From photos to charcoal drawings to canvas
These drawings then move from the page to the canvas and I try again to expand on the photo/drawing by returning to the place I photoed with unstrecthed canvas and painting the scene from the drawing and life.
I have created different paintings by doing this. The way I work outside is so completely different from studio based works. I am distracted by the worlds noises, texture, light and forms. Iys hard to concentrate on the whole as I do when drawing from a photo. This tension causes me to approach things in a diffenent and experimental way. I want to take away the pressousness of the act of painting the stigma and pompus act of attempting to capture a scene in paints. The tradition of landscape forces my hand to make others works, so I start by putting the unstreched canvas in to a puddle or covering it with ash, rust mud, cow munure what ever is around the place the painting is of this killing of the white surface is rought and energentic. The natural ground helps to make the canvas seem more like a old rag a thing that has lived, been outside and seen the elements effect. I will leave them outside to get rained on to move the ground around in a random factoroutside of my control. All of this helps to take away the pressous feeling of making art.
The muddy ground I then draw into with burn wood form a barn that burnt down last year. This drawing is imformd by the drawing from the photo. I can concentrate on the elements that work in that drawing for me and bring then to the canvas work. This meditation on a theme helps I think to get me to concentrate and I find I work like i do as if it where a drawing more. I mean when I draw on paper I am not pressous about the out come, Only I will see the finished drawing its for me to understand and learn throght, when i approach a canvas then I intent to display it and I become aware of that intention of ego the distroying of the canvas by mud, ash, rust or manure helps to bring it back to a point where I can work to understand more of what I am investigateing in the painting.
