While I totally embraced the focus, simplicity and austerity an entirely black and white palette gave the work created for my solo exhibition Collected Patterns: The botany of Walter Hill, I am now enjoying an overwhelming sense of abundance and joie de vivre in the series of colour prints, wallpaper and textiles I am designing for my upcoming show Recollected Patterns: The botany of Walter Hill.
One of the most wonderful things happened when I hung Collected Patterns last year… I felt the exhibition didn’t merely represent the culmination of a project, but the beginning of a whole new body of work… And, that is what Recollected Patterns is – an extension of the original series.
I decided not to create any new motifs, but instead work with the considerable library of motifs already existing within the series. I also chose to explore colour in the work and repeat pattern – hence the decision to develop designs for wallpaper and textiles. So now, I have multiple colour cards, charts, maps and swatches filling the studio. Hex RGB colour maps, Pantone colour fan decks and digitally printed tests on textile, wallpaper and paper substrates. I’m reviewing them under various lighting conditions: daylight, morning and afternoon light, incandescent and fluorescent light etc. And while they all read differently, I’ve decided to make my decisions in natural light with a leaning towards morning or noon light as I find the yellow cast of the afternoon far too muddy.
This next series is really fresh, just like spring and summer, the seasons during which the exhibition will be held. Expect a bright, clean palette and loads of symmetry…