This painting is too large to photograph easily so I made a video link. It’s about the process. The paint is quite dilute so that it can run and flow. But I’m in control …well mostly. The element of chance plays a part too and I react to the patterns and marks made accidentally. It’s a give and take motion. I like not knowing where it will lead.
I’ve been playing around with this tonight and think I’m getting somewhere. It’s hard to know if it’s complete but I get a kind of gut feeling about when to back off and think. That moment has arrived. So one more video clip and an attempt to show the whole canvas
This is it as at 14th Oct…..it might change again.
A visit to the Abstract Expressionism Exhibition at the RA has enabled me to begin to put into words the germ of an idea to explain what I am trying to achieve within my current art practice. I struggle with ‘Artspeak’, generally preferring to just get on with the practicalities of painting rather than endlessly pontificating about it. But slowly I am appreciating that I am thinking intellectually about what I am doing even if I don’t talk out loud about it.
In the past I have lamely mentioned ‘sense of place, memory, non-figurative representations of landscape’but would like to add a slightly different but more exact explanation which is, I hope, rather better.
This very large (unfinished) painting is the first in a series in which I am trying to trick the viewer’s brain into
believing that they are actually in a different space by somehow involving all the senses of sight,smell,sound and touch,for a split second, as they catch a glimpse of the image. Hopefully they will then stop and look deeper into the image. It should be a stronger reaction than just a ‘sense of place’.
I want to create a physical feeling of being able to actually smell the sea, feel the wind, hear and see the waves; to give a shock of believing they are standing on a beach. Obviously it will not be a sustained feeling but I want to elicit however briefly that all the senses have been involved within my making of my work and that their senses are involved in looking at the image.
This painting just happened. It started when I covered a failed landscape with blue paint which then needed a touch of red. Next the shapes and colours evolved into a rather sinister yet exciting image which somehow reminded me of past events in my life too uncomfortable to put into words but which were quite clear to me through the shapes and colours I had instinctively chosen.I wonder if this is the way forward ? To let my subconscious take over after first choosing a random base colour?
The level of satisfaction with my painting soars and plummets but at the moment I’m cautiously happy with the way things are going. I’ve adopted an attitude of not over-thinking what I’m doing but to just get on with it and enjoy letting the materials lead the way forward.
This is one of a series I’m doing based on Cape Cornwall rocks and beaches. I seem to be stuck on a turquoise and orange palette which reminds me of the colours which dominate in this part of the world.
I’m also enjoying messing about with charcoal. This grew out of trying to compose a painting of swimmers which is a favourite subject.
As I said I’m not thinking too deeply about what I’m doing right now. I’ve been to London galleries several times lately and I think I’m letting everything swirl about in my mind and hoping that the cumulative effect of seeing and doing will come together into a more ordered and profound body of work in September when the MA course gets going again…well it’s worth a try ?
After my minor rant about my dislike of Artspeak, I was talking to my daughter and her words have offered me a solution and cheered me up. I was getting quite depressed about my painting. I couldn’t think of a worthy subject which would comply with the final module of my MA study. I felt it needed to be highly original, intellectual, groundbreaking, high-minded or important in some way, and I just couldn’t think of anything which hasn’t been done a million times before. As I said in my last post….everyone seems to be painting about a sense of place, memories or the physicality rather than the representational. I don’t feel I have the mental stamina to cope with such aloof and difficult ideas.
She said to me, after I had agonised and poured out my doubts to her, “Just paint what you see. It was good enough for Monet so it’s good enough for you. Paint Alec (husband) pottering in his workshop. It’s an Aladdins cave in there….loads of things to paint”. What a Eureka moment.
It instantly reminded me of the Hockney guide at the RA Portrait Exhibition I saw recently.‘Hockney says he paints ‘what he sees’, acknowledging that we all see differently as our view is shaped by our many experiences. When a sitter asked if Hockney had captured a likeness, he said ‘ I have got an aspect of you’ adding that if he were to do a second portrait he would capture a different aspect and each subsequent portrait would capture a different aspect.
So…. with wise words from Hockney and my daughter I will endeavour to stop agonising about subjects and just ….paint what I see. Each time I will capture a new element of what I see. And that’s enough I hope.
