Sunday Salon 37

The curatorial and editorial project for systems, non-objective and reductive artists working in the UK

Sunday Salon 37 | Philip Cole

Saturation Point, London | December 2025

(from left to right): ‘How to be, ‘Connect’ and ‘What to do’ at Saturation Point Projects ACME Studios

Thanks very much to Patrick Morrissey and Hanz Hancock for the opportunity to exhibit some of my work for Sunday Salon 37. Access to a large space meant I was able to exhibit two larger works alongside a small selection of recent smaller works.

Over the past few years, I have been experimenting with a range of different materials and processes, many related to my background in ecology. I have an ongoing interest in the use of polyester resin and the potential it has for painting.

The Anthropocene age is marked by the prevalence of plastic, and my work seeks to underscore the importance of this significant material, formed from the remains of organic life. My considered use of this material is controversial, but intentional in order to elevate its status and that of the work. The production of something permanent is in contrast to the use of these materials to construct and package temporary and throwaway things. I reference the packaging and registration marks of the products we buy because we need to, and we want to.

These things may seem peripheral, but their importance lies in the clues they give about life at this moment.

The works reflect my interest in and regard for these materials. They are also explorations of certain colour compositions and how these might translate using this unusual painting medium.

‘What to do’ (2023), coloured polyester resins on fibreglass and foam, 125 x 186 x 5 cm

Scale is something I have focused on recently. It had been a few years since I had completed a larger-scale work, and it followed a suggestion from my mentor to experiment with painting on a larger scale, while I was on the Turps Hastings Offsite programme 2023/4. Would my current approach to image-making translate to this scale?

Working at a larger scale also presented its own practical challenges, weight being one. I usually pour coloured resin layers onto a solid board surface; I favour birch ply. As a wooden base would be far too heavy and so for these larger works, I used a foam inner, sandwiched between layers of fibreglass – essentially a rectangular surf-board blank which could then be painted on. This meant that the finished work could be easily lifted, moved and transported. ‘What to do’ is nearly two metres wide but can be lifted by one person, although two are better!

Left: ‘How to be’ (2025), coloured polyester pesins on foam and fibreglass, 125 x 125 x 5 cm, and right: ‘Connect’ (2023), coloured polyester resins on birch ply, 30 x 30 x 3.5 cm

Many years ago, I discovered that making mosaics was an enjoyable venture. Many mosaics start off with the composition sketched out on brown paper, then areas of colour are completed by sticking down small pieces of tile until the section is complete. Attention is then turned to the next coloured section, and so on. In my painting practice, I’ve developed a way of working that is not dissimilar to this approach.

This involves putting individual areas of evenly-coloured elemental shapes together, one after the other, in order to complete a whole. I often use squares, rectangles, circles and spheres. My work follows a process; it has a beginning, a middle and an end.

‘Leavers’ (2024), coloured polyester resins on fibreglass and foam, 60 x 65 x 3.5 cm

‘Connect’ (2023), coloured polyester resins on birch ply, 30 x 30 x 3.5 cm

In a similar way to mosaic making, and perhaps many forms of image making, the works start with an idea for a composition and some kind of visualisation which may involve two or perhaps three colours together; the picture in my head is usually shaped and informed by previous works, and there are often some connections or similarities between one work and the next. I guess it feels like an ongoing experiment.

From left: ‘Untitled’ (2025), coloured polyester rsins on fibreglass and foam 62 x 62 x 4.5 cm. Top: ‘Within’ and bottom: ‘Without’ – both 20,23 8-colour hand-pulled silkscreen print on 410 gsm Somerset satin paper AP (edition of 20) 30 x 30 x 3.5 cm framed. Right: ‘From here to there’ (2025), coloured polyester resins on fibreglass and foam, 40.2 x 29.7 x 1.7 cm.,

A lot of physical work goes into the preparation of the base layer or ‘ground’, and if it is a large work, that will men several layers of resin and fibreglass first. Then I sketch out the idea for the composition on the white ground in pencil.

I add the first colour to one of the central areas, and this colour will beget the next, and so on. I work from the middle outwards. At this stage, I focus on achieving a pairing that is true to my original thought picture, but also which seems right and which feels good.

Sometimes at this stage I might remove a colour and start again, and sometimes it’s the third colour that becomes really important in activating the previous two.

I have around 30 different coloured pigments to make up the colours that I use. I like putting contrasting colours together, and sometimes add white or black in order to achieve tonal variations. More recently, I’ve focused on experimenting with the volume of pigment paste added to the clear resin. Opaque and transparent layers can lead to different outcomes in how the colour appears, and it also affects how two neighbouring colours sit together. The meeting point can be sharp and hard-edged, fuzzy, or a bit in between. This is apparent in ‘From here to there’, as the pink and one of the whites are semi-transparent. One colour can appear to blend with another or even seem to ‘bleed’ into the other. This is partly because the layers of resin are 2-3 mm thick once sanded back.

‘From here to there’ (2025), coloured polyester resins on fibreglass and foam, 40.2 x 29.7 x 1.7 cm. Photo courtesy Bernard G Mills.

The last pours are around the edges, and this final layer of resin drips - these drips set and are left in a fairly irregular way, as this stage is far less controlled, and these edges are least affected by sanding. The drips remain there as a reminder of the process and contrast with the flat surface.

The final stage, the removal of part of the surface by sanding, is exciting but also critical and easy to misjudge – subtracting paint is as important as adding it! The flat satin surface that is left has its own special quality; I think it helps to bring an element of depth to what is ostensibly a very flat two-dimensional composition.

The surface ends up having quite an unusual tactile and visual quality; it has a softness that belies its hardness. I sometimes compare this with marble or travertine – metamorphic rocks that have been changed through heat and pressure within the earth. It seems ironic that the coloured resin was once the bodies of small organisms that were similarly changed within the earth to form crude oil, and then changed again by the polymerisation process.

I have always thought of my works as paintings but they also exist as objects. In a way they lend themselves to touch; this is why I displayed two on a small table in the exhibition.

Both works ‘Untitled’ (2023), coloured polyester resins on birch ply, 30 x 30 x 3.5 cm

The process of making is messy, dusty, smelly and time consuming. It involves hand sanding, cutting blades and the use of power tools – the kind of activities that are more usually employed in making sculpture rather than paintings. But it seems appropriate, as it reflects my lived experience which has featured home renovation and DIY.

I have found moments of calm in the mundane repetitiveness of construction.

In these completed works, evidence of the painter/maker is notably almost absent. In their ‘hard-edged-ness’, the paintings might be misunderstood as digitally created, but the element of craft in their making attests to a more analogue approach.

I think that the paintings can be understood best when they are seen ‘in the flesh’ – this is when there is the possibility for them to truly connect.

Philip Cole

December 2025

colecorner.com @colecorner

Left to right: ‘Within’ ‘Without’ ‘Leavers’ ‘How to be’ ‘Connect’ and ‘What to do’.