Recessional Space

Artist TERENCE CLARKE explores how you can create distance and space in a painting using colour, tone and drawing.

- Terence Clarke

How is distance and space created? Is it colour or drawn structure? The Fauve style demands elements of colour are given free rein but the drawing also articulates space. It sweeps in to reaffirm the spacial reading, even when the colour seems to contradict what we think of as cool, recessional colours or warm, advancing, hot colours. In practice, cool and warm don’t apply to defining recessional space.

Tone is also a factor in suggesting space. Here, the woodland’s deep space is as much to do with the very dark tones in the middle distance as colours at the horizon. The perspectival drawing is a dominant influence throughout and trumps colour in defining the space. It’s this that allows me to play with spectacular hues and tones but still lets the picture make sense as a readable space. 

www.terenceclarke.co.uk