Rich, impasto oil painting on canvas. Please see the detail photos to get a sense of the thickly painted surface.

This is an abstract painting, based on the classic 'Popular Penguin' paperback books, a style icon. I wanted to take the original format of the book cover and transform it, distorting it with thick brushstrokes, while retaining the essence of the original inspiration but also becoming something new.

The orange areas are predominantly Cadmium Orange, with lighter patches where I've mixed ochres, whites and Naples Yellow. The surface is very impasto and textural, with many spatters and signs of overpainting and reworking.

Please note that this is a substantially larger work than the earlier paintings in the series. The edges are painted, and it will not need framing.

Former director of the Art Gallery of NSW, Edmund Capon, said of the first painting in this series, " an evocative imagining of the familiar Penguin Paperback...it was a painting we all liked very much for its rich texture, its sense of memory and its sort of nostalgic humour"

In terms of the application of the paint, I would cite the work of Jasper Johns, Robert Motherwell and Franz Kline as inspirations. The text owes something to the work of Rosalie Gascoigne.

These striking paintings will look fantastic in any home.