The Edges of Cornwall...

                                                                       

I enjoyed a family holiday down near the Lizard Point in Cornwall last week. I always enjoy exploring unfamiliar places, and the natural beauty to be found in the area combined with the cliffs and crashing surf on the nearby beaches, the enormous skies above the flat landscape, and of course a Cornish pasty or three made for a good break which is always welcome for me at this point in the academic year (despite the gale force winds and driving rain on a couple of days…).

I had other motivations too for visiting this part of the world: I was keen to visit Alex Katz’s ‘Give Me Tomorrow’ exhibition at Tate St Ives. I’m a big fan of Katz, and his work has been a big influence in the past, and this exhibition didn’t disappoint. It featured a great collection of his coastal scenes based on his experiences in Maine, where like a lot of New York artists keen to escape the stifling metropolis, he spends his summers. The show seemed perfectly suited to the location of the gallery across from the azure blue sea of St Ives (you can see why the region is such a draw for artists), and it displayed just the right amount of work. It seemed extremely well judged and precise, just like Katz’s paintings. I really loved seeing so much of the very  early work, which I hadn’t seen much of in the flesh before. I had previously felt the paintings completed in the 1950’s had seemed rough and still developing in their technique, but seeing them here I was really struck by how brilliant and exciting the handling of paint was. They had real authority and power. I also enjoyed some more recent extremely large canvasses depicting different aspects of water: from crashing waves to hazy, lose yourself in them reflections (see ‘Green Reflections 3’ below). I’ve been thinking about exploring ideas about the reflections under the motorways and in the local canals for some time, and this certainly inspired me to take this idea more seriously (although the waters of Tipton seem a far cry from Maine or St Ives, but Katz himself would say. ‘always look in your own backyard’…).

                                                     
My new I-Pad also seemed to come into its own in Cornwall. The photos I can take on it are terrific with such a high level of definition, and I also started exploring the video on it and took a bit of footage around the coast. I’m also continuing to practice my painting and drawing skills on the ‘Brushes’ app, which is great fun and extremely addictive (see images below and at top made from the window of our draughty caravan).

I also found myself exploring the nearby Goonhilly Downs a couple of times. It’s a really interesting location and site of some enormous wind turbines, which I always find a bit eerie in the landscape but very compelling to watch, and also to be found were about seven huge satellite dishes in the nearby former abandoned radar base.

The way they faced expectantly heaven wards you half expected them to whir into action at any moment. It was rather unsettling the evening I went there alone to photograph and film them: the combination of the vast low expanses of surrounding moorland with these gigantic manmade structures, including an ancient standing stone too, and the sound of the  wind and fading evening light created an almost science fiction-like atmosphere that didn’t make me feel like hanging around too much. 

I headed back to the car with an ever quickening pace, and sped away from this unique example of the Cornish edgelands….

More Crap...

Here are a couple of new still lives. Looking at this ever increasing set of paintings on the studio floor last night, I’ve decided to push on and commit to making a lot more and to exhibit them at this year’s annual Arts Festival we hold in the college where I work.

I’ve been allocated a space where I was going to display a range of my ‘Edgelands’ studies and drawings, but I don’t really feel ready for this. I more feel the need to really do something with these still lives, try and make another 20 in the next month, and to hopefully explore it all with a bit more purpose and depth, and get it out of my system. I then want to then exhibit them as a big collection on the wall. Discussing the work for the first time with colleagues at work today seemed to garner a positive response, which helps me feel a bit more confident about the idea.

In exhibiting them publicly for the first time, I hope to somehow link them in more closely with my ‘Edgelands’ theme. In my original proposal I had discussed the idea of still lives based on things found on the locations that attract me, and this seems to be increasingly emerging with these pieces: the empty, discarded and mundane detritus left behind in the motorway service station, the out of town shopping mall or retail park. 

Jan Bowman

'Tyseley'

I’m spending quite a bit of time popping down to Digbeth in my lunch hour these days for the odd tube of paint from Harris and Moore Canvasses the new art supplies shop that has opened at the Minerva Works on Fazeley Street (they sell the Michael Harding oils I like to use but normally have to mail order).  I always pass Eastside Projects on Heath Mill Lane and wonder why is it never open when I go past, and then grab a sandwich at The Bond cafe also on Fazeley Street.

                                          Miroslav Sasek 'This is New York'

Whilst in the cafe the other day waiting for my sandwich to be prepared at the end of a very long queue, it gave me an opportunity to enjoy a terrific exhibition of digital prints on the walls there by Birmingham based illustrator, Jan Bowman. Depicting scenes of Birmingham, and made from drawings scanned and then digitally painted (I think!), I really enjoyed their effortless charm and energy. but wonderful precise observations and details. They reminded me alot of illustrators like John Burningham, and most notably Miroslav Sasek and his famous ‘This Is...’ children’s book series of different cities around the world, which I love (image above) Here are a few of Jan’s images and a link to her website where she keeps a really lively blog:

www.janbow.com/

www.harrismoorecanvases.co.uk/

Doing It For The Kids...

I’ve made this painting over the last few days. No, not in my usual one-hit way, I just couldn’t get there in the time I had, but in two long sessions. I felt the time between was pretty valuable to think about what I was after a bit more, but having nearly got there in the first five hours work, it was difficult returning to it and trying not to ‘refine’ it too much now the surface was much drier, without the danger of losing some of the energy I felt it had. Anyway…It’s my biggest motorway painting so far at seven feet across, but I felt it could have gone two or three times bigger. That is, if I had a bigger studio, and somewhere to store this stuff.

I’m pleased this evening, going in to look at afresh after finishing it late last night, unable to ‘see’ it anymore with my tired eyes and mind. In fact, it seemed better than I thought last night- no longer part of me.

The rust coloured sky was a return to some of the first motorway nocturnes I made last year, but also a bit influenced by the palette observed in ‘The Bridge’ (image above), the brilliant Scandinavian crime drama which has just finished on BBC Four. With this and ‘The Killing’, I’ve found myself totally observed in this dark world of Scandinavian noir in recent months. ‘The Bridge’s’ many bleak locations and intense atmosphere has certainly fed my imagination as I think about my own forthcoming trip to Norway, Copenhagen and also Sweden now, where I will be spending a few days. I will be crossing that bridge from Copenhagen to Malmo myself. A picture is beginning to emerge of where I might find myself on my trip for the first time…let’s hope it’s not in concrete boots underneath that bridge…

This blog is for Hasan and Umera…I’m sure you’ll let me know what you think!