Composition of Shapes + Colours

Exploring new formats, techniques and ideas provides me with the foundations to all of my work. Since 2006 I had purposely avoided colour, and due to physical restrictions in the small darkroom I was never tempted to explore what colour could give me.

However, I eventually started experimenting with different chemicals and processes and to my surprise discovered that colour could expand my work immensely. I found that suddenly I had another factor to control - another limitless variation that I had to place into the equation.

Colour burst into my work and started taking over. Because of this my work needed to be simplified and reassessed. I was already juggling with form, tone, texture, placement and relationships between forms - now I also had to decide, in the dark, what colour everything should be. This finally made me put the brakes on and start to consider colour as an equal to form.

Simplifying everything also had another benefit - not only did it mean that I could fit colour into my way of working without overloading, but also the work became bolder, stronger and more direct.

This in turn meant that my work could finally fit comfortably with a much larger format. In fact the upscaling of the work from a darkroom print to a much larger size changed the final result itself, and in my mind it is as if the work has had the volume turned up to max. - MG Jackson