So I’ve had many a sleepless night over my large canvas I mentioned in blog post 30.
I kept thinking – I’ve started this all wrong! As I said I started the painting of it formally to find the structure of the space. I then rubbed charcoal over the canvas to roughen it up and set back some areas – I glue gunned strips of charcoal on to a block of wood to cover more ground.
I wish I had a bruised the canvas in the same way I had the smaller ones but I was shell shocked by the enormity of the canvas. It made me treat it differently and because of this the figure will not emerge from the abstract aspects of paint or its pure materiality.
To try and change this I splashed over the forefront of the picture with dark melty paint. This will give a texture underneath my painting and from here I used a black wash to loosely mark out the figure. I also lay it down on the floor and splashed paint up towards to the top of the painting – the idea to give the sensation of the figure being pulled up – being gravitated out of the space as if it was an alien being beamed up. This is to contradict the sensation attached to the emotions of sadness that can sometimes feel like a weight pushing you down. This is to defy it – to line this painting with optimism.
I decided I didn’t want to graph the figure out of draw it in pencil first – I wanted to paint from instinct… my instinct was wrong – my figure was too small too far right and so I started to work over the black in muted colours. Now my canvas was becoming battered and have the story of its construction engraved on it!
Again to reflect on Saville’s remark “… It is like you’re putting history on the painting…” – Brutvan, 2011.
I was a little frustrated that this painting wasn’t running as smoothly as I had hoped – but not surprised. I think this came through in my application – scratching aggressive marks.
It’s when technicalities of the beginning stages go wrong that I find it harder to get into the painting – to connect and try and create a sensation of my subject. In hind sight I wish I had done some more life size drawings as well as my smaller sketches and my drawing on cardboard. Perhaps if I had I would have had less to think about – but then there would be less traces of a fight / battle with the canvas – a process Bacon described on the South Bank show 1985.
Bacon on South Bank show, 1985 discusses his process amongst other things.
