University Campus Suffolk

After looking at the work of Gerhard Richter I wanted to research more into other artists that use a similar technique of painting with a squeegee. I wasn’t necessarily looking for artists that have the same subject matter as what I’m looking at, just for artists that use the same technique in their process and to look at the outcome of this technique.

While researching I found the artist Kimberley Bruce on the Saatchi Art Online website. Kimberley Bruce’s work almost documents the process she goes through to make each piece of work. When talking about this she said that while creating a piece she will be pouring and dripping paint and scraping and squeegeeing and paint will drip over the sides of the canvas. Instead of neatening the edges she leaves them, by doing this the process has been recorded and becomes a part of the artwork.

http://www.saatchiart.com/art/Painting-Terra/416637/1569533/view

This technique is something I am definitely going to try within my own work, I love how all the colours merge together but there is still a vibrant feel to the paintings. Tomorrow I am going to spend the morning in the studio experimenting with this technique and I will post the outcomes on here afterwards.

Over the weekend I finally took some of my own images at Harwich beach. The main reasons for taking my own images is that if I am going to be taking inspiration from pictures some of them should really be my own. Also I want to use my own images as a reference for colours and composition.

Things I was thinking about when taking the photographs:

• Composition – I didn’t want to have lots of photos of just sky and sea, I wanted to have a mixture of different things, so that when I am painting I can look to these photos for composition inspiration and take different things from different images.

• Horizon – Something I have been thinking about is where I place the horizon in my paintings. When taking these photos I wanted to try and get a variation of where the horizon sits within the picture.

• Balance – The balance in the photos links in with the placing of the horizon. For example I wanted photos that had more sky than sea, so the horizon would be nearer the bottom of the image, making it look top heavy and vice versa. I also wanted some pictures where there was an even balance between sky and sea and the horizon sits in the middle of the image.

• Colours – In the photos I wanted to try and capture the different colours within a natural seascape. When I am painting I can then look to these photos for colour inspiration.

Gerhard Richter – Seascapes and Squeegees.

Richter is someone I have only recently started to look at. I am looking at his work for two reasons, his abstract technique of applying paint using a squeegee and for his seascape paintings.

Using a squeegee to apply paint is something I have been thinking about for a few days. I have been experimenting with using a squeegee and acrylic paint to see how it would look and to try different ways of using it to apply paint (applying different pressures, different angles and different amounts of paint and colours). I wanted to experiment first before applying it straight onto the canvas (I will show the results of these experiments in a separate post).

By using a squeegee I want to try and create some depth and texture within my paintings. A technique Richter uses is to smear the wet paint and keep adding layers of new paint, and then he will work into the layers to reveal the hidden layers underneath. This is something I am definitely going to try with my own work.

In relation to his abstract paintings Richter once said,

“When I paint an abstract, I do not know what it is going to look like beforehand, nor do I know where I want to go when I’m painting.”

This is similar to how I think when I start to create a painting; I have no set outcome in my mind.

I first looked at Richter for the squeegee technique and then discovered his seascape series of paintings. After researching Richter’s seascapes I found he has made a series of photographs entitled Atlas. These are a collection of photographs, newspapers cut outs and sketches. In this collection are some seascape collages, where Richter has used the sea part of two photographs and put them together to create the sky and sea in one collaged Image. He would also use the sky and sea from separate images and put them together in one image, these collages were sometimes used as a starting point for his paintings.

I found this interesting as although I don’t create collages like Richter using different images, if I see something in a photo and think it would work in my paintings I will use it and take inspiration from different images for one painting.

On the right I have put some examples of Richter’s seascape paintings, his seascape collages and two abstract paintings that demonstrate how he used a squeegee to apply and layer the paint.

http://www.gerhardrichterpainting.com/#/the-artist…

http://www.gerhard-richter.com/art/search/detail.p…

Today I continued with painting my large canvas. As you can see in the picture I have got a lot more of the sky and some more of the sea done. I like how the sky has turned out, however now I have got pretty much all of the canvas covered I want to add texture with the paint so it doesn’t look so flat, this will probably end up changing how it looks slighty. I have also been thinking about how I am going to do this and will try applying the paint differently, either with a palette knife to apply the paint thickly or I might try using a squeegee.

I think by adding more texture and layers it will make the painting more interesting, I just dont want to add so much to it that I will end up wishing I had left it alone.