‘I grew up playing along the riverbanks, so the River Avon is a big
influence, the huge tide and the mud banks.’ ¹ – Richard Long

Richard Long created Untitled using mud taken directly from the River Avon in Bristol – the city where he was born and still lives to this day. The artist described this particular mud as ‘squidgy clay’ and the present work is a clear celebration of the tactile qualities of this untraditional medium. Prior to executing this painting, the artist would have added mud to a large bucket partially filled with water, mixed the two together with his hand to create a liquid, and passed this through a sieve to remove debris. Next, he would have painted the entire canvas black and, once the paint had dried, likely with the help of a tape measure and ruler, divided the canvas into thirds using a red pencil. Only after masking off the perimeters of the canvas and positioning it vertically, would Long have begun the ‘painting’ process.
With the bucket in his left hand and a rubber glove on his right, Long would have smeared the liquid mud across one third of the canvas with his fingertips, in a series of rapid gestures, before rotating the canvas 180 degrees and repeating the process once more. Not only does Long use his fingertips effectively as paintbrushes, but he works across the whole of each section of the surface at once, using his entire body, leaning, reaching, crouching. The flicking motion of Long’s wrist, as it moved from the bucket across the canvas, has left a series of explosive marks which under gravity, have dripped down surface. These wiry thin lines and large blobs of paint that are most visible in the centre, in fact extend right the way through the composition, criss-crossing from left to right when the painting is hung in its intended horizontal position. Finally, after the mud had dried, Long would have removed the paint encrusted masking tape, leaving behind the crisp, black border that effectively frames the composition in the finished work.
While Long claims to have a precise idea of the work in his mind before he begins, he creates the marks intuitively, the fluidity of the medium giving him the freedom to alter the appearance of the surface as he is working – although, like the action paintings of Jackson Pollock, gravity and chance mean he is never fully in control of the final outcome.

1 Long cited in Ben Tufnell (ed.), Richard Long: Selected Statements & Interviews, Haunch of Venison, London, 2007, p99