Green Day

Green is a very difficult colour to work with. I worked on two canvasses yesterday with a lot of green to deal with that gave me a few headaches. It’s difficult to combine with other colours successfully, particularly when it’s the predominant colour, and also the properties of certain green oil paints are difficult to handle. Colours such as Terre Verte have a ‘fugitive’ quality, which means they are incredibly mobile and translucent on the surface of the canvas. It was these issues that gave me all sorts of problems.

I don’t usually use terre verte, or any other green paints, as I prefer to mix my own, but I’d bought a tube as I was seeking a particular green for these two paintings. I’d completed one of them several weeks ago, really struggling with the ‘fugitive’ green paint. Finally I completed it, but when drying out the green background had dried in a strange way. I thought that I would therefore re-paint it when I came to do the accompanying painting. I completed my new painting fairly quickly in the morning, with what I thought were pleasing results, and then started to apply the green to the other one. This was a disaster as the paint underneath reacted badly and it all started peeling away. Fed up, I decided to take this one off the stretcher, and re-stretch some new canvas on it, double prime it and then re-paint the painting afresh later that day as I had the colours all mixed. By teatime, I was ready to go and duly re-painted the original painting. This came out great using a darker, richer green than the previous one, after mixing it myself after using all the terre verte, than the one I had done that morning. This then made me look at this painting differently, and I decided to re-paint the green in this with this new colour and in a flatter way than previously. An hour later this looked much better. So much so that I then had a crisis with the new one I had just done before this, thinking it didn’t now look as good as the other one, and re-painted this to look more like the revised version of my morning painting! (are you keeping up? Believe me I was struggling to know where I was at this time with it all).

Often when I’m painting a point arrives when it feels like the ‘chase is on’- a different part of the brain kicks in and I’m just utterly focussed in trying to reach what seems unreachable. I will have set up the ‘scaffolding’, if you like, with my preparatory drawings and studies, transferring these to the canvas etc, but then, hopefully, you reach this point where you find yourself just having to kick the scaffolding away. So often the painting can appear to be within your grasp but then just slips away again. It can be incredibly exciting but also like you’re walking on a tightrope.


Eventually, with my brain spinning, I managed to get to a position with these paintings where I was pleased with both. I cleaned my brushes, and closed the studio door, exhausted. I went to look at them again the next day. This is a moment always filled with great trepidation. It almost feels like you are returning to the scene of the crime. Hopefully, with some perspective, it is now no longer a part of you and has become a thing that now stands on its own. If this has happened and it can stand up to my careful gaze, I turn it to the wall and think about the next one…

'The Meal', etching and aquatint

Here's a new etching and aquatint that I recently printed a small edition of. It's nice to work on something other than a portrait with my printmaking. I'm pretty pleased with it and hope to develop some further still lives for my printmaking work. The graphic qualities of the medium seem to lend themselves well to my deadpan images.

Drawing and Existentialism

Continuing on the theme of drawing, I visited an artist friend of mine, Jonathan Marshall at the weekend at his home in County Durham. His own Fine Art practise stems from his interest in drawing and existential ideas concerning how the artist ‘that pushes forward the boundaries of new creativity must be aware of the void against which they create’, and how one deals with that crisis. Jonathan’s answer is for his drawings to form an enquiry into this crisis, countered with a desire to produce figurative work. He continually explores this through continual drawing, just with simple charcoal on paper, the motif of the head to look at ideas around identity and figurative purpose in the work.

The ideas are pretty complicated (and as usual I’m not explaining them very well at all here!), but a couple of years ago I was deeply moved by an exhibition of Jonathan’s at Darlington Arts Centre, ‘Head Works’, where he installed over 1000 of these drawings on one long wall. Contemplating this wall of drawings, that just seemed to wrap themselves around you as your eyes darted from one drawing to the next trying to process the information, I was really struck by the intense futility and desperation present in the work, something Jonathan was trying to assert. The ‘existentialism’ and sense of the void seemed momentarily overwhelming. It was a very powerful experience.

We found ourselves at the Durham L.I Museum and Arts Centre on Saturday, where this year’s Jerwood Drawing Prize was on show. I must say I was really disappointed by the exhibition. There were around 60 pieces selected from over 2500 entries, and I was really baffled how this could be the most interesting from such a large field. I love and appreciate drawing in its all different manifestations and forms, and look at drawings all the while, so it was dispiriting to see so many that were just plain nasty.

May

Drawing is at the core of all my practise. Everyone of my paintings begins with an observational drawing of some kind. I also make alot of small 'plein air' paintings which inform the work. I don't use photographs at all, as I find they stifle my interest in mark-making and a more perceptual approach to painting. I've been working on alot of new paintings over the last few months, mainly flowers and landscapes. Here are are a few examples of some of the drawings and studies I've been making and using . Some are just small sketchbook studies, others are more detailed pencil drawings, and there are some charcoal 'cartoons' as preparations for the paintings. There are also some examples of the paintings created outdoors which are in oil on board.

Home of the Lost and Found

I went to a private view yesterday at the unlikely venue of Birmingham Dogs Home. ‘Home for the Lost and Found’ was an exhibition of photographs by an artist friend, Elizabeth Lee. They were, at times very moving, portraits of the dogs at the Home that Liz had spent the last few months photographing. She faced all sorts of technical difficulties as she wasn’t allowed into the pens with the dogs, meaning she had to photograph through the small protective mesh in very gloomy light. The photographs were installed around the Home, so you were taken on this quite harrowing journey past all these dogs in their pens howling for your attention. It was quite an experience. I nearly came home with a particularly forlorn greyhound, before being pleased to see that they had been ‘reserved’ and would hopefully soon be finding themselves in a new home.

I used to teach Liz years ago when she studied for her HND Fine Art. It’s great to see her continuing to do such interesting work. Here’s a link to her website which is worth visiting ‘Stanley Dog of War’ for, and a recent feature in the Birmingham Post on her work. She makes some really interesting points that I share about the difficulties of being an artist in the West Midlands. The exhibition continues until the 16th May at Birmingham Dogs Home New Bartholomew Street Birmingham B5 5QS, Mon-Sat 11.00am-4.45pm
www.birminghamdogshome.org.uk

http://www.elizabethjlee.co.uk/

www.birminghampost.net/life-leisure-birmingham-guide/birmingham-culture/...art/.../snail-sheds-light-on-elizabeth-lee-s-opinions-65233-21559587/

'Diana and Acteon'

I visited the new exhibition at Compton Verney yesterday. ‘Diana and Actaeon, The Forbidden Gaze’ was an exhibition that initially centred around the mythological tale of ‘Acteaon, a skilled and dedicated hunter who, when out hunting with his hounds, happens to approach Diana bathing in a stream with her companions. Acteon is transfixed by Diana’s nakedness and beauty; Diana is momentarily passive and vulnerable in his gaze and seeks revenge for his intrusion of privacy. Diana transforms Acteaon into a stag and sets his own dogs on him, tearing him to pieces.’

The exhibition opened with a reproduction of a Titian based on the theme (which was recently acquired by The National Gallery). Some say that Titian was the first modern painter with his later works such as 'The Flaying of Marsyas' (below). The violence of the scene is superbly expressed in the painterliness of Titian's brushwork.

The show then explored in increasingly graphic and sexual ways, through both historical and contemporary works of art, how the depiction of the female naked body has continued to persist as a genre in European fine art. Importantly it looked at ‘the cultural and social influences involved in seeing- and with this, possible feelings of embarrassment, fascination, guilt and pleasure’. It certainly did push this side of things. I’ve never seen so many images of female genitalia under one roof! Often on a very large scale. How very rude...On a more serious note, it was another really varied and well curated exhibition from Compton Verney.

John Currin, 'The Dane', oil on canvas, 2006

John Currin, the celebrated American painter, had this piece above represented. There is a lot made of Currin’s virtuosity as a painter, but I’m not sure. He is skilfull to be sure, but no more than many painters. I don’t like the bits where he has ‘exquisitively rendered a golden candle stick’ or whatever. They just seem quite academic exercises you once would have dealt with at art school, and often spoil the unity of the painting. It’s the images and ideas that are interesting. But again, I’m not sure how interesting these are. I saw his retrospective at The Serpentine Gallery a few years ago, and really enjoyed it. I then caught it again a few months later at The Whitney in New York, and found it so empty and irritating. I find him confusing. He is very interested in interview however. There is a link below to an interview, where he talks about these recent paintings derived from Danish pornography. Apparently, the idea behind these came out of his anger at the 9/11 bombings, which I found fascinating:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/john-currin-the-filth-and-the-fury-795525.html

I’ll leave the last word to two old ladies I overheard in front of Currin’s painting, ‘ It’s all very interesting, but you wouldn’t be able to have it on your living room wall when the grandchildren come around’.

George Shaw and The Specials

George Shaw, 'For The Boys On The Back Seat, acrylic on rucksack, 1999

Wasn’t it brilliant to see the reformed Specials on ‘Later…with Jools Holland’ last week? It was a reminder of how powerful and original their music was. I was a bit too young to appreciate them in their heyday, but I have been a fan for a long time. I remember the impact they and other 2-Tone bands had on the older kids at my school though, who used to be dressed to impress in their loafers, parkas, and Bobby Punn trousers. The music and lyrics came from a working class culture that really struck a chord with myself and so many others in it’s authenticity. The social and political observations were always so spot-on. I’m kicking myself I didn’t get a ticket for one of the reformed gigs now! I got all wrapped in the ‘it’s not The Specials without Jerry Dammers’ thing. The band give a good account of all this in this month’s Q magazine.

George Shaw, ' Scenes From The Passion', humbrol enamel on board, 2001

One of the most interesting artists of recent years for me has been the painter George Shaw. He is famous for his meticulous depictions in Humbrol Enamel paint on board of the Coventry housing estate he grew up on. He has however also created other pieces and drawings that reflect his admiration of The Specials too, and interest in certain areas of British working class culture. Culture as depicted in the films of Ken Loach, the ‘Plays for Today’ of the sixties and seventies, the books of Alan Sillitoe and Stan Barstow, and TV such as ‘Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads’ and ‘Auf Wiedersehn,Pet’ by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais. It is an interest I share, but have not met many other people, least of all artists, with much interest in this, so I was naturally drawn to these influences in Shaw’s work. They are very subtlely presented however, in photo’s of his studio, or in catalogues rather than directly in the paintings. It seems to suggest the heart that beats beneath the work. Here's a good link:

www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/A/art_show/george_shaw/

George Shaw (with John Strutton), 'The Land of Nod,' installation view, Lift Gallery 1999

The recent films by director Shane Meadows, such as ‘This Is England’, and ‘Dead Man’s Shows’, seem to have a quality, passion and again, authenticity straight out of this era and culture too. You can see that he is obviously influenced by these things, but seems to have managed to bring them to a whole new audience.

still from 'Dead Man's Shoes'