Boaty McBoat Face

Boaty McBoat Face is painted on a 30 cm x 30 cm, 12" x 12", ¼ ” MDF panel mounted on a ½” MDF panel using mixed paint media. Boaty McBoat Face is heavily layered with a high gloss resin finish and was worked on over an eighteen year period between 2002 and 2020.

Boaty McBoat Face is a painting that is not easily dissected. It was painted in numerous sittings on what was originally a sample panel to explore media manipulations. The using translucent media makes it hard to discern the different layers. It probably has up to five resin layers separating paint layers. You can see the refracted light from multiple layers of resin surrounding this painting. 

Boaty McBoatface is the name of an unmanned submersible used in the Arctic. They let the internet pick the name. At first people were aghast! Oh my! Then they saw the publicity and became happy again. The painting was titled after it was finished. I like to say Boaty McBoatface. It feels good. The painting kept becoming a face against my better informed art persona. So make it human but not. Maybe even not animal but machine.

Over the years it is a painting that has been worked on when it stuck out enough from others in progress. Boaty is one of my over the top excessive paintings. I can’t get it right so I keep adding. It becomes a battery of sorts.

Boaty McBoatface is the lead boat of the Autosub Long-Range class 3 of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). It is used for scientific research and is carried on the research vessel RRS Sir David Attenborough. Boaty McBoatface is owned by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and operated by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). Because of its complexity and its extended range, NERC classifies it as an autosub long range autonomous vehicle.

Boaty McBoatface is the name of an unmanned submersible used in the Arctic. They let the internet pick the name. At first people were aghast! Oh my! Then they saw the publicity and became happy again. The painting just got named recently because I like to say Boaty McBoatface. Feels good. And the painting kept becoming a face against my better informed art persona. So make it human but not. Maybe even not animal but machine.