FWD Suites

Hackney’s chess paintings are made by translating the constituent moves of a selected chess game into a single, multilayered painting. Each canvas is first divided into the eight-by-eight square grid of a chess board, with each move then painted, in sequence. As the game progresses, the layers begin to overlap and overlay resulting in a composition of variable density, delineated by ridges of paint. At the end of the game, squares of the board that were left uncrossed remain unpainted, leaving visible areas of the bare canvas.