It’s 3am and can’t sleep. Mind buzzing with ideas so got up to draw in case I forget on waking. Suddenly after nearly 3 years everything’s starting to make perfect sense. So much to do in just 4 weeks – all that’s left of my MA course.
Quickly sketched out this, my latest idea. I poured mostly blue paint onto a roughly 3 metre by 1.7 metre canvas on the floor the other day. It was intended to be a screen onto which I was planning to project a video film. But this plan was abandoned in favour of using a large TV monitor enabling me to avoid setting up in a dark space. This way I can hang paintings based on stills from the video. See next images – all works in progress
So ? What to do with the huge canvas? This is where my nocturnal idea kicked in. Thinking about my swimmer image which introduces my blog I suddenly decided that I’d create a large swimmers painting onto the big blue canvas and then I can hang that too rather than pin it to the wall or stretch it onto a frame. I think the large paintings will look better floating a few inches from the wall and will have subtle movement to enhance the images. Worth a try anyway. I’ve seen enough images as I swim underwater to remember the lovely fluid shape people make when freed from gravity. These memories plus my ingrained knowledge of the figure in motion drawn endlessly on the recent course at The Royal School of Drawing will be enough to create the scene making sure it doesn’t become too figurative. The painting will be chiefly about movement but with the added interest of being movement in a different element – water. I want to express the ‘otherness’ of the watery environment.
Then there’s this. I keep thinking it’s finished yet every time I go in to the studio space I add a bit more to it. I’m calling it ‘Leap of faith’ because that’s what it was. I had no idea where it would take me – just wanted to paint figures. Then it kind of grew each day and took on a life of it’s own. Deciding how to display it has been worrying me. Then at about 2.30 am I knew. I’m going to suspend it ….somehow? about 6 inches away from the wall and let it flutter gently.It’s on nice thick, strong paper but has distorted a bit with the watery acrylic paint but it should flutter quite well. I think that will increase the sense of movement which is what it’s about mainly. If that works I’ll try to treat the big swimming painting in the same way, although that will be on heavier canvas so we’ll see what happens. Either way I want it to stay as unstretched raw canvas not framed or constricted at all. Decisions, decisions???
Phew…. lots to do. But now I’m off back to bed.
