“Blue Chalk”, acrylic, India ink and graphites on canvas, 50cm x 60cm (8”x8”)
Blue Chalk is a small painting created after my 2020 Solitude series, to bring my new technique of combining ink and drawn lines with the painting onto canvases. The 8”x8” area was small enough to control the India ink and splash it about a bit. The intent was experimentation and play!
Inspired by the folded and faulted chalk near Flamborough Head (link to article about this section of coast from the Open University Geological Society), I wanted to include angled and curved lines in the patterns of the rock layers. This area of our coast is unusual because it displays evidence of a time of soft chalk. The white chalk cliffs near Bridlington have highly angled folds, some with sections of complete 180 degree turns. Our chalk, unlike some of the brittle southern UK coast chalk, was easily deformed from shifting forces – originating in the area that is now the North Sea (Doggerland).
While the folds feature in other paintings, in Blue Chalk I became a bit obsessed with how the cliff edges and the exposed layers of strata have an undulating edge. This comes from different grades of erosion in each layer – strata of easily eroded chalk, harder chalk as the environment changed, and regular flint seams between chalk layers leaving jutting edges proud of the vertical line.
So Blue Chalk is a simple composition to give the vertical boundary pride of place. A rock edge softened by curves of ink and line and with soft hazy layers of paint. A strong geological structure of shadow shifts into an atmospheric moody image.
TINA MAMMOSER 