Paintings – Christopher Madden

Art meets science. Eclipse of the sun projected onto watercolour painting

Eclipse of the sun projected onto a watercolour painting

Photograph of watercolour painting (16 x 22cm) and projected image. 29th March 2025

The image above is a detail of the projection of a partial solar eclipse onto a watercolour painting. The watercolour painting is a simple painting featuring only a rudimentary landscape and sky which was created as a base for a collage. It was only while watching the eclipse from my garden that in occurred to me that the painting would work well as a backdrop for projecting the eclipse.

Using a telescope to project the sun onto a white background such as a sheet of paper is a standard method of observing the sun. It’s something I’ve been doing for the past 55 years or so.

The painting is on white watercolour paper which looks dark in these photos because the projection technique involves using a baffle to shade the paper (otherwise it would be too bright in the sunlight).

The projection could be categorised as a form of light art.

The whole painting with the solar eclipse projected onto it.

The painting in the garden with the solar eclipse projected onto it.
London Eye watercolour and ink sketch

London Eye watercolour and ink sketch

Watercolour and ink on Arches watercolour paper. 13x20cm. 11th June 2024

A sketch of the London Eye.

The line art was drawn first, using, appropriately, a Uni-ball Eye ballpoint pen. The ink in these pens is waterproof, so it was no problem to then add a blue watercolour wash over the drawing to create the sky.

The sky was created using Sennelier cerulean blue watercolour. This colour is good for skies because it’s easy to lift the colour off the paper with a tissue or suchlike to create white clouds (and because it’s a nice colour).
Watercolour pencil art – Organic Matrix

Watercolour pencil art – Organic Matrix

Watercolour pencil on paper. 20 x 29cm January 2024

A painting, created with watercolour pencils, depicting a network or matrix of organic forms linked by tube-like structures.

The work is from the imagination (as you can see), and although it wasn’t created with any particular meaning in mind it probably alludes to the connectedness of life, with the blobby entities being connected to each other by the tube-like structures. I’m not sure whether the blobs are meant to look like slightly unsettling organisms or wonky potatoes. Probably both. The work may allude in some way to the nature of consciousness or intelligence, with the entities possibly communicating with each other like cells in a brain.

A work on paper created using Caran d’Ache Museum Aquarelle watercolour pencils, which have a very high pigment content.
Lunging Figure – gouache on paper

Lunging figure

Gouache on paper. 350 x 250mm November 2018

A gouache work on paper featuring a lunging figure.

The work is from the imagination and was created as part of a series of relatively spontaneous, unmediated artworks.
Conic construction in a landscape

Conic construction in a landscape

Watercolour and gouache with digital additions. 2023.

A watercolour and gouache painting of a cone in a landscape, with additional features added digitally.
The original watercolour painting was scanned to create a digital file to which additional features were then added in Adobe Photoshop. The digital additions were created as spontaneously as possible, without too much conscious consideration. The results are similar to other works that I have produced using the same process, but I suppose that’s only to be expected. Next time I’ll consciously try to do something different.
The image partly resembles a creature of some sort, maybe with a beak and what may be an eye. If the white blob that may be an eye had a dot inside it, it would obviously be an eye, but it would lose some of its slightly sinister mystery.
Maybe it’s not an eye at all. Maybe it’s a hole in the top of a wigwam. Those straight lines protruding from the top of the cone look a bit wigwamy now I come to look at them.
Environmental art: watercolour tree

Watercolour: Tree

Watercolour on paper. 2023

A watercolour painting from the imagination, depicting a tree in a sinister landscape. The dark foreboding atmosphere of the painting is partly to reflect the atmosphere of the ongoing environmental crisis and partly to reflect the atmosphere of thinking about it.

The tree looks as though it has uprooted itself and is trying to get away from its environment by using its roots as limbs. Alternatively, maybe the ground around the tree’s roots has been washed way as part of environmental degradation (perhaps by floods caused by climate change or by people’s exploitation of the land), literally sweeping away or undermining the foundations of a sustainable environment. And what are those objects next to the tree?
Contemporary art watercolour painting with digital additions

Watecolour painting with digital additions.

Watecolour painting using collage (April 2021) with digital additions (Oct 2023).

A spontaneous semi-abstract watercolour painting with additions in Adobe Photoshop (added several years later, so it’s not that spontaneous).

The watercolour rock-like object is collaged onto the sky, with the line work added later digitally.

The painting is meant to have a sinister edge to it, with the rock-like form being some sort of creature. I’m very interested in the way that people see some creatures as being cure (baby mammals, especially furry ones being a prime example) and other creatures as being repellant (even at the baby stage).
Rectangle on legs

Rectangle on legs

Gouache, acrylic, collage 30x40cm February 2022

Is this a lopsided building on stilts or a rectangular creature lumbering across the painting?

The black rectangle was placed on the sky for no particular reason other than that the rectangle was close to hand. It then became whatever it is.
Fur in contemporary art

Fur ellipse

Fake fur, card, acrylic. 30 x 42 x 8cm March 2022

At first sight this work looks like a dark ellipse painted onto a blue background. Closer inspection reveals that the ellipse is in fact made of fur and that it protrudes some distance from the flat blue surface.

A close-up detail of the work.

The fur is dark and matt, making its texture quite hard to see without close inspection. As a result most casual observers don’t notice. A close inspection is however rewarded with the realisation of what is being looked at.

This work exhibits my interest in interpreting perception, illusion and expectations.

Optically deceptive artworks in my solo show at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Cornwall, 2022. The fur piece is the far one.
Number Two in a series

Number Two in a Series

Digital print. Drawn in Procreate. March 2023

Titled Number Two in a Series, this is part of a series of prints based on images of numbers drawn in Procreate on an iPad.
Abstract digital art created on iPad

Digital abstract painting

Painted in Procreate. March 2023

This is an example of digital abstract art, created in Procreate on an iPad using an Apple Pencil.

The brushes in software such as Procreate and Adobe Fresco are getting better all the time, allowing for much more spontaneous and expressive work than was ever possible in the past. The expressiveness of the medium is now such that I think that the results can legitimately be classed as paintings rather than just digital art.
Proposal for a mural – semi-abstract wall figures

Mural (proposal).

Photomontage. December 2023

A proposal for a mural applied directly to an art gallery wall.

I’ve been experimenting with subjects that are suitable for murals on gallery walls for several years.

The proposed mural is of a group of semiabstract figures with linked hands. The anatomy of the figures is ambiguous. Are the circular objects at the top of the figures their heads, or are those some form of decoration? Are the large white circles eyes, and are the various indentations mouths?
Abstract acrylic painting

Abstract acrylic painting.

Acrylic on watercolour paper. 30x20cm. 2022.

An abstract painting composed of black lines and areas of colour.
The framework of black acrylic lines was painted first, quite quickly and spontaneously. The coloured areas were added to this superstructure later after experimenting with their positions.
Abstract acrylic painting: linear and curved forms

Linear and curved forms

Acrylic, paper, collage. 35 x 25cm. 2022.

A painting from a series of abstract acrylic artworks featuring strongly linear black forms interacting with curving coloured forms.
Although the black linear elements in the painting are abstract their composition give the impression of a living entity such as an animal or a person – an effect that is heightened by the coloured curving forms, some of which hint at anatomical features such as eyes or ears.
Rorschach mask

Rorschach Mask

Watercolour, acrylic, paper, collage. 30cm x 21cm. 2021.

A watercolour Rorschach pattern, or inkblot test pattern, with a panel of stripes in acrylic collaged onto it, giving the impression of a mask.
The type of watercolour paint used to create the Rorschach diagram (Daniel Smith lunar black) creates a particularly intricate and textured inkblot pattern.

Below, the image framed.
Painting of linear and curved forms – acrylic on paper

Linear and curved forms

Acrylic, paper, collage. 35x25cm. 2022.

An abstract acrylic painting featuring a strongly linear black form overlaid by curving coloured forms (some of which are collage while others are painted directly onto the paper).
Although the black linear elements are abstract they convey the impression of a dynamic animal form. This is heightened by the coloured curving forms, some of which hint at eyes or of other anatomical features.
Perception-challenging artwork

Shapes at the edge of perception

Papier mache, acrylic, card. 30x21cm. 2021.

A wall hung artwork in which a matte black hemisphere protrudes from a flat matte black surface. Due to the darkness of the surface the protruding hemisphere is quite hard to see (although in this photograph it is lit in a way that makes it reasonably visible). Even less obvious than the protruding hemisphere, the matte black circle at the centre of the metallic area is actually a hemispherical indentation. This indentation is very rarely noticed by observers.
The work is an investigation into perception, optical illusions and expectation.
Prancing figure: sketch

Prancing figure

Charcoal on paper, digital colouring. 2022.

A sketch of a semi-abstract figure in a landscape. The figure is of a type that I’ve drawn on and off for the past thirty years, so it obviously has some sort of significance.
Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens exhibition

Solo show, Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens

May – June 2022

A general view of my solo exhibition in the gallery at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Cornwall.

More of the work in the show. Don’t forget to notice the hammer and nails.
Tree and sphere. Ink drawing with collage

Tree and sphere. Ink drawing with collage

Pen and ink, gouache 30x40cm May 2022

A pen and ink sketch of a tree drawn from the imagination, with a collaged sphere painted in gouache.

The sphere is meant to have a slightly otherworldly quality about it, as though it’s from a different dimension or reality.