Had a really bad day painting last Thursday – lots of self doubt about what I was doing and why, figuration versus non-figuration, etc. This all while painting Sizewell Power Station from the beach on a canvas which seemed a bit large for me. The resultant painting is on the subject of “Why do we still have nuclear power stations after Fukoshima?” It is figurative and has morphed through various phases. I took the foreground out progressively and added waves all around as I felt that this leant it more meaning. I think the waves in the foreground could be choppier as they were in an earlier phase. I’m not happy with the painting and reckon that I should work non-figuratively – I need to think about this some more. Also, although I’m still going to work in different sized canvasses to increase my experience, right now I prefer working on small to medium sized surfaces.
Image 1 came first and I reckon I should have stopped there. Images 2 and 3 are details which might have made better images – I need to plan more before starting painting. Image 4 added detail to the foreground which I thought was too pretty and negated the meaning. Image 5 is the final version. Still not happy….
Sketching at Dunwich heath again. I made several sketches in pencils and pastels and also took photographs.
I’ve been walking The Gorse Walk at Dunwich Heath too and am inspired by the tapesties of colour, shape and texture all around. Saw a herd of red deer on Bunker Hill. Joined the National Trust. I guess (hope) that the deer are safe on National Trust land. Such a shame that animal protection and a natural environment has to be institutionalised yet at least it is still there.
I think that I am preconditioned to want to look at the sea, the land, the bits of the planet remaining from the incessant concreting-over. I want to get away from the plastic. I am concerned about conservation. The planet doesn’t care. It simply “is”. But we should, for ourselves and future generations.
So how does that translate into painting, for me?
1) Sense of place – for me, it’s a celebration of what’s left and something about respect for the planet. Nature now depends on us as much as we depend on it. This is increasingly relegated to the places at the edges of things. Hence I’m wandering around a nature sanctuary adjacent to a power station. How ironic.
2) Perception – Perception is a strange beast – it is both inside and outside ourselves (depending on your philosophical standpoint). Painting is an expression of this. The landscape has elements of something “other” – the non-human world outside ourselves.
3) The enjoyment and pain of the act of painting – exploring colour and texture. I have little time for isms but at times get very concerned about what and why I am painting anyway.
My favourite artists right now in no particular order are Turner, Kiefer, Richter, Shaw, O’Donoghue, Price, Rae, Jackson, Fieler, Lanyon and Eardley.
On 3/1/14 I was at Dunwich sketching the movement of waves. I sat on the sand sketching using paper and pencil trying to capture the movements of the very high, wavy sea. I am disappointed with the results but will be returning to try again – using colour too. I am going to start painting outside more now as my art is about something that I see initially and then develop using colour, shape and texture to capture my perceptions of the experience. I then find I am able to evolve more work in the studio.
I kind of agree with Peter Lanyon’s statement “I do not start with the idea but with the experience” (quoted in Causey, P. (2006) Peter Lanyon: Modernism and the Land (Essays in Art and Culture), Reaktion Books.
I visited the Bircham Gallery in Holt last week to see some artists’ work – Barbara Rae and John Hoyland prints in particular. It was a good exhibition there being some Peter Blake, Elizabeth Blackadder and Ben Nicholson work there too. I was particularly impressed with Rae’s prints Achill Beach and Achill Fence for their colour, style and creativity. I also liked Hoyland’s prints Life and Love and Warrior Universe – great imagination and colour. I’ve always admired how Barbara Rae captures a sense of place in her work. Achill Beach and Achill Fence were inspired by Islands off the coast of County Mayo in Ireland. I want to capture a sense of place in my own work but, of course, in my own style.
Barbara Rae’s work can be seen at: http://www.barbararae.com/
I started my blog by looking at some of the artists that I admire, noting how they represent the sublime and the sense of place and time in their work. What I want to do in my work is research landscape – what is it to make a landscape and how can it engender a sense of place, time, the sublime even?
I want to explore the sublime – that sense of ‘other’ and what that means today as the concrete jungle increasingly gobbles up resources and changes the environment forever.
These are some paintings I made in response to some visits to Orford Ness and its AWRE site. Meaningless Wreckage is inspired by rusty, hectic shapes of wreckage at the AWRE site. But really it is about nothing – structures from the past making a strange, increasingly meaningless landscape.
W. G. Seabald, in his book The Rings of Saturn, described Orford Ness as giving him the feeling of being “amidst the remains of our own civilisation after its extinction in some future catastrophe” (p. 237). I wanted to capture that atmosphere in Wasteland. I feel that the canvas is too large and that I have not achieved what I wanted. I am, however, fascinated by the humanesque shape of a piece of wire that I photographed in the shingle and used in my painting.
I will return to Orford Ness in the Spring to continue my work there.
