Man at Work...

Studio. Work in progress

I’m currently working on some new large paintings. They are a return, but hopefully can be seen as a 

development, of my interest in the vehicles and lorries that populate the landscape beneath the motorway. After the recent, more inward, at least to me, looking paintings of the last year that I recently exhibited in Evesham, I’m keen to do something a bit more expansive with the work, and the vehicle motif seems very fertile ground. I’m also on a formal level keen to develop my interest in colour and push my experience with the materiality of oil paint further.

This large painting, which is 2 metres tall, I’ve just started and as you can see I’m painting over an old painting. I’ve knocked the old painting back with a wash of red oil. Many of the previous lorry paintings are painted over old paintings that I was no longer happy/bothered with (most of the time 

the act of painting them was enough to satisfy a need for expression of some kind. When looking at them several months later I often think that a) they are not that good or b) those needs were met and the actual painting itself is not that important). I also actually have grown to really like painting over the older paintings and working with and responding to the ‘ghost’ of the image underneath. The ‘ghost’ may be the marks or texture, or some area of colour revealed again when I rub back the surface. I seem to spend quite a bit of time enjoying adding and then removing paint again after it has dried out a bit to build up subtle, stained layers of colour. My approach has changed quite a lot like this, for those who know how directly have painted before, and feels more enjoyable for it, and more importantly the paintings look more varied and interesting.

Some of this can also be seen in this other painting of a roadside digger. This one is finished, and again was painted over an older painting. The flash of yellow of the digger’s ‘arm’ reminded me of the quick light in a De Kooning, which was my route into this piece.

These paintings are being supported by some fairly tight charcoal drawings first, which has been good. I think this is an essential part of the scaffolding of the painting; an exploration of the image and form, but one I have neglected a bit in some of the recent paintings which has made some of them look a bit too photographic for my tastes.

                                             

  

Anyway, as you can see, I’m moving on a bit…if these work out I hope to include them in the forthcoming exhibition in Nottingham’s Surface Gallery with Hugh and Andy, ‘Visions Of A Free Floating Island’.