'Skin'
Skin is a response to the Black Lives Matter rallies of May/June 2020. It is a patchwork of colours I would regularly use as bases for skin tones and tints. 'Flesh tone' was an historic title given to many paint manufacturers, to describe 'skin' and was usually assigned to a caucasian pink colour. Thanks to the artist Nic Uribe highlighting this, a group of us were able to convince most mainstream artist's paint manufacturers to change the label.
There is one red square in the image that stands out, because it doesn't belong there. This was promoted by some uniformed social media comments that we were overreacting about the title and that flesh was red. Flesh is red, but that wasn't what the title meant and the red now is a reminder of the ignorance around skin colour still prevalent in society.
All of these colours are used in skin colours in a portrait and many more and all come from three primary colours, red, yellow and blue. All three primaries mixed together make brown, not black or white.
Oil on panel, 7 inches square, plus black satin float frame.
