Exposed Cinnabar Painting 2006

Callum Innes made this “Exposed Cinnabar Painting” and what strikes me is how he has married control and chance through mark making. There’s something almost architectural about the way Innes divides up the picture plane into these colour blocks, but look closer and you can see how the paint has been pulled and thinned out, revealing the canvas beneath in delicate vertical rivulets. In the lower section this controlled dilution of the pigment becomes the main event. It’s like he's inviting the painting to decompose a little, to find its own form. It's as if he’s saying, “Okay, paint, show me what you can do.” This reminds me a little of Gerhard Richter’s squeegee paintings, where the artist allows the materiality of the paint to dictate the image. Both artists seem to revel in the unpredictable nature of the medium, embracing the idea that a painting can, in a sense, paint itself.