Injections
I was shown this piece of veneer by Quentin who founded and belongs to the Staffordshire group. It is thoroughly garish, acid orange and electric blue with flashes of purple and yellow. I think it had been acquired from someone in the U.S or Canada and is an example of a timber injected with dye. Anyway he thought it worth showing me and I am glad he did.
I am aware of the use of dyed veneers and even manmade ones but this was something I hadn't heard of. Effectively injecting a tree with a colour whilst it is still living the dye is carried through the wood to create a unique effect once the tree is felled. Like the xylem tests in high school science, charting dye sucked through a celery stalk this is same thing on a grand scale.
I'm not sure what the veneer is but the effect is certainly distinct. I like the idea of it, not knowing how the colour will carry on the inside of the tree and the result being unpredictable. Like an experiment in process painting the end product is a surprise result in itself. Thinking about painting again here this is an example of the material quite literally being painted into before even being used in any form of marquetry.
The readymade nature of this piece also is worth mentioning. With a distinctive grain and the blue of water or sky it almost feels inevitable that it should be used as part of a landscape of some sort. Perhaps there is such demand that veneer is produced with an endpoint like this in mind. Whatever its use I would hate for the grotesqueness of the piece to be lost as it is so striking an example of a human intervention in to nature. In fact the whole idea of how the veneer is coloured makes it a highly challenging material to begin thinking about using.
