7 Pattress Plate Painting Meditation

Is something I never thought I’d ever say. Yet here I am. Following the 4950 paintings challenge in 2018 I had to paint a few of the more obscure architectural detail. This is one, it’s a particular type of wall tie used when walls become unstable and need securing. That’s the limit of my understanding. Artwise, however, I can say a lot more.

Texture is the prevailing theme in this piece. The building is old. The signs of wear obvious hence the need for the pattress plate. Like a cartwheel bolted onto an axle but this is fixed to a rough old wall. Painted white but weathered with age.

The colours cast in shadows, nothing is ever truly white. Light bounces off everything and brings colour as it does.

The texture as on the pattress plate and the wall behind contrast with the regimented geometric brickwork to the left. The colours are obvious at first, then the lines of the alternating bricks forming a chessboard pattern. Hints of a window, to the top and bottom, frame the board. These angular blocks are in rigid fragmented placement compared to a unifying colour of the circle of the pattress plate. With spokes radiating from a central hub, crowned with a bolt and a piece of weathered rod.

The spares dividing the plate into wedges, each filled with textured patterns of dots and squiggles. Areas masked so that, once removed, all that remains are the page behind and the ghost of where the masking was.