Andrew Bond Art

There’s nothing new about painting on vinyl records. Many artists have tried it out as a support for their artworks, but most paint onto the black surface using a light colour or white and paint a negative image so as the shadows are light and the highlight is black. This can look great but limits the images to a narrow spectrum. I tend to put a base colour on first {mostly but not always] and build a picture on top of this which I find gives me a lot of versatility in colour variation and consequently, this makes for more impact than a black background.

Vinyl records are instantly recognisable and hold a special place in popular culture for many. They are limited in size which means the images need to be economical and clean, there is no room for clutter. This is the ideal medium in a world that needs to be mindful of waste, particularly plastic which we all know is becoming one of the gravest issues of the 21st century. Records when new are items that were held in high regard by collectors, often due to there limited availability. Often specific records needed to be ordered in specially for a customer, involving long wait times and inflated prices. Slowly over time these record collections got damaged with wear and tear and became unwanted and were discarded or replaced by other newer more convenient ways of storing sound.

It is certainly true that in the last few years vinyl records have made a resurgence in popularity [myself included in this], but there are a lot of old unpopular recordings that are destined for the landfill. To be able to give these items a second life as an artwork I believe is a responsible and ethical way of treating these once treasured bits of plastic.