Rivet Red 2
£295
Original – Oils, sand and resin on canvas board, mounted and framed in black wood frame, 28cm x 33cm (image is 15cm x 21cm)
The Rivet Red artworks form part of my Ghost Ships Collection – a set of more reflective paintings.
Alongside the Sink works, they are a mini‑series that read like a study in surface and depth. Each piece is built from a shared vocabulary — rivets, seams, industrial geometry, jointly inspired by rivets from a boat hull deep underwater and rivetted steel beams in industrial buildings. But the works resist literalism, instead translating those references into tactile fields of red.
Some areas are heavily textured, almost sculptural, where layered mediums suggest corroded metal or encrusted marine growth. Elsewhere the paint is polished to a high gloss that catches and fractures light. Between those extremes lie expanses of flat matt that absorb light and reset the eye.
The contrast between glossy and matt is deliberate: highlights slide across the glossy planes while the matt zones act as visual anchors. The rivet motifs appear as raised punctuations or subtle impressions, sometimes catching a specular gleam, sometimes disappearing into shadow.
Although one hue of red, the series demonstrates that red is many things — warm, cool, velvety, metallic. Subtle sheens and washes reveal themselves depending on viewing angle and illumination.
