P A U L H U X L E Y
Huxley’s paintings rarely have a single point of origin; many aspects are drawn from art historical references and sometimes they may derive from things seen in everyday life, but always they grow from the previous works in a continuing chain of thought process where ideas are modified through development and variation. ‘Lu - Green', one of the series of Chinese names for colours, is unambiguous in that the main left hand element was drawn directly from the Chinese word, Lu, meaning green, seen painted on a wall in a Shanghai street.
The working process towards a completed painting usually starts with a series of pen drawings on a small sketch pad. Through mutation and modification these drawings explore the configuration of shapes and their relative positions in the composition. Successive drawings arranged in sequence resemble a storyboard of ideas.
The drawings lead to small paintings on paper where the full manifestation of the idea is developed in colour. Although these stand in their own right as paintings and are often exhibited as such, they are nearly always painted as a concept for a larger work on canvas in the same way that a sculptor’s maquette is a model for the final work.
