Poppy uses a variety of paint types; shiny oils and waxy encaustics are used in combination to play against one another and emphasise their different characteristics, most effectively where areas overlap and interact. A variety of tools are used to manipulate the work, including knives scrapers and squeegees. These methods of applying paint can accurately preserve her movements and gestures. Paint is also poured and dripped directly onto the canvas, which adds the element of chance, as it is not entirely foreseeable or subject to control.

 

A vital component in the work is colour and how it behaves, a sense of duration or ‘time’ is involved as some colours reveal themselves immediately. Other tones are much closer and take longer to read in relation to other colour within the painting. To ‘slow down’ the pace in certain areas families of colours are grouped together, then bold contrasts are introduced to highlight the shift in dynamics.

 

Many paintings hover between abstract compositions of line and colour and representations of nature itself.