Bigger portions....

 

oil on canvas, 120 x 150cms, 2021

Since completing the paintings on black grounds I wrote about in the last post, which were rather modest in scale, I thought it might be nice to try and make some nice, large paintings again. This arose out of having one of my small Spaghetti Junction paintings that I made some months ago on my living room wall. Contemplating it over several days I realised it looked more like a study for a bigger painting and that it’s more abstract quality of bold, painterly shapes, geometric forms and colour combinations could look really exciting on a much bigger scale. So in the last three weeks that’s just what I’ve done: I enlarged 2 of the smaller paintings, or ‘studies’, and made 2 4ft x 5ft paintings that I’m really excited about.

oil on canvas, 120 x 150cms, 2021

I had great fun painting both of them, particularly the first one (above) which was a simpler composition and was almost a direct translation of the smaller painting it is based on. The second one was much more exhausting to do, and had a lot more to consider in terms of colour relationships, the mark-making on this scale and trying to depict the complicated spatial areas that exist across it. Basically, all of it really!

 But I think it was worth it, as I’m really pleased with them, and it’s great to bring some bolder colour into the studio and create some paintings that are more abstract and dynamic. It's also exciting to see some of the work I've been experimenting with since the start of the year start to develop into some more coherent paintings. 

Tomorrow Ends Today...

oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, 2021

My experience on Sky Arts Landscape Artist Of The Year and the practice work I made before competing has lead me to experiment quite extensively with painting on different toned grounds, including yellows, pinks, violets, blues and also black for several months now. For years I have always painted directly onto a white, primed surface liking the luminous quality this brings to the colour.

oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, 2021

Painting on these toned grounds, however has been really interesting, particularly the black grounds which seemed to create an unsettling atmospheric quality I recently explored in greater depth over a series of more than 10 paintings. I used a more reduced colour palette with these paintings too as a reaction to the Spaghetti Junction paintings I’d been making where I thought I was getting a bit silly with the colour.

oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, 2021

The paintings in this series started out being based on some of the reference photographs I made many years ago with my photographer friend Laura’s help of the landscape beneath a small stretch of the M5 just outside West Bromwich. These photographs were then used to inform my first motorway paintings and a more serious foray into landscape painting.

oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, 2021

When I made those original paintings I realised on completion that they were in some way an expression of my grief at the death of my younger brother, Stu who lived near to this place, a place where I was also born and knew very well growing up. It was also the place I travelled through on my last visit to see him on the night that he finally died of cancer aged just 36. Unsurprisingly, it’s a night that is forever deeply etched in my memory.  So I felt some trepidation in revisiting these photographs, but there still seemed rich material in them that might lend themselves to working on these black grounds….

oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, 2021

I made 5 paintings before I felt I had used all I could from these old photographs and it would also be better to go back now, 11 years later, and see the landscape with fresh eyes and take some new photographs to work from.  

oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, 2021

So, again with Laura, who also taught me how to use my new digital camera to take my own night time photographs, we went back and got some great new material, including some images of the flats just beyond the motorway which seemed very evocative. 

oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, 2021

I then completed with renewed energy another five paintings before deciding that was enough for now.

oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, 2021

oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, 2021

I did find myself transported back to that evening and completing the work felt intense and urgent, so I wanted to stop. I see the paintings not as individual pieces but as one, detailing a final journey for both of us that night….   

oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, 2021