Boiled Eggs and Nuts....

Wayne Thiebaud, 'Boston Cremes', oil on canvas, 38 x 38inches , 1961

I’m at home recovering from an operation on my ankle. I have a huge, supportive boot on my right foot, and I can only walk with the aid of crutches which are used to help me to ‘hop’ around. I feel pretty helpless. This is harder than I thought it would be. 

I will be off work for a staggering 3 months, which is appealing- lots of books to read, films and TV to watch, bass guitar to learn and practice, and of course hopefully some art, but I have yet to figure out quite how yet, but it has only been 2 days since the op….but as usual this is the first thing on my mind…

Wayne Thiebaud, 'Luncheon', oil on canvas, 2010, 38 x 38inches

A big monograph on artist Wayne Thiebaud, a favourite painter, arrived today. As I look through the beautiful reproductions I’m struck by the many formal similarities and interests we share across our respective work: the carefully considered compositions where everything is in the right place with a lot of repetitive shapes and forms; an unfussy, almost flat-footed, but always closely observed, treatment of form; a sense of the whole without skimping on the details; the physical handling of the paint itself, the drag, the pull and the push in the brushwork. And finally, the colour and the light which holds all these elements together. These are qualities I really enjoy in the paintings and painters I return to, and continually try to explore in my own work. I’ve learned a lot about harnessing and appreciating these things from artists such as Thiebaud.  

Wayne Thiebaud, 'Cold Case', oil on canvas, 48 x 60inches, 2010-13

I’m also struck today when looking at the work afresh by Thiebaud’s continued interest in depicting the same small range of subject matter over a 70 year or more career: the cakes and pastries; the gumball machines; shoes, jackets and deadpan portraits that best represent the tense, spare yet stagey compositions he is most associated with. The colour is all in the objects themselves and their shadows, with very little colour in the background and the surfaces the objects sit in. These are mostly white. 

Wayne Thiebaud, 'Towards 280,' oil on canvas, 54 x 60in, 1999-2000

Wayne Thiebaud, 'Winding River', acrylic on canvas, 72 x 60inches, 2002

 And then there are the expansive, freer paintings of landscapes which seem a counter to the still lives and portraits. These depict cityscapes of San Francisco and the landscape of Sacramento, California where he lived and worked. They are complex spatial arrangements with their snaking and looping freeways, glistening lakes and valleys; patterned fields and gridded streets. There exist distorted games with perspective in the skyscrapers, architecture and trees, often intermingling in unexpected ways. And then huge slabs of Californian mountainside look just like extreme close-ups of the heavily iced cakes in the other works. I like this bounce between. 

Wayne Thiebaud, 'Canyon Mountains', oil on canvas, 66 x 54 inches, 2011-12

The same subjects are explored endlessly, Thiebaud never getting bored with finding multiple ways to skin the same cat, yet also, despite such a long career (he died aged 101), they are painted very consistently. It’s hard to tell a cake painted in 1963 apart from one painted in 2013. 

I find this reassuring today as I think about my own painting, particularly my landscapes. Although in my own painting there is a large range of landscapes that have now accrued over time there is a consistent tone and approach to the work, and despite different excursions into other areas I keep returning to these few core ideas that repeat across the work: the street scenes at night; the motorways and bridges; canals and local woods; the fields of pylons and the many depictions of different cars and vans. 

Shaun Morris, 'Late Night Delivery', oil on canvas, 90 x 120cms, 2022

Like Thiebaud and so many painters, this seems to be the tradition I find myself in when I occasionally take the time to step back a bit to reflect. In small, incremental ways it seems over the last 20 years I've busy creating a painted world that seems to be becoming more distinctly mine but based on a world observed and very much outside of me.  Although this recognition feels fairly positive, maybe this forced time off will help me think about these issues a bit more carefully, as one always hopes to also keep moving forward too... 

 

Summer's Almost Gone....

 

'Ice Cream Wars', oil on canvas, 120 x 150cms, 2022

It’s the end of the summer holidays…I’m back at work, my children return to school next week. I always feel slightly wistful as we all go our separate ways again as another summer break draws to a close, which for most parents I think, but definitely for this one, can be pretty exhausting. Yet each summer seems a keen marker of time as the kids grow up so quickly. 

 

This new painting that I’ve been working on this week is based on observations I’ve made of a burnt-out ice cream van on the Moseley Road, just 200 yards from the college I work at. It seemed like a real gift of a subject and an image to work with as I drove down late at night to photograph it, having spied it on my journey to and from work. It also seems to perfectly capture something of those end of summer blues, but also seems pretty loaded in other multiple ways, particularly in the current political and social climate of the UK. 

 

In the studio this week

Anyway, I LOVED painting it over a few late nights this week with some current listening in the studio of Yo La Tengo’s ‘And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out’ and Miles Davis’ ‘In A Silent Way’. All new, but very exciting, listening to me. Through this large 4 x 5ft piece I feel a bit more energised about my painting again too. Although I have worked, as ever I guess, steadily and consistently in the studio this year, I have also struggled to feel that excited about what I’ve been doing and also feel it has been a bit all over the place. I’ve painted over as many paintings as I’ve made, feeling very unsatisfied. I’d like to write about some of this in a few more posts, but for now I thought I would say hello again from the present as I’ve not written in ages. ...