Batman Punching Forward on a Rainbow Splatter — Print & Oil Painting

Confetti is the only honest word for the background. Turquoise, magenta, lemon, scarlet and violet have been flicked and spattered across the whole surface, halftone dots show through underneath in patches, and white speckles have been thrown over the top. None of it is describing an object.

Onto that field the artist has drawn a figure from an older era of comics: grey bodysuit, blue cape and cowl, yellow oval on the chest, and a segmented yellow belt laid out as a neat row of buckles. The line is thick, even and cheerful, inked the way superhero comics were inked before the 1980s made everything grim.

He lunges out of the picture at us. The left arm and fist are thrown forward and down, far enough that the glove sits closer to the viewer than the rest of the body; the right elbow is cocked back at shoulder height, the cape is flung up behind the head, and the mouth is set in a small determined half-smile.

What keeps the piece from being merely loud is the grey. Large areas of the suit are left as plain flat neutral, and the eye rests there before going back into the noise. Part of our DC Universe collection. The blue splatter canvas works the same trick on different characters, and the yellow impasto study keeps the paint and drops the colour.