This painting is the kid whose uniform never fitted, who never had the right books in their bag and lost their dinner money on the way to school. It’s worn multiple overcoats, had some reconditioned, ripped a few and lost the bits that came off. It began simply enough; a plain white canvas x with notions of having black ink drifted over it and pooling in small troughs.

And it got that, but it wasn’t enough and unfortunately, Management neglected to preserve the evidence.

Below is the eradication phase – yellow acrylic over the ink shapes – some of them looking like seaweed, others less easily categorised and not giving me any reason to try.

This has come about following the less-than-intentional addition of dilute water-soluble oils, giving the whole a much darker appearance and mood. I was beginning to see a landscape here, possibly near a river or pond and with patches of light that could either be reflections of events in the sky or something gaseous in the water.

So I used a lot of scrubbing movements with a rough cloth to pull out the sub-layers and make more of shapes I could find there.

I’m not entirely sure whether this is an iteration with small changes or just a better framed/lit image. But what’s evident is the various painted and unpainted layers exposed by the scrubbing process. There’s the yellow I’d covered the canvas with, please don’t ask why, and the remnants of a neon orange layer top right. The original canvas is evident too in small patches here and there.

I’ve a feeling this will be on its third recycle soon.

© Suzanne Conboy-Hill 2026