Postcards 1987-91
In 1987 I bought a pad of Japanese watercolour paper in the form of postcards. Displayed by the paper in the shop was a poster advertising a fund raising ‘postcard art’ competition. I had never painted watercolours this small, but I resolved to have a go. I decided to rework some of the Imperial size watercolours at this small scale to see if I could resolve problems with the large pictures that irritated me. It also kept me going with my painting during college vacations and other times when there was no open life class I could attend. In addition, it gave me the opportunity to try out the many more brands of watercolour paper available in small sizes. I also experimented with different palettes for flesh in these pictures. In the end I settled on a format a little larger than your standard postcard, about 8” by 4.5” and the majority of the re-worked pictures were standing nudes. It took me much longer to draw and paint the pictures at this size than it had to do them at Imperial size (22” by 30”). I continued to do these occasionally for about four years, in the end I did about 200, but some were distributed without me ever photographing them.