Milking It

Milking It

E16: A milk float van carrying glass bottles. A heritage (nostalgic) milk round or a last stand against the might of the supermarket and local shop?

Reflections

The small scale of the canvas somewhat defeated a plan to use a number of regular shapes arranged about the picture plane, with inter-linking lines (or marks) to suggest some kind of ‘round’, or a journey the eyes might take. On realising this, and in trying to avoid creating something overly contrived, I switched attention to the nature of the colour to be used and enjoy working with the paint. My original response to the MO was to recall the colour of Coop milk floats (from the late 1960s and early 1970s) and use this to determine the dominant colour for the piece.

In rendering the surface, some lines became etched into it, suggesting tyre marks on the road, or at least an ‘imprint’ of something, as well as a sense of a surface becoming worn out and losing a battle against time. The reference to the ‘round’ in the MO was achieved by using a white frame around the edge, usefully pushing the image forwards or backwards according to the way one responds to its frame.