When paint dries up and hardens it always looks different from when it’s fresh and liquid. And it’s the qualities of the latter, the color, the shine, the texture, that Jon Gabb has preserved and used to make his three dimensional paintings. ‘Painting’ isn’t necessarily the best description of Jons work. They seem like installations or sculptures really, and Jon is actually a sculpturer by education.
Jon mixes acrylic paint with a special glue that works as a medium to keep the paint flexible. It’s laid out over a flat surface and once it has dried enough Jon cuts the paintings, creating the strands which he can then set up to create the sculptures. Jon used strong highly saturated colors as they show the original colors of the paint better.
The works are adjustable to a certain extent. The strands of paint are very fragile so it needs to be handled with care when moving the art. And they need to be fitted to the space they’re going to be in, so it’s never really finished until the sculptures have reached their final destination.
