Making Paper Sculptural/ Stripes

Quite unexpectedly I have started painting again. Largely done out of momentarily being stuck with the sculptures and an impulse to do something different, I made a huge number of quick A4 and A3 stripe paintings using blue ink. The process was intentionally very simple and repetitive. I would put the paintbrush to the very edge of the page and allowing it to run dry down the length of the page before repeating, working horizontally, usually from left to right, across the page. The works were a very clear copy of Lee Ufan’s From Line Painting series which I love. This didn’t really bother me as, in hindsight, it helped me understand Lee Ufan’s works. I also really enjoyed how cringy it felt to do these paintings.

I was interested in how the page, once filled, became sculptural, reading as a single surface rather than a separate space, as I would have normally read my previous paintings. I think this is because of the figure-ground relationship, something which I learnt from reading about Minimalism and geometric/ mono-chrome paintings of the 60’s such as Frank Stella or Robert Ryman. The idea was that the figure was stretched to cover/ become the ground – essentially rendering painting sculptural. Thinking about this I started to see how I could make these 2D works even more sculptural.

The stripes are also no doubt shaped by Daniel Burren who has been on my mind. This is particularly case for the ones where I alternated the starting point between top and bottom every stripe. These ones also remind me of my crisscross wood structures.

After using the painted paper as a sculptural object, I decided to try using blank paper. I experimenting trapping the paper under weights and creating fold/ ripples. I tried to see how many pieces of paper I could stack