Dilemma
Spent the morning working on the paintings, and the afternoon working on the mosaic for the SLBI. Both tasks have their challenges. At the moment I am feeling frustrated by the limitations of my smalti palette. For those who haven’t come across it, smalti is beautiful, intensely coloured hand made glass. Most of it comes from North Italy (Venice and Friuli), but you can find beautiful Mexican smalti too. I usually get in some supplies of the Mexican material when I go to the US, as the transport is cheaper. I imagine there are wonderful factories in Russia too, but I don’t know how to find them. If anyone knows anything about Russian suppliers, please let me know.
Smalti is unlike the thin vitreous glass tiles people use in their bathrooms. It is far more intense in colour – it’s often used in a way that is much too intense, in my opinion. The real drawback with smalti though, is that it’s very expensive, and most suppliers only provide a limited range of material — perhaps a hundred at most. Thousands of shades are produced. I have been told that the Vatican workshops have tens of thousands of shades. In order to work with it really effectively, it is helpful to have a really wide palette, or at least one that includes more subtle or muted colours than most suppliers customarily provide. And that is what I have been battling with today.
The mosaic I am making is going to be installed on an old Victorian wall. It needs to pick up some of the soft and muted tones of the wall itself, and be a presence in the garden that works with the plants, rather than being a strident contrast to them. So the colours need to be strong enough to seem like something, but not so assertive that they take over. This isn’t quite as easy as it sounds, particularly when everything I thought was subtle when I bought it, seems far too Disney-loud in the cold light of the workshop. I have decided marble is the answer. I will have to explain why later: work calls.
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