New Art / Artifact — KINGDOM OF STYLE

With my design work all but disappeared with exception of one client, I have been busying myself with painting, until I can no longer afford to buy art supplies of course because no clients means no wages. I know so many of us freelance and self employed people are in the same boat.

So I thought I’d share my latest artwork which is called Artifact.

This is so hard to photograph as it features two shades of metallic silver, but this is the best I could do. The concept of Artifact is finding something beautiful after it’d been long neglected, left to rot and decay: unearthing and brushing away the bad stuff to reveal it’s beauty once more. It was once perfect but is now a little tarnished, a little broken but no less beautiful if you just give it a little love and attention to bring it back to life. The imperfection of it’s age perhaps makes it even more beautiful.

I really enjoyed creating this one as I used a special product called Crackle Paste which, as the name clearly states, it’s a paste which cracks as it dries. The cracks vary depending on how thick or thin it’s applied. I worked first with a product called Structure Gel, which I apply onto the canvas first to create an initial uneven surface then the Crackle Paste is built on top of that. It’s messy and fun!

As an side, I know a lot of freelance creatives are struggling right now and I have just been given a link to get 2 months free Abobe Creative Cloud, so thought I’d share it with you guys too. You need to be an existing subscriber but as you know, £50 a month for an individual is a lot of money and when you have no income coming in to offset the cost, that £50 might as well be £5000 because that’s what it feels like. Anyway, this amazing article on Creative Bloq shows you how to get the payment holiday. Hope that helps some fellow creatives out a little. I know it has given me a little financial relief.