Brushes Standing Up In Jars

I had a busy day in the studio last week. After a morning working on a large charcoal drawing in preparation for a painting, I had a couple of spare hours so I decided to attempt a new small still life painting, which soon ended up being two paintings, based on my extensive ‘crapola’ collection. I’ve stopped collecting things now, having lost momentum with these paintings in the last month, doubting the direction they seemed to be going and questioning my intentions. This has arisen from a few things, not least sharing and discussing them with a few different artist friends who have visited the studio. 

The responses have been mixed, from one friend wishing he had thought of the idea, to another thinking they were beginning to look too ‘composed’, and another ‘too haphazard’. The former friend was more excited by the paintings of singular objects, enjoying their uniqueness as ‘objects’ and characters. The groups I had been working on looking too ‘prettified’ almost. I had to agree, and felt I had lately lost a bit of faith in my instincts, bing naturally more drawn to the deadpan character of the single form. He was particularly struck by a painting of brushes in a jar of turps, almost dissolving in the paint. 

Having visitors to the studio lately has been really terrific, and has really begun to open up my thinking. The psychological readings made of my work by others, particularly the recent landscapes, has made me much aware of different possibilities that have been very much unexplored in my work for years as I’ve pursued my interest in developing my painting around more formal interests.

A lot of my influences in the last ten years have come from a generation of American painters that established their reputations in the 1950’s and 60’s after Abstract Expressionism and sort of in between Pop. They include Fairfield Porter, Alex Katz, Jane Frielicher, Janet Fish, and also Chuck Close, who was part of the generation that followed after. Many of these artists’ ideas have centred around developing a form of representational painting that was had its ideas rooted in the language of abstract art. It was seen that it was not important what was painted, more how it was painted: a question of ‘style’ being the subject, and a style coming out of the so-called ‘grammar’ of abstract painting. Psychological readings of the work were very much pushed to the sidelines in their pursuit of their formal goals. Their influence became inspiring to me when I was seeking a route out of certain artistic cul-de-sacs I had painted myself into. The large-scale narrative paintings I was making at the time had lost all meaning for me.  It was visiting Chuck Close’s retrospective at the Hayward Gallery in 1999 that had the most profound impact on my thinking and lead me to create my first portrait paintings. Interestingly, one common painter all these artists deeply admire is Morandi, with his own deadpan still lives of the bottles on his shelves. Chuck Close refers to them as emotionally ‘flat-footed’, which is a phrase I like. I love Morandi’s paintings too.

Anyway to get to the point, at a time when I have the opportunity to be thinking more critically about what I am doing I’m keen to take more ‘ownership’ of the way my own paintings are read again, an issue I’ve also tried to push to the sidelines. I’m not saying I want to move away from my interest in the formal, or even change my approach necessarily.  I just want to be more receptive to the possibilities of exploring other layers of meaning and bringing other influences into play.

Here’s a link to an interview with another American artist of that generation, Harriet Shorr, whose large still lives I really like. She discusses her own obsession with the formal values in her paintings, and how that has started to unravel in recent years based on the readings others have made of her work:

http://brooklynrail.org/2009/02/art/harriet-shorr-with-robert-berlind

It’s a good interview and discusses with a bit more clarity than my mumblings many of the issues I’ve tried to raise in this blog. 

Seven Seconds....

I made this new painting (above) the other night. It was nice to move on from the three paintings I had recently made and posted in April. I’m trying to extend and develop some of the things I have been exploring in my approach. It’s a pretty complicated picture. There were lots of things to deal with that made me think I’m not going to get there with this one, but I think I did in the end. I was interested in the hard, repetitive vertical shapes in the composition and the close tones where I wanted to create a spatial ‘push and pull’, where the space could look simultaneously flat and deep.

My wife, Diane, wasn’t as convinced by my formal concerns when she visited the studio: ‘It’s a bit vertical, isn’t it? I’m not sure about all those vertical shapes’. ‘Oh, that was the thing I was interested in’. ‘There’s not enough tonal contrast, either’. ‘But that was the intention….’. Oh well. Fair enough. They say you only have seven seconds to get the audience with a painting, and I think I didn’t get that far with this one.

But I’m pretty pleased with it anyway….

Even better....

I’ve been working out on location today. It’s the first real time I’ve been out making new studies other than my tree at Padstone since my grant award which has made me a little anxious despite being busy on paintings back in the studio. Anyway, after a couple of hours in the city this morning (I was trying to choose some small gifts for my AS Art students. I had set them some pretty challenging Easter break homework and promised prizes for the best three. The talented little buggers only went and produced some amazing work, which made me very proud of them and think that this idea may have been a good one, but I do feel slightly less well off today, which didn’t feel so good..), I stuffed a pasty in my pocket and drove down to Spaghetti Junction in the lashing rain.

(I had decided in my mind to avoid Spaghetti Junction after having seen the recent paintings of Birmingham based artist Rueben Colley of the place in his gallery in Moseley. I was slightly aghast when I saw them, as I had just embarked on my own nocturnal motorway drawings and felt slightly beaten to it again. And indeed, when I showed the gallery my pieces they felt it was too close to Colley’s own work to consider showing, which wasn’t a surprise. But I have to say they aren’t anything like mine. But I have to say this…and in a perverse frame of mind I headed there today as if I was going to prove this and also because I like the place too and felt why shouldn’t I go there as well).

I worked for a few hours in all weathers: from one minute spring sunshine then spring showers, to brief, but heavy, downpours to finally a hail storm whilst I was finishing a small oil painting. I headed for shelter under the motorway, but the painting only just survived the hail (see picture). I also made a study on my new I-Pad. Yes, my new I-Pad! In a recent moment of madness I decided to invest in one as a tool to work outdoors and also develop quicker ideas in electronic ‘paint’ using the ‘Brushes’ app as used by Hockney. I’m really enjoying it, and finding it very flexible. My own efforts are a far cry from Hockney as yet, looking more like bad felt tip drawings, but I’m slowly discovering how to get more subtle effects. I’m achieving these by exploring many of the strange mark-making tools available which I wouldn’t thought I would be attracted too, me being a purist and all that, but actually these are great and have helped me get to grips more easily with the idea that this isn’t painting, but a different media with its own qualities to explore. Here I am bravely sharing a few examples…

It’s a good tool, but I have to say it was great to get my paints out later…

Better Grist to the Mill...

oil on canvas, 100 x 120cms, 2012

I’ve made these three large oils in the last couple of months. They are meant to be seen together and represent different perspectives of quite a small area under and around the motorway as you approach it and as you find yourself under it. I’m pretty pleased with these, and I feel they represent a more successful and interesting move forward from my charcoal drawings and the first new motorway painting that I made back in January. They seem much more their own thing with a strong and dynamic interplay between my interests in abstraction and the language of abstract painting set against realist motifs.

oil on canvas, 100 x 120cms, 2012

Today, I had my first studio visit with one of my mentor’s, Marian Edwards. She was really excited about them too as this was the first time she had seen any of my newer work. It was a huge relief and Marian seemed to ‘get them’ straight away (if that is the right phrase?), as despite being pleased with them myself, I have more than anything else I’ve made in along time wondered how they would be perceived by other people. Of course as with most of my work, there are many artistic references to be found, but I have felt that these particular pieces don’t remind me much of anything else I’ve seen. This feels really exciting but comes with a great deal of uncertainty too. Marian discussed how the trees, which seemed almost Romantic, also reminded her in a funny way of the English landscape tradition. A coincidence, as I’ve been looking at the likes of Constable lately.

Oil on canvas, 100 x 120cms, 2012

It was great to share all this with Marian and to get a more critical response. I used to work alongside other artists and lecturers more in my last job, including Marian, where there was a good dialogue and interest in each other’s practice. In my current job I’m the only practicing Fine Artist in the department with very little opportunity to talk about one’s work. It has led me to feel increasingly isolated in the last five years. If nothing else comes out of the way I use this Grant Award in the next few months, the seeking of critical advice with help from mentors like Marian will be worth everything else, and hopefully help lift me out of this isolation…

(Please forgive the quality of my photographs. Photographing all these black shapes is proving difficult. A good photographer friend, Danny has offered to help shoot them professionally when I need to, I'm glad to say...)

Grist to the Mill...

I love painting and drawing. I love art. I love the experience of visiting exhibitions and galleries and how over the years I have encountered exhibitions or artworks that have changed my life. I love the places in my mind I find myself in everyday from being involved in my own creative endeavours, despite all the inherent difficulties with this. But as an artist the experience of trying to negotiate opportunities to exhibit your work, gain some sort of exposure, generate contacts, raise funds, apply for commissions and grants, all the stuff to do with the business of being an artist, I can find tedious beyond belief.

It’s no use complaining really as these things go hand in hand if you care about what you are doing and want other people to care about it too, but sometimes you wonder why you are doing it when so much of this stuff seems like so much anathema to what you really want to do, which is just make stuff. I’ve had a couple of weeks like this where you find yourself going back to the studio thinking ‘I JUST DON’T NEED THIS CRAP!’

Since my grant award, I’ve been working with Angela, an arts consultant who is acting as a mentor to help me negotiate some of this stuff more easily. When we met recently, I questioned how I might get my work seen by curators and a local young curator’s name came up that Angela knew and said she would try and invite to the studio. The answer that came back was that said curator wasn’t interested in doing a show with me (I’m not sure where this came from? I wasn’t interested either!), but would be willing for a nice fee to offer me a consultation on the Birmingham Arts Scene! I may not that be active on the network of said scene, but as an artist based in the city for many years now, I know pretty much all I need to know about it. It might be worth stating here that one of my reasons for applying for a grant was to seek opportunities outside of the region, frustrated at not finding a suitable ‘place’ for my work, after much effort trying and researching into EVERY gallery in the area. I dreaded the thought of being horribly patronized by this curator, but I also thought ‘bloody cheek…’


On the other end of the scale, this weekend I decided to enter a couple of paintings in an Open Exhibition advertised by a previously unheard of gallery in Hockley which sounded like a good chance to get some work out there with little hassle. Who knew? Maybe I may even get a bit of feedback, he thought optimistically.

When I turned up with my two little still life ‘crapola’ paintings, the owner just said, ‘but they’re not framed’, to which I replied ‘well, your advert said canvasses did not need to be framed, and besides I don’t like to frame my paintings’, ‘Well, we won’t show unframed work’. I looked around at the pastel seascapes and Mohammed Ali and Evel Knievel prints on the wall, ready to leave again. ‘You’re a commercial gallery, eh?’ I remarked. ‘Oh no, my friend we’re not’ this is all about the art, we’re not interested in selling’. I didn’t understand. ‘Don’t worry’, he said taking my paintings, ‘if you get selected we’ll frame them’, and he pulled out a ridiculous baroque frame and placed it around my rather sad painting of crap, empty drink cartons. I was getting restless at this point. ‘Well that’s no good, is it’, I remarked. ‘Well, what sort of frame do you usually have?, ‘I told you…’ but it was too late. He had a more discreet white frame on my painting. ‘It’s all about presentation’, he said. ‘You can have those for twenty quid’. I felt trapped as he then proceeded to show me around the gallery. The best paintings were definitely the ones by his mother-in-law. ‘Look, if they get selected let me know before you do anything about framing’, I said as I headed for the door. ‘Don’t worry, they’ll get in’, he smiled as he closed the door behind me. My head was spinning as I drove home feeling like I had been horribly conned, and was soon to be several quid lighter.

Today I went back and reclaimed my paintings with my three year old to protect me. ‘I want my paintings back’, I said. ‘You don’t want to sell them?’ ‘No’. I took them home and hung them back on the studio walls.

Like I said, SOMETIMES I JUST DON’T NEED THIS CRAP….

(The Philip Guston paintings on display here seemed to fit the mood of this particular post)

'Exile'

'Exile', charcoal on paper, imperial size, 2012

Dan the Man...

I was at Goldalming College in Surrey on Wednesday for a ‘Practical Painting Workshop for A Level Art- a practical guide from Cezanne to the Abstract Expressionists via Cubism’. It was a staff development opportunity that I was keen to participate in and hopefully get some new ideas for teaching painting, which despite it being my specialist field I do find a very difficult subject to teach. It was led by Daniel Fooks, the Head of Art at the College, who is an inspiration. I had previously been to a training session in 2009 led by him in London, ‘How to Get All Your Students a Grade A at A Level’, which he does every year, almost without exception. It is refreshing to hear someone who gets such amazing results say ‘I have no paperwork, just what the students make, no schemes of work, I can’t stand them’. His training day has had quite a profound impact on my approach in the classroom since, although sadly I do still have to do schemes of work despite telling my manager we don’t need them according to Dan.


It was a great day, and I did come away with lots of new ideas, but I thought I would post this to share the inspiration I came away with from Dan’s own paintings. They were in a makeshift studio space he had made in the class, and worked in alongside his students. These included this incredible set of five portraits of actor Peter Capaldi (above) that were selected for the BP Portrait Award last year. It also included a group of very large paintings based on his fascination with the forms and expressive qualities to be found in knotty trees. Although, very much derived from Cezanne’s techniques I found them really exciting. I spent my lunchtime totally absorbed by them in his studio space and having a chat with him about them. They gave me a great deal food for thought as I begin to develop my own forays into the landscape. It was a real privilege...