Artwork Description

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, retaining the essence of the original inspiration but also becoming something new.

The paintings in this series were created over many sessions. The green areas have been built up in five layers, leaving marks and splashes visible. The surface is impasto and textural, with many spatters and signs of overpainting and reworking.

Penguin used green for their series of crime paperbacks. The green I've used here is primarily cobalt green and chromium oxide. I've chosen Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' because of the association between the monster (at least in contemporary culture, if not in the novel) and the colour. The text is mirrored, suggesting something sinister or wrong, and the jagged and broken lines could also refer to the creature's broken body.

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.

These striking paintings will look fantastic in any home.

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Medium

acrylic on canvas

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Ready to hang

This artwork is ready to hang.

Tags#Green, #cobalt, #chromium, #Frankenstein, #monster, #classic, #horror, #book, #Penguin, #popular, #unpopular, #cover, #title, #text, #white, #cream, #spatter, #impasto, #icon, #style

All art by Ben Tankard

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