Five postcard size, black ink on grey watercolour paper, sketches

A5 drawing paper greyed out with ink

I was going to paint the paper grey with acrylic but then realised the plastic like surface wouldn’t take the ink so greyed out the paper with diluted black ink.

What is surprising is that even though I tried to make this even and only used one dilution of ink the subtle tonal differences have captured the process of laying down the ink and are so suggestive you can see movement and the beginnings of a landscape… or whatever else your brain conjures up.

Sitting by the Fen Drayton lakes sketching the waves rolling in on the stiff breeze and foreground transparency.

This was hugely more difficult than I imagined as it was constantly moving and difficult to ‘see’ the patterns on the water. My brain processed the waves fine, but they were almost impossible to decode on the spot.

I can see why people are tempted to copy ‘frozen’ photographs, but I wanted to capture the sense of wholeness (like a fluid sheet mirror) and movement. Next time I look at waves on a painting I’ll have a much better idea of the visual language.

The transparent area bottom left is too dark and difficult to get the sense of what’s above and below the surface.

A general problem with starting in grey is that you’ve no highlights, but also that once you’ve darkened the paper you can never lighten it… it’s a specialist technique which needs practice.

The trick seems to be in the layering of ink to get very subtle tonal changes and to avoid trying to paint detail. It’s a suggestive medium.

2)

This would be the top half to the first sketch looking up to the far bank. It was now falling towards dusk.

I tried a different and sketchier way to suggest the surface of the water.

This time I worked more quickly and intuitively. Always having to pull myself away from from realism towards suggestion, but finding it hard to see the underlying patterns and understand how the bushes and trees worked visually on the far bank.

And getting close, overpainting, having to correct… a lot of using ink in this way is knowing when to stop.

Adding the grebes gave the sketch a narrative and a focus and draws the eye, changing the way we see the rest of the drawing. Which makes it more like real life where we are drawn to movement.

They really improved the sketch.

3)

I turned away from the lake to a stand of silver birch trees. Now, I was actively looking for the underlying visual structures.

Remembering this is just a sketch (and ignoring the floating bush) this is beginning to capture the misty evening drawing in around the trees.

I used my smallest brush but the leaves would still be enormous on the real tree. However, it’s more about seeing how the branches divide, where the leaves fall, how the light strikes the tree trunks… then trying to translate this onto the paper in the form of intuitive patterns. That is, not without reference to the actual leaves, but in a suggestive rather than figurative way.

4)

Turning to a hawthorn tree with twigs falling down over some reeds at the side of the lake.

Possibly the weakest of the drawings though there is some sense of looking through the leaves.

I couldn’t really see the shape of the hawthorn leaves in the glooming well enough, and would need to study them if I did this again.

The background was an infinity of reeds, mainly stalks, receding… I think I should have sketched them first and then added the darker hawthorn leaves on top.

5)

Getting too dark to see properly so walked home and sat in the picnic area, which meant I had a curated view, and a table and chair.

What luxury to have my inks and brushes around me and not be squatted on the floor.

I was quite pleased with this.

I worked very quickly and didn’t overpaint, using everything I’d learned from the previous four sketches, and just going for the broad brushstrokes using thinned ink. This gives a sense of distance… not happy with the clouds but once you’ve done it with ink you can’t take it off.

The foreground is more worked to match the increased clarity but again I tried to keep it suggestive.

I’m sure being sat comfortably with all my tools easily accessible took away a lot of mental noise and gave me more head space to focus on the sketch.

Five postcard size, watercolour on watercolour paper, sketches

I’m going to take a little stool with me and a watercolour ‘kit’ (it all fits into little box that opens out) that a friend loaned me which should make this physically easier than struggling with inks on the floor and holding paper on my knee to stop it blowing away.

1) Evening as dusk falling, changing light, local playing field and scout hut.

I’ve only ever used watercolour a couple of times before, back in the days when I copied photographs… two or three years ago I tried two paintings working meticulously.

Firstly, it’s a unique wonderful and joyful media. The colours are exquisite and have a lovely clarity. I’ve never really thought about the chemical/physical quality of paints before this course and really only on this last section. But the process of evaporation took on a whole real meaning with watercolours.

I have to be kind to myself as this is a new media and I’m outside.

The washes washes and suggestive brushstrokes work much better than the detail.

2) Morning, view over Fen Drayton Lake from bench near viewing point.

Huge learning curve trying everything out I can think of. Vista’s are hard.

But there’s a small patch bottom right and the foreground vegetation generally that is beginning to be interesting.

For the fine details I need a finer brush.

I think the answer is in using the white paper, keeping everything clean, and how you put one wash over another to create tone.

3) Burr plant late morning to after lunch, storm coming.

I had fun with the sky, tried to work quickly and intuitively, and think it’s working. Not in the sense of real sky but in the sense of sky generically it’s captured something.

The far trees and bushes are working quite well and are almost impressionistic.

The rest doesn’t work so I have to find a way of painting vegetation. On my next painting I’m going to try painting the foreground carefully in washes and then work backwards into the undergrowth.

I think the colour of the burr plant (not its real colour) plant works well as it picks up the colour of the clouds and is a strong compositional device for linking foreground and background.

4) Afternoon 4pm till 6pm, sitting next to a blackberry bush.

I chose leaves for vegetation as my brushes are too big for grasses and reeds.

I’m really pleased with this as I had a plan which was to paint the whole painting suggestively in washes starting with the front and working back into the bush. And using the qualities of the media I’d picked up such as leaving white spaces and haw you can show shadow by applying a second wash.

It really captures the feel of the bramble patch.

5) Raining and forecast more rain so headed for the bird hide on the nature reserve… but the rain stopped and I passed this. Had done 90% when the thunderstorm hit so stood with my sketch board on my head for an umbrella hiding the painting till it stopped.

I enjoyed this and had absolutely no idea how I was going to paint it, so this is trial and error… and playing.

That said, and allowing for the bits that don’t work, I’m quite pleased with it and think the composition works. I especially like the big log at the front.

The original looks much better than the photograph which is odd as it’s usually the other way round.

In the end I had to finish this at home, the trees were dripping after the storm and I was sitting underneath them. Had I tried to finish I would have spoilt my painting. And as I didn’t have a sketch I had to take a photograph.

I ended up making it up… the colours were way out… the visual information horrible… and no sense of being there (smell, wind on the face, raindrops, damp earth). What a sterile experience.

I realised just how much I enjoy painting from life, or from sketches, and how much more information even the simplest sketch has than a photograph.

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Research:

Research these artists first whose work involves walks:

1) Gilbert and George

(Gilbert Proesch 1943 born in Italy and George Passmore born in UK are two artists working together.)

Wikipedia: They are known for their distinctive and highly formal appearance and manner in performance art, and also for their brightly coloured graphic-style photo-based artworks.

Having a quick read of their Wikipedia entry a few things jump out:

1. They always work together.
2. Their life and art is inseparable, their life is art. They are never out of character, alone in public… and usually wear their trademark suits.
3. They work solely in the East End. That is they see the East End as a microcosm for the world and can comment on anything in the world by drawing on their local environment.
4. They are often controversial, attract a lot of attention and have spent their life in the media spotlight.
5. They are anti-elitist and try wherever possible to promote art for all… which is a little paradoxical as their monumental efforts at brand awareness (they are the brand) mean their works are far beyond the pockets of ordinary people. Though videos and public exhibitions make their work more readily available. Ironically (even though not many artists would do this) making some of their work free to download from the Guardian for a short time (so anybody could own an original artwork) only enhanced their brand image .
6. They trained as sculptures and insist all their work even early charcoal drawings are sculpture… charcoal sculptures on paper.

Ignoring the fascinating personal/psychological/branding/commercial aspects of their careers. (Though for my practice I could take away that how you dress, behave and relate to people and the world is an important part of any artists brand. In these days of social media nobody can hide away and rely solely on their art, everybody becomes part of their product.)

But for this exercise the main thing is that they use their local environment for their art.

However, looking at their work most of it is conceptual (based around their sexuality and world views) using people as the subject matter – usually themselves.

As such they are not really ‘painting’ the local environment but their own internal worlds.

Light Headed 1991
© Gilbert & George

This is conceptual art based on the digital manipulation of photographs which tells us nothing about their local environment. They are not recording or cataloguing their environment in any meaningful way and as such are not useful for me in this exercise.

Ironically, as they say they are sculptors and work locally, Frank Auerbach both captures the local environment in its own right and his works sculpturally, where theres’ is flat.

I could use their way of working by using my local environment to make wider comments on the world, and the colour use is painterly (rather than sculptural). But the use of photographs in this way seems much more like fine art than painting and has nmo appeal for me.

2) Jane Grisewood

A contemporary female artist. On her website it says:

Grisewood’s practice is an ongoing exploration into time and transience, dislocation and memory, where process and movement are key. While working across media, the line, repetition and duration are recurring themes in her work, from drawing and photography to print and performance. Drawing involves her body as a tool to mark temporal presence, where the line is a fluid open-ended process recording motion in time and space, inspiring her shifts between earth-bound and cosmic temporalities.

And further with this photograph she goes on to say:

Journeys

Travel has been integral to my life since crossing hemispheres from New Zealand to Britain in the 1970s and subsequent journeys by motorbike, car, bus, van, boat, train and plane in Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa. I am interested in movement between places – as passage – marking time by passing through, and in the journey itself as a suspended space of liminality and dislocation.

Walks and Memory
For many years walking in the rural and urban environment has been an important part of my drawing practice, providing the most basic way of putting a mark on a place, and as a means of exploring notions of movement and temporality, particularly between places I have known. The locations provide ‘surfaces’ for recording my presence while serving as mnemonics for triggering memory, both conscious and random. I am fascinated by the complexity of the memorial potency of familiar places and the notion that the ‘drawing’ touches back, leaving a trace or residue. Moving back and forth between two points, some walks simply create invisible lines in space, while others produce drawings in the land: walking and measuring; cutting; staking; digging and trailing materials, such as ash and pigment, string and thread. The processes are recorded in notebooks and documented through drawings, digital photographs and video.

This much dense verbiage to explain a photograph of a road which, without the explanation would be totally unmemorable is the sort of art I hate.

So it gets a reaction.

At best it’s an illustration of an artistic treatise, there is nothing of intrinsic value… compositionally or aesthetically this could on anybody’s phone.

Similarly her sketches are inaccessible:

Without the CV, the worldwide fame and the renown teaching post (and the dense forest of impenetrable words that explain and justify her work) I don’t think anybody would buy or look at this.

This is pure elitist art which excludes 99% of the population and is not something I have any interest in.

3) Richard Long

(b. 1945) English sculptor and land artist.

I can see why the OCA would pick this artist (not a painter) as several of his works are based around walks. He photographs changes made to the environment on his walks as below (he also uses texts and maps of the land he walks over).

A Line Made by Walking 1967
© Richard Long

This must be somewhere, and in that sense is local… but he’s not sketching/recording his local environment. He is using the landscape as his sculpting medium and  photographing it… then adding words and maybe a map.

It’s a conceptual piece and raises lots of ideas (I like it as a concept), but for me it is not art and I want to go there my painting degree.

Also, the instructions say make a sketch of something you see, not create art and draw that. I know the instructions are fluid but there is a huge difference between recording your environment and using it (or it could be anywhere) as your medium for a sculpture.

Another piece of his, which I do think is a work of art, and very beautiful, is a sculpture made out of materials taken out of the landscape.

South Bank Circle by Richard Long, Tate Liverpool, England. (1991)

This is very similar to the Whitechapel Stone Circle which sold for over £$200,000 in 1989. I hope he sold this for a similar sum.

I could also see this as a painting, the composition is exquisite and the balance and harmony breathtaking.

But, I don’t see how his work has any relevance to sketching my local environment.

4) Heath Bunting

(b. 1966) British.

I don’t understand his entry in Wikipedia or how his art works, I will put it in the ‘technological art’ box.

His Wikipedia entry says:

Heath Bunting is a contemporary British artist born in 1966. Based in Bristol, he is the founder of the site irational.org and was one of the early practitioners in the 1990s of Net.art. Bunting’s work is based on creating open and democratic systems by modifying communications technologies and social systems.

Plus…

5) Mario Rossi

(b. 1958) He has a formidable CV and teaches at the Royal St Martin School of Art, hence is part of the elite.

However, there is very little information about him online (as I found when I researched him earlier for part 5) – if the OCA includes specific suggestions to artists work it should give us links. Without library access or academic help there it’s often impossible just to ‘Google up’ the information.

I couldn’t find any of his watercolour paintings online, and nothing where he paints his local environment. So, no relevant image.

All that was available was recent painting of the sea on his website and photographic work for sale. It’s as if (apart from a few exhibitions which he has no control of) all his earlier work has been wiped.

6) Robert Priseman (painted a series of houses where crimes have taken place placed in Indian icon frames to emphasis the precious nature of a house)

I’ve looked at some of his work before, and like his early work.

16 Wardle Brook Avenue (where the Moors murders took place.)

This is a series painting, which like painting famous people garners a ready audience due to the fame of the subject. So could be seen to be as much about marketing as about art, depending on what it is saying.

I don’t think it works as the houses where crimes were committed generally don’t become shrines, even with dark tourism it’s not a mainstream or necessarily acceptable iconography. (In contrast I thought his series comparing famous dead performers to medieval saints/the cult of worship worked very well.

Both series used the painting’s frame (with a famous subject and fan art level painting) to frame the meaning. It was the combination of frame and painting that created the art… as such it is something built, almost a sculpture, of which the painting is only a part.

This raises a whole series of questions as to how much meaning is inherent in a painting and how much is in the physical and verbal framing: that would include the frame (if any), the physical context of the hanging, critical reviews… artists and galleries publishing introductions to explain and position the work… commercial marketing and star endorsement (in the old days it might have been selling a painting to Saatchi… nowadays the Tate probably does a similar job.

In terms of sketching my local environment it’s of no use whatever, but might be a very useful idea for my Assignment. I could frame (for instance) one of my paintings with bottle tops I’ve been collecting running up to part 5.

My thoughts on these artists are that I have chosen to do a painting degree and these artists would be more useful for fine art and concept art. And certainly –  even though they are connected to walking – they are not connected to this exercise. And while being open to the world of art is essential I want to make paintings. I don’t want to be a fine artist, which is why I didn’t do the fine art course (this is the BA (Hons) Painting course)… and I definitely don’t want to be a concept artist.

Preparatory/exploratory sketches:

1. Double page in A3 sketchbook, art pen

This is turning into a drawing of my garden rather than of plants or weeds so I need to focus in on a few weeds.

I enjoyed this and it’s the beginning of an interesting drawing. But I spent over an hour on it and I could easily spend the best part of a day to complete the drawing. It’s throwing up some really interesting challenges such as there are so many leaves and the far ones merge into a green patterns… how do you represent that on a drawing or a painting?

I guess you have to simplify, with drawing that might be drawing foreground eaves and then leaf shapes and lines for the farther leaves? With painting a range of greens/dark greens and then dabs to suggest leaves.

I think I’ll try two more drawings and really hone in on a small area… I might try charcoal for one and pencil for the other. Then I’ll pick one of those and paint nit up.

I’d like to try thin and loose for my painting up in the style of Mimei Thompson, but given how long it takes oil paint to dry when you’ve thinned it with linseed oil, I might try acrylic for the first few layers?

Drawing 2:

A4 sketchbook, Hb and 4B pencil, Conte crayons.

I like the composition and that it’s on the verge of abstraction in places.

The difference between what we know we see and what we actually see has just hit me, I don’t know if that’s a stage for all art students? For although I know exactly what this is, a wilting courgette plant; and when I look at it in a periphery I way can see all the detail – or I think I can see all the details – and know where everything is. When I look properly it’s often impossible to see where one thing starts and another ends… much of it is an abstract pattern, but my brain must map out the individual leaves and stalks from what I know of the plant.

Given how hellishly complicated the scene is visually it would take days to do a photographic rendering of all the shades so I’m pleasantly surprised how natural this looks.

It’s a new way of drawing for me where I’m really looking and drawing, rather than copying… before when I was drawing, even if I was drawing from life, I was still ‘copying’. My relationship to the subject was different, it was almost as if I was looking at a photograph.

Now, I’m seeing a 3D object in space, hearing the sounds, feeling the sunshine. And I’m seeing so much more, tones, shades, hues, shapes… it’s as if I’m connecting to what I’m drawing rather than copying something dead outside me, to which I have no connection.

My drawing kills are still very basic but I’m really pleased that I’ve begun to learn to draw properly.

Drawing 3:

Willow (soft) charcoal on fairly heavy/toothed A3 drawing paper in sketchbook.

I like this and could imagine it being a painting.

My drawings feel as if they are starting to come to ‘life’. I can’t put my finger on it, or explain it, and I’m not in control of it (I did this without stopping for over an hour) but they are definitely improving.

It’s amazing how complicated nature is. If you were to actually draw what’s in front of you it could take a lifetime. Charcoal is great because you can’t draw in detail (which is why I chose it) – though I think a smoother paper, range of charcoal and a better putty rubber would help – so you have to work by suggestion.

The result is something which isn’t ‘real’, but is still ‘detailed’ and very appealing.

It also leads me to think that you can paint anything. This is a random section of untended garden which if you were in the garden or photographed it you’d dismiss straight away. But when framed and transformed though art it becomes alive.

PS: I like the way this is becoming abstract (I’m colouring it in my head) and also has print elements.

Painting up

I have no idea at the moment which one I’m going to paint up as they would both make interesting paintings. So am going to take some time to think about it.

A3 acrylic/oil paper and painted mid-tone brown (burnt umber and titanium white) with acrylic.

Acrylic on A3 Acrylic paper

I can’t decide if this is awful or quite good… probably somewhere in between.

It’s certainly the start of a new style, kicking away the crutches and boldly going where I really want to go.

There are elements I really like the geranium at the front and the way the leaves are suggested, and the red pot plays nicely. Then there are areas I don’t like such as the base of the big plant. Overall it feels like it probably is (and the old saying you get worse before you get better) which is promising, but a lot of faults, which wouldn’t be surprising as this is the first time I’ve painted freely like this.

I loved doing washes over the top of colours, which made for complex and subtle changes to hue and tone.

I liked moving paint around to give direction and movement.

Acrylic was a pain as it dried so quickly and I wanted to make marks at the end with pointed sticks but it was dry. Though with oil you probably have to wait until the paint is dry before glazing… maybe I could combine the two, start with acrylic and do the final coats with oil?

Considering the amount of paint I’ve used and my finances it’s probably better to learn the very basics with acrylics. Like anything the more you practice the better you get with your tools.

Also, this was painted from a tonal sketch, not that I want to copy local colour but a bit more information in the sketches would be help.

Maybe I need to move even farther away from reality? Like Mimei Thompson.

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Research:

First look at these artists:

I’m going to take it that that means I can paint in any of their styles, and there’s nothing in the instructions that says it has to be scientific or photo real.

Richard Wentworth:

(b. 1947) Artist, curator, teacher.

Much better known for his sculpture and photographs than anything else, though he was Master of Drawing at the Ruskin School of Drawing.

I watched a short Tate video and his raisson d’etre appears to be co-incidences. A dropped piece of steel on a building site heard by an artist on a distant roof… he has a successful ongoing photographic series (from the 1970’s) called ‘Making Do and Getting By’ whereby unusual connections are photographed (and sold) as framed prints.

These range from the banal that we all see everyday (above) to found sculpture. I don’t think if I had taken the photograph above, framed it, and took it to an art gallery and asked them to sell it I’d get anything other than laughter… and there are loads of people taking ‘found art’ and posting it on the internet… so I think this is much more to do with branding than art.

It may have been original in 1970 and interesting before mobile phones with camera’s. But in today’s world it is just more personal ephemera.

With relevance to Part 5 I guess it would be easy to find some strange use of an everyday object (and finding beauty/interest in the ugly or everyday is artistically valid) and include it,

But he has nothing to do with painting or weeds.

Mimei Thompson:

(b. Around 1981?) – Her work is lovely, and very interesting… as is her personal background (I’ve looked at her work before). She deals with fluidity – in every sense – and this is reflected in her painting style.

One her website she says:

Mimei Thompson’s paintings are both process-based and representational. The works are constructed in thin translucent layers over a smooth white ground. Paint marks function descriptively, but their physicality, as paint and as trace of gesture, remains strong.

Chain Link Fence

oil on canvas, 2013, 50x60cm

This would be perfect for my detailed weeds painting only I’ve now painted over my white background to a mid tone so it might be difficult to follow her process. But I will I may well try and paint something based on her work. If not for this exercise then for the Assignment

I like the idea of working in translucent layers, though studying the paintings the layers on top cover up the layers underneath – she must have painted the chain link fence first but you can’t see it through the stems or the leaves.

This is particularly interesting because it’s like working with layers on photoshop or glazing – but where each glaze instead of melding to give subtle colours and tones is a new image laid on top of the old one. It’s also a way of preserving brushstrokes (if I can get it to work… I seem to remember she uses a special process) without being impasto.

If I’m working in oils I’d have to let each layer dry first – I wonder if I could adapt it for acrylics? At the very least I can have a play around with the idea.

In terms of this exercise it would allow me to paint weeds without being scientific or super representational.

PS: I think most artists work with a mixture of process and representation. Traditional painting is equally a process to her work.

Thomas Hall:

This is the first time I’ve been totally defeated and found nothing on the internet about an artist, just one painting.

It shows the weakness of Google for research, and how you need a good library and a librarian… and easy face to face access to tutors.

Exquisitely painted to capture a complex visual scene simply. On first glance it looks representational and then dissolves into abstraction.

I love the way an infinite number of hues and shades has been captured by a relatively few dabs and lines of muted colours. This would be very difficult wet on wet, it would make for a very different finished product, but would be possible dry on wet building up from the back adding every more opaque and fatty colours.

With oils this would take months, I can see why artists work on numerous paintings simultaneously.

But, I could try it with acrylics and it’s definitely an option for this exercise.

PS: Given cashflow and production time, and thinking of my practice, it might be sensible to work mixed media in oils and acrylics to speed up production time if the process involves the painting drying.

And working long term on some oil canvases?

Richard Dadd:

(b. 1817 – 1886). Wikipedia says: “… noted for his depictions of fairies and other supernatural subjects, Orientalist scenes, and enigmatic genre scenes, rendered with obsessively minuscule detail.”

 The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke (detail), 1855-64, painted in Bethlem hospital. 

Guardian article – Rachel Cooke @msrachelcooke Sun 21 Jun 2015 08.00 BST

Beautiful work, but frozen like life in aspic, and not something I would want to paint.

Interesting that his art is still discussed, like Van Gogh, in relation to his mental health. I wonder if a retrospective or major exhibition has been undertaken linking him to the art movements of his time? Or the expressive value of his use of colour?

If Picasso had been confined in a mental institution would our obsession have been with his mental health as opposed to his art. Is it a modern disease to be obsessed with our and other peoples mental health and part of the mythology (like artists starving in a garret) that with genius goes madness?

Richard Dadd’s was clearly a major artist of consummate skill and I’m certain his work exists outside of his insanity.

But I won’t be using his work as a template for this exercise.

Pre-Raphelite (plant details)

In Culture 24:

Elena Fortescue-Brickdale: the last Pre-Raphaelite at Watts Gallery

By Richard Moss | 21 February 2013

The Watts Gallery in Surrey is hosting an intriguing exhibition of works by one of the last great exponents of the Pre-Raphaelite style of painting, Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale (1872-1945).

The Little Foot-page, 1905

Very similar plants to Richard Dadds in that highly detailed and representational/pho-realistic. And equally frozen, these flowers are not caught in a warm breeze, they do not gift sweet smells of Summer to the warm air.

It’s a very particular style, and not one that I like.

I admire the skill but shan’t be attempting Pre-raphelite weeds in my garden.

Overall Comments

Pleased narrative and meaning is coming through in my work as this is something I’ve been working on.

Work sometimes tame but okay because lots of learning gong on… my whole world view of painting has been destroyed (in the nicest possible way). I’m starting to build up a new world view from the ashes and would dearly like to be more adventurous, but my old voice keeps coming out. I guess habits and actions take longer to change than intellectual understanding.

But it is coming, I think that’s what Level 2 will be all about.

Assessment potential

I really want to pass, as an isolated Level 1 student I have no idea how I match up to academic and university level academic and craft expectations, which is another frustration of not being on a full time course and seeing other students work (and ideas), and those of Level 2 and Level 3 students. So it’s useful to know that I have the potential to pass.

Feedback on Assignment:

Ex 4.1

Be careful with representational work because technical aspects of shape and form  need work. When you hone in it’s more engaging especially as it becomes semi abstract. Thin down paint works well for this. 

I have no desire to do representational work but believe that all painting is underpinned by good drawing skills, like Picasso or Peter Doig, so am working on my drawing skills by banning copying photographs, collecting information from sketches. And by attending weekly life drawing sessions.

It’s a work in progress and I am getting better. I think 18 months to two years should see me somewhere near where I want to be.

Ex 4.2

This series more impact – back of the shoes is the best as it gives it a narrative – worked well with detail – good detail and cropping. Hone in has more impact. 

All good – what I’m beginning to learn in just how much process (to such an extent some painting is more like building a flat object through a series of procedures, and that the procedures can become as important as the human input) is involved in painting and that the choice of medium and surface is crucial to outcome.

For these sketches I used pencil crayon which is a very easy medium to control for fine detail. Also, from a purely physical point of view, it’s easier to get in awkward positions and sketch something than it is to do the same thing with watered down paint where you need your paints set up around you.

I agree about the cropping and detail.

Shoes instantly tell a story… I always think of the wonderful old boot painted by Van Gogh.

Ex 4.3

Interesting comments – vibrancy/sculptural aspects of varnish splashed and painted on help visually describe subject in meaningful way. Push sculptural use painting with more texture as gives more dynamic play with paint.

Be careful background is on a different plane.

I loved doing this and really surprised myself. It’s ones of those exercises I did because I had to, didn’t think I was going to learn anything, and ended up having a great time and learning loads.

It’s really a case of bravery… of playing… and limited financial resources… if I’ve put effort into a painting and then throw sand at it or spatter it with varnish it’s a risk. I might waste my time and money. Or, it might make a brilliant painting. It’s definitely something I’ve got to overcome as I loved the results and it made for a much stronger painting.

Maybe it’s a case of planning it into the ‘process’ of making a painting. And I still have to kill the idea that a painting is paint smeared on a canvas with a brush… it can be anything glued, stuck, spayed, smeared, painted or even burnt in or onto any flat surface – more what I would have thought of as a sculpture in the past.

But a seed has been planted.

This was a fantastic exercise and has really moved me on.

My only caveat was I saw a painting recently by minor (fully qualified) local artist who’d use a whole range of different processes on a canvas and it totally fractured the result, it looked like ten different paintings. A dog’s dinner of a painting.

I’m not quite sure what Diana means by the last comment or how to achieve it – I’ll just have to remember to ask on my final feedback.

Ex 4.4

Shoes most effective as have identified with narrative.  Would be good to push impasto to increase movement and grittiness… compositionally could have included old walking boots. Play with textured surfaces can be pushed more.

I absolutely agree and was cross with myself. I painted into the thinned down paint but only to opaque out colours and with minimal impasto or brushwork.

What I wanted, in retrospect I would go back and do again is have some places of heavy impasto and really slap the paint on so the brushwork could add movement to the painting.

In my defence, I was worried about cost as you can easily get through a £5 tube of paint on one small area. However, I’m just going to have to go for it and make it count… I want to paint big but for now (until I start selling some) I’ll have to go small or choose carefully where I impasto.

What I ended up doing was making a thicker version of the thinned down paint when what I’d wanted to do was was produce crusty shoes with personality and brush strokes which filled the canvas with energy and pushed the viewer round the canvas.

Assignment

 The work is clean and clinical which suits the nature of the scene and intended narrative. You have charged yourself with being realistic and representational. It does work in a tondo but where is the intrigue? Is it too obvious? If going for hyper-realism there are technical issues such as cleaner lines and more realistic tones. Overall a good challenge.

My intention was hidden at the bottom of the write up, so have moved it up to the start and added it below, underlined in bold.

“I’ve decided to go for oils, and as I’m not painting this fast and free I’m going to try making it into a slightly abstract by the geometrical structure (where the lines dissect and shapes echo (I did this when I was drawing up). And go for flat areas of colour… I’m not being bound by local colour but composing it as I go along…  I’m also going to try and use subtle tones.

My aim is to create a surreal interior which on the surface looks real but with subtle colour and compositional changes so it pulls the viewer in while pushing their eye to the window. By doing this it will take the viewer through the interior space to the outside, which we can look at and experience but never be part of as we live internally in our heads.”

Diana’s comments are useful if ever I want to go for hyper-realism but but in this case I specifically wasn’t going for hyper realism. And the enhanced tones were a deliberate choice.

My intention wasn’t to be realistic and representational, merely to appear realistic on first glance, but to be unreal. The dynamic, between seeming real and unreality, was meant to push the viewer to realising that their internal space is subjective, and yet it is this very subjectivity which determines what they see ‘objectively’ (and accept unquestioningly) such as a tree or cloud.

My aim was to question the nature of reality and seeing. The intrigue was not the on first glance, ‘reality’, but to mirror back to the viewer how they always see the world through their own mental filter.

Sketchbooks

Sketches/planning supportive for intentions and concepts. Some exciting drawings going on… could these be translated into painting? More expressive?

Firstly I’m really pleased than I’m understanding and using my sketchbook better.

Secondly, I would love to develop sketches into paintings, the two constraints are time and money. But things change and who knows?

Making an Assignment piece that is less free than the my sketchbook work was a huge problem when I started the course… a bit like Cambridge Utd the first time they got to the play offs at Wembley having been non league for ten years. Having fought like lions all season and beaten their opponents in the league they were like rabbits caught in headlights, froze and lost 4 nil. It was an unmitigated disaster.  It took them two more seasons to be able to go to Wembley and play football.

Compared to my first Assignment of my first course four years ago I’m much freer and looser and I thought I had this sorted.

But just because I’m not aware that I’m approaching the Assignment differently, doesn’t mean that I’m now relaxed and free, just that I’m not obviously in a total panic.

Diana’s comments are really useful as they allow me to go back and think about my sketchbook and Assignment with new eyes and see that although the gap is less, there is still a tightening up on the Assignment. It’s no longer fun and play, it matters…

I’m sure this will come and the ideal is to be as loose and expressive in the Assignment as the sketchbook work – I’m working on it.

Research

In depth and imaginative – you are learning and questioning to develop your personal voice – insightful while keeping your own practice in mind in relation to narrative of others.

Good to hear as I’ve been working hard on this… and trying to find where my artistic voice fits within painterly concerns and within the art market.

Learning logs or Blogs/Critical essays

Essay plan

Good plan look at two artists and relate through ‘meaning’. Good to see where your voice comes as an artist. Be careful not to include too much or will be breadth and no depth. Social, cultural and political context may be too much.

Great advice, which I’d also been given by an academic friend. It’s helped me focus down on one very specific aspect and examine it, almost, out of time. How historic conventions (social/cultural/political) determine artistic output is a whole essay in itself, and not what this essay is asking for – which is to compare two artists use of the same medium and relate it to my practice.

Suggested reading/viewing

1. Patrick Caulfield – relating to assignment.

(1936 – 2005) Wikipedia entry: English painter and printmaker known for his bold canvases, which often incorporated elements of photorealism within a pared-down scene. Examples of his work are Pottery and Still Life Ingredients.

After Lunch 1975 Patrick Caulfield 1936-2005 Purchased 1976 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T02033

Interesting artist but conceptually very different to my assignment – and in painterly terms he always thought of himself as a formalist (to do with the flat painting surface and colours/composition etc).

I was trying to make a surreal reality (and wasn’t aiming for photorealism/if anything the opposite) with heightened colours and a semi-abstract geometric composition to express a concept about the nature of perception, while Cauldfield is playing with hyper reality/printmaking and design to set up a dynamic tension about modern living.

2. Michael Craig-Martin – playing with clean colours.

(b. 1941)

Knowing, 1996

I heightened and flattened colours (and moved slightly away from local colour) to disorientate my viewer and make them think about the nature of seeing.

In ‘Knowing’, which is positioned by the title Craig-Martic asks the question… How can we know? What do we know? How do we see everyday objects?

By focussing solely on solid colours he stops us using our normal process to construct the image and as we slow down and build up our seeing we become aware of the process and realise that seeing is a construct, and how little we normally ‘see’ of everyday objects.

So, it’s a bit like a film that takes one small element and blows it up to monumental proportions.

What I particularly like about this use of colour is the laser like focus and understanding of what the colour is doing.

For my practice it makes me think that I I maybe shouldn’t always try to be so subtle (the message gets lost) but think about how I use colour, what I want to achieve and then go for it.

Be radical.

3. An interesting article on Elizabeth Peyton – http.www.the guardian.com/artanddesign/2009/apr/08/artist-elizabeth-peyton

Fascinating article which will give me material for my essay… and can go in the bibliography, if I can figure out how to Harvard reference it.

She starts with glossy press photographs and turns them into 11 inch painted portraits – making something distant and unattainable into a personal friend, like a fan might imagine they know the star. On one level she’s making her own ‘fan painting’.

The way she chooses her subjects reinforces this as she only picks stars whom she respects, for being true to themselves with their rebellious behaviour, and not becoming marketing puppets. Given this personalisation of fame it’s not surprising her paintings drip romance and mysticism, like her weeping paint, and transform a slick publicity image into personal treasure.

The irony is that these treasures can now sell up for up to half a million pounds and are as unattainable as the stars themselves.

Interestingly she has always drawn people and her first exhibition was not of pop stars but royalty.

For my practice this has five take aways:

1. She has a personal investment/connection with her subject which fills the canvas. This is honest and the public react to it.

So, always paint something I’m connected to.

2. Size isn’t everything, it depends what you’re painting.

I don’t have to go big to be successful… size like my choice of medium and surface depends on what and why I’m painting it.

3. If you have a unique brand based on sincerity and skill that cuts through to an audience you can be very successful.

This is totally different from trying to guess the market and paint images that you don’t care about just to sell them.

Or equally, to hit on a gimmick or process like Gary Hume – he takes a photograph, traces it onto acetate, projects it onto aluminium, and then paints it. Yes he has a market and his objects look really cool and are desirable – but I don’t see the difference (apart from scale and skill) between what he does and making little glass animals for Blackpool pleasure beach.

So paint something I’m really connected to.

4. I have told myself this many times… but painting isn’t about copying or making a realistic representation of something in the real world.

My take is be brave and experiment – that’s what doing a degree is all about.

5. Finally, although I am interested in ideas this makes me realise that what I really want to paint is visual language and things that matter to me, I don’t want to paint visual versions of ideas. I’m not a concept artist.

My painting is much more akin to my acting than my hermeneutics degree.

This is, after all a painting course… and I want to paint.

(PS: I do feel that there is an undue weight on the course towards concept art and Fine Art, rather than painting. But maybe that’s just because the UCA doesn’t teach a pure painting degree.)

Pointers for next assignment:

Strengths:

1. Play with semi-abstraction plus honing in – this could be pushed.

Noted… I’d like to push the semi abstraction and but have mixed feelings about the honing in.

As a technique honing in is brilliant but does cover for a lack of skill – Hopper didn’t hone in (he honed out) which was part of his style and integral to his meaning.

So, so long as I’m using it as a deliberate artistic choice, or with an awareness that it’s covering for a drawing or compositional weakness, then I’m fine with it.

2) Variety of painting styles and good to see you understand what different finishes and media can do.

I agree, though to say I’m barely scratching the surface is an understatement. But every journey begins with the first step – and in my case that might be the hardest. As I loosen up and feel easier and braver I should be able to play with painting styles and pick the most appropriate for whatever I’m painting.

3) Learning log and self reflections apt and insightful.

Yes, this is a huge part of my learning. I spend as much time looking and reflecting as painting. Which is probably out of balance. But I’m filling in for not having a painting background or done foundation art.

For me, although the craft is essential, it’s only another tool like your paint brush. What really matters is what’s inside your head… your understanding of visual language… connection to other artists… how I see the world.

And that’s what the learning log is slowly building up.

Areas for development:

1. If want to go for hyper-realistic work technical aspects need working.

Luckily, I don’t. (But I still want to improve my drawing/technical aspects as they are basic skills that underpin all painting)

There would have been a time when I would have been upset by this, when I saw painting as fundamentally a skill based profession where success was judged by how well you could mirror nature/a photograph; but hyper realism is a very, very, minute, tiny sliver of painting today.

It can be a choice, and then you need to put the craft elements in place.

Also, many craft/applied arts – hand chair making and marquetry for example have a higher technical level than artists/painters – for example Angelo de la Cruz, Broken into Pieces, 1999 (a broken painting thrown in the corner) or Monique Prieto, Walked, 2006 (crudely painted text on a multi coloured blotchy canvas).  So skill, of itself, like hyper-realism in painting, is no longer one of the main definitions of being an artist.

The skill range of artists ranges from virtually nil (many concept artists) too highly skilled (Picasso).

Traditional oil painting degrees as still taught in Poland and enable graduates to produce traditional 18th and 19th century paintings, but nowadays that is more seen as producing craftspeople to serve a market than producing artists.

2) Think about compositions – not too much empty space but rather a honing in.

I agree.

Hopper’s empty space was full of meaning… so was not empty.

Dead space is a killer. And until I develop my skills sufficiently to be able to fill ’empty’ space by filling it with meaning (like a carry over line at the end of a line of poetry), I need to find ways round it. And close/photographic cropping is one way that works very well.

3) Keep working on your essay but don’t include too much. It would be good to have a hook and question, which you are referring to throughout. E.g. narrative.

Is a hook and question the same thing – I need to ask my academic friend as I’m not clear about that.

I understand about not including too much and have already discarded about half of what I was going to write about.

With apologies to Charles Avery, Walter Sickart and Archie Franks (my three chosen artists from this research) here are three paintings in their style:

Link 8 not working but I found this: The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo

Thoughts:

A very interesting read and fascinating set up for this Part 5 as The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo is a scientific rather than an artistic work. The drawings etc may have artistic qualities, and it was created at the very dawn of science which will increase the artistic element in the drawings… but the whole thrust and tenure of the work is scientific, not artistic.

In effect, Cassiano Dal Pozzo, 1588-1657 (later joined by his brother: Carlo Antonio Pozzo, 1606-1689) collated and printed the first visual encyclopaedia.

The collection documented and tried to capture in visual form (before cameras) the entire field of human knowledge. Whole colour and black and white plates were given to entries along with close up and wider views. The two brothers produced most of the plates but they also used existing prints from other publishers to augment these where helpful, and added written text documenting the production, collection and all available knowledge about the subject.

The subject was the focus of the entries (as in a modern encyclopaedia), unlike art where the subject is merely a vehicle for the artist’s meaning. If Cassiano had included an entry on Pope Innocent X – 1644 to 1655 – Pope Innocent X would have been the subject, the entry would have been lifelike and the supporting information factual – a piece of non fiction; but when Bacon painted, Study after Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X in 1953, Pope Innocent X (and Velázquez’s painting) was merely vehicle for Bacon’s ‘artistic meaning’.

Cassiano came from Pisa where he was educated and befriended Galileo. He moved to Rome in 1612 where he became influential in aristocratic and intellectual circles, becoming a patron of both star artists like Poussin and lesser artists. However, Cassiano was equally involved in science and was a friend of Prince Federico Cesi who founded the Academia dei Scientific (the first modern scientific society) where Cassiano was able to get ‘scientific’ drawings of plants to microscopic detail.

Rome was the centre of the 17th century world, the pope equivalent to the boss of the biggest multinational corporation today… its reach and power though political connections and ideological dominance akin to that of the USA after the second world war.

A whole thesis could be written on the church’s reaction to Cassiano’s work and how the collection has been split up and sold, and re-united over time.

The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo is undoubtedly a fantastic historical document giving unique insight into the developing culture and science of the 17th Century. But it is a scientifically produced and collated, rather than artistically produced and curated, document and has limited use to me as an artist engaging with my local environment on an artistic level.

I have A level Chemistry and Biology, studied A level Maths and Statistics and chose to walk away from a career in the sciences to become an actor because I found it difficult to engage with the natural world in a scientifically detached way. Wordsworth’s Daffodils moved me much more than understanding the chemical processes that drive the biology of plants.

Nor do I want to be, and have a strong reaction against, artists who are pseudo scientists.

I know enough science to know when somebody has done the 5-10 years training and has a lifetime’s experience, and the scientific rigour, to fully understand their subject and when somebody has read a few books and is skimming the surface. Which doesn’t mean collaborations between scientists and artists are not valuable, and artists can illustrate scientific processes in a way scientists can’t. But for my artistic voice it’s very definitely not a road I want to go down.

So, this has been really useful in focussing my mind.

I want my reaction to my environment to be personally and artistically driven. Not accurate drawings of plants/buildings and animals… I don’t want to ‘catalogue’ my local environment I want to capture its meaning for me.

Pick three artists:

1) Charles Avery or Mike Nelson (contemporary/take on personas)…

Charles Avery Grimm Gallery

Quote from the Gallery: Since 2004, the Scottish artist Charles Avery (1973, Oban, UK) has dedicated himself to the invention of an imaginary island, new corners of which he continues to chart through drawings, sculptures, texts, ephemera and (more rarely) 16mm animations and live incursions into our own world. Known only as ‘the Island’, Avery’s wave-lapped realm is not only a vividly realised fiction, teeming with sights both strange and strangely familiar.

Mike Nelson at the Tate

Nelson seems to produce mainly installations – as I have no interest in making installations so I’m not going to choose him.

Charles Avery – I’m going to focus on his paintings.

Like:

I like that his paintings are fiction so he’s free to paint them from his head. He can be connected to the narratives and the environment without any reference to the outside world and put all his experiences and skill into his painting.

Dislike:

I dislike that he is stuck in his imaginary world. No artist’s imagination can create anything that even comes close to the complexities of real life.

The people in his world look like they have lives and stories but in a story the story world is merely somewhere for the story to take place – the world is not an end in itself, it’s the story that matters. In Avatar even though the world was wonderfully realised what made the film was the story and the characters.

And the way I read a book/watch a film is very different to how I read paintings. In a story book there is a beginning, middle and an end, it takes place over time, and it has a setting. There is an evolving story arc, character changes and a meaning (unless it’s pure entertainment). However, I’m not going to invest time getting to know Avery’s world.

As somebody’s fantasy world it holds no interest, as a context for a story it might be interesting, just as the environment in Avatar was interesting. But what would interest me is the story and the meaning.  However, as single paintings (I’m not going to spend time getting to know his world and the lives of his characters) they are shorn of any meaning.

Strangely, the painting I picked is initially appealing, and I can start to read it… but as soon as I know it’s from a made up world and I don’t know the story I lose all interest.

By contrast Peter Doig’s paintings of imaginary dream worlds where I enter and ‘create’ the world are wholly satisfying as they work as paintings rather than book illustrations.

How view own environment through their eyes:

Well, he’s not taking on a persona as it says in the OCA materials, he’s inventing an imaginary world. Taking on a persona is like acting… taking on a different character and seeing the world through their eyes. In this sense every work of art shows us the world through a different persona, from Van Gough to Matisse to Elizabeth Peyton. Every artist (I’m not talking about copyists) would paint the same subject from their own persona.

If I  pretended my village was not real but part of my imaginary world (apart from being seriously mentally ill) I could do anything I wanted – I would only have to follow the rules I made for myself.

So, I could have a go and just see what happens.

A painting in the style of Charles Avery: brush ink, art pen and oil on A3 drawing paper.

The Fen Drayton Monster

2) Natural artists in the 19th century: Anna Atkins; John James; Audubon; Walter Sickart

Anna Atkins (1799 – 1851) 

Botanist and photographer. 1st woman to publish a book with photographs – she was a scientist. Below is one of her calotypes.

Although it would be possible to to copy this effect with fine drawing this is a scientific slide and I’m focusing in on my voice and medium. So I don’t want to research a botanical photographer.

John James Audubon (1785 – 1851)

American ornithologist, naturalist and painter. He painted birds in their natural habitats. His most famous book The Birds of America (1827–1839), is one of the most famous ornithological works in the world.

American Scoter Duck

I could paint a bird on Fen Drayton Lakes in this style as an ornithological illustration. But (I read he worked from stuffed birds and also observed in real life) I would have to work from a photograph and that is something I don’t want to do at the moment, until I can draw properly.

Also, this is like botanical art for birds. Highly skilful and aesthetic but not what I want to be doing… I don’t want to catalogue the local birds from books and photographs… or catalogue them scientifically at all.

Now, maybe sketches of diving turns painted up???

But I’m not going to be researching Audubon.

Walter Sickart (1860 – 1942)

He was a Post Impressionist and member of  the Camden Town Group who often painted domestic interiors, often semi lit beds with naked women sprawled across them and public meeting places like cafes and music halls.

He started painting wet in wet but moved to painting in stages from drawings or photographs, often using newspaper photographs or Victorian prints which he transferred to canvas by using a grid. His aim was to complete the painting in two sittings… first an underpainting then overlaid detail.

Strangely given the atmosphere of his paintings he was known as being a detached painter shown both by using snapshots/press photographs and increasingly used assistants and took over the work of dead artists.

Mrs Mounter at the Breakfast Table exhibited 1917

I chose  because Walter Sickart.

Like:

I like that he’s a painter and reacts to his environment in a painterly way with a distinctive artistic voice. This is how I’d like to react to my environment.

I like his suggestive blotchy use of colour which lets the eye dwell on the scene rather than the detail and take in the emotional and psychological whole. So, in a strange way, you’re reading it as you would real life rather than visually or aesthetically.

It gives you a distance, you are definitely an observer, but it’s as if you are actually before the scene that’s been painted.

Occasionally, as in this painting, I love his use of people who seem wholly contained and real. Here he captures the emotional distance between this divorcing couple. It reminds me of the way Hopper captures space and isolation with a cold clarity, as at a psychological distance, but also with a human warmth and compassion.

Dislike:

His obsession with naked women on beds, which seems a bit titillating as much as it is art.

His overuse of photographic cropping which work on photographs but somehow seem a bit tricksy and gimmicky in his work. When Monet uses photographic cropping as in his dancer paintings it feels integral to his composition, but in Sickart’s painting it feels like he’s taken somebody else’s composition.

Mostly his people seem like props, or at least not real people or people standing for types or functions.

How view own environment through their eyes:

I could try and paint suggestively leaving the detail indistinct, but as I live on my own in a village and don’t go down the local pub it might be difficult to include people, unless I can sketch my partner when she comes over.

A painting in his style:

Poor old Sickart would be turning in his grave but it wasn’t drawn, was painted wet on wet and has elements of suggestion… I quite like the big tiles and door handle.

It’s much too light and clean.

But I learned a lot from from the process and would like to use this way of painting for at least some of my Assignment pieces. If I painted it and let it dry it would be a lot easier to add details and highlights… but I only gave myself a couple of hours to

3. Other relevant contemporary and historical artists: Maria Sybylla Merian; Mary Delaney; Karston Bott; Christian Boltanski; Marcel Broodtaers; George Shaw; Lisa Wilkens; Lee Maeizer; Hayley Field; Nathan Eastwood; Robert Priseman; Kathy Prendergast; Tanya Wood; Cornelia Parker; Alex Hanna; James Quin; Archie Franks; Tim Stoner; Karen Densham; Terry Bond; Marrio Rossi and Michael Landy (Semi Detached at Home and Weeds

As there are so many I’m just going to have a very quick look at each and pick the one that appeals to me most.

Maria Sybylla Merian

(1647 – 1717) German-born naturalist and scientific illustrator

This could almost be a pastiche of scientific illustration (a visual cliche) – but no doubt it was cutting edge in its time. You could do some really interesting art based on the style, but it’s not for me.

Mary Delaney

(1700 – 1788) – letter writer and Bluestocking famous for her  “paper-mosaicks”, botanic drawing and needlework.

Very interesting and not at all what I expected.

I love the style… it works on black… slightly naive (almost childlike), flat and it reminds me of Japanese prints. And in a strange way is hauntingly beautiful. It could be very modern… the foliage almost looks like it’s stuck on paper.

I might paint a flower from my garden in this style.

Karston Bott

Haven’t got dates but he’s contemporary and German… he collects and curates everyday objects, in 2007 he had 500,000. He photographs them and makes small encyclopaedia entries: for film he might have a photograph of an award winning actor and a popcorn bucket.

Fascinating from an anthropological (and even archeological) perspective and very though provoking.

And it’s a way of cataloguing the world around him it’s very effective and as time passes we all forget the reality and rewrite/mythologise the past (I might even use it in my Assignment).

But as a painter not where I want to go with my artistic career.

Christian Boltanski

(Born 1944) Quote from Wikipedia: French sculptor, photographer, painter and film maker, most well known for his photography installations and contemporary French Conceptual style. 

The Reserve of the Dead Swiss, 1990

A conceptual piece where Boltanski took press cuttings from a Swiss obituaries over several years… re-photographed the grainy pictures… blew them up to bigger than life size (so they were unidentifiable), stripped away any textual reference, then framed and presented them as above.

Knowing that these handsome people are ashes and that we will all be dead, and anonymous is a conceptual piece. A transformation physically and intellectually (and of purpose) of the world around him. So, in that sense he isn’t ‘documenting’ the world around him he’s using the ephemera of the world to make a bigger point.

I think this is very valid and may include it in my Assignment, though as it’s an installation I won’t pick it to draw or paint.

Marcel Broodtaers

(1924 – 1976)  Wikipedia: Belgian poet, filmmaker and artist with a highly literate and often witty approach to creating art works.

Though this doesn’t do justice or describe him very well from the little I’ve read. He was 40 when he made his first art after struggling in penury trying to earn a living as a poet, for his first exhibition he stuck 50 copies of his unsold poetry book into plaster.

For his first exhibition he wrote his ‘Introduction’ onto pages cut out of magazines:

“I, too, wondered whether I could not sell something and succeed in life. For some time I had been no good at anything. I am forty years old… Finally the idea of inventing something insincere crossed my mind and I set to work straightaway. At the end of three months I showed what I had produced to Philippe Edouard Toussaint, the owner of the Galerie St Laurent. ‘But it is art’ he said ‘and I will willingly exhibit all of it.’ ‘Agreed’ I replied. If I sell something, he takes 30%. It seems these are the usual conditions, some galleries take 75%.

What is it? In fact it is objects.”^[3]

He used any objects to hand… so his raw materials were the ephemera of life… the offcuts and discards of society, a bit like his poetic career.

L’oeuvre (coquilles d’oeufs et coquetier), 1967

Sort of witty, but it doesn’t quite work for me.

The idea of using the waste around you to make ‘art’ is interesting and has a long history, but this has a different feel from Art Povera. Art Povera felt like artists using cheap materials artistically… this feels like a raconteur using materials like words. What he couldn’t do in his poetry he’s trying to do physically, but his ideas aren’t strong enough.

However, I’ve just found a 30 minute MOMA discussion about him which (for the purposes of my artistic education I’ll watch) may change my opinion?

Moma video. 2016

Interesting and confirms my initial conception that he didn’t understand visual language, he wasn’t an ‘artist’ if you consider an artist to be primarily visual he was a philosopher/poet using physical constructs to examine concepts.

Listening to the talk it was more that he gave a matrix for artistic critics to map their ideas onto more than that his work had any intrinsic artistic merit. The talk wasn’t really about his work but about the role of museums in modern society. Whether museums are to preserve artistic objects run by artists (as in the 19th century) or a bureaucratic tool run my historians to maintain the status quo (as in the 20th century).

As a trainee artist I don’t find anything in his work I can connect to, as an illustrated discussion about the role of museums in modern society it is very interesting.

George Shaw

(b. 1953)  English painter noted for suburban subject matter. He uses Humbrol enamel paints and is noted for his naturalistic approach.

Scenes from the Passion: Late 2002

Don’t know the title… 2014 from Fusion magazine.

I included two as you wouldn’t think they were by the same artist. The first is technically very skilled, naturalistic and feels like it has a meaning. The second feels lazy, brushed off, meaningless and as if it could have been done a beginner painter in acrylics.

However, apart from by restricting his subject matter to his near environment (and therefore relating to Part 5) while trying to inject bigger ideas, at least in the first painting, his work is gimmicky.

He has branded himself by subject matter and media, which is a very effective way to stand out from the crowd and sell paintings, but is very restrictive to his development as an artist. I instantly think about how Picasso was constantly innovating and changing over his life… and sold paintings through artistic genius nit great marketing.

Which isn’t, as much as it may sound, a value judgement. He’s an artist and needs to sell his work and is providing a useful useful object for the market using his skills.

My take is that you can earn a living just painting what’s around you, and in a non scientific way… it’s a way of curating your memories and the environment around you. But for my practice, though it’s nice to  know I can paint anything I don’t want to restrict myself to a single subject and media.

PS: The fact he’s still selling paintings when the quality has dropped is a testament to the power of brand and context. Has the second painting been in a local village art show I’m not sure it would have sold for £60. I know he’s not after that market, but I cannot see anything that would warrant a price tag in the second painting apart from the brand.

Lisa Wilkens

(b. 1978) She has a degree in Scientific illustration and an MA in Visual Arts.

Quote from Paper: Lisa Wilkens’ work is fundamentally based in drawing and the understanding and exploration of images, their reproduction and development through drawing. Her interest in images is connected to their political and historical context and function. The drawn image offers a platform to address present situations and developments and to imagine and discuss a possible future.

Reading about her work it is highly technical, highly skilful, process driven and conceptually based.

Head, 2013, Chinese ink on paper 67 x 80 cm 2013

I’m struggling to see how her practice relates to Part 5.

Artistically, the more I see of concept art the less I’m drawn to it. As a tool in modern society to examine how we communicate, how visual images are transmitted and transformed etc I think it’s invaluable. But as art it’s dry and barren from the head not the heart.

The irony is that what seems to differentiate art from craft (beautiful objects) is the meaning put in by the artist. But there’s a world of difference between intellectual, conceptual, word driven meanings and ‘human’ meanings.

For my practice, I’m definitely in the Peter Doig boat (early career) rather than the Lisa Wilkens’ treatise on sailing.

Lee Maeizer

She’s an artist working in London. A quote from her in Collateral Drawing says: “I am a painter and sometimes photographer and filmmaker, living and working in east London. I make figurative oil paintings, often very large, of ominous, mostly unpeopled spaces and the discarded objects therein. These comprise a body of work that relates to both a psychological and physical reality and celebrates the possibilities of the paint and surface.” Lee Maelzer

January 2014, Paper lining wall collecting marks from oil painting
Chair or step ladder holding paint marks
Take away tubs and tins on table

I’m beaten by this. I don’t understand it and can see nothing in it. I hope I’ve not misunderstood a photograph of her studio for a work of art?

Which is a whole different, Duchampion question.

The other question is who buys it and how does she earn a living and run a big studio?

It looks like the paper on my painting desk with some studio objects stuck on it?

I often look at random marks which are the residue of my painting and think how beautiful they are, and that they would make a painting and have a freedom and lyrical beauty I could never consciously capture… but I couldn’t possibly sell them/exhibit them as works of art as they are just artistic ‘waste’. But maybe I should stick some studio objects on them, like broken paintbrushes, frame them, and exhibit them?

I could certainly do something like that for Part 5.

Hayley Field

Contemporary artist… Here’s part of her Artistic Statement on Axisweb: I am an abstract painter. My work represents intense, personal responses to observations, events, or experiences. My focus is on colour, shape and composition. My paintings slowly emerge through considerable re-working, accumulating a history of marks, often surfacing isolated figures and shapes.

Paper ball, Oil on board, 30cm x 30cm, 2018

I chose this as part of Part 5 is to paint near monochrome waste packaging, which could be a screwed up paper ball. This is reinterpreted as a semi-abstract – I can see the small yellow balls and the large central ball, which with the name pushes it into a figurative painting.

However, I love the balance and composition and use of colours… and highly developed visual language.

If I can use something like this in Part 5, I will.

And, as I have lots of paper and canvases are expensive, a work on paper.

Across the river in the trees, August 2017 to March 2018 (ongoing)

Nathan Eastwood

(b. 1972) He videos everyday scenes on his phone and then paints them, working in monochrome by glazing with enamel paint. On Wikipedia there is a quote where he says that he is re-examining kitchen sink realism.

He’s using a mobile phone, which is great… lots of artists over the centuries have used new technology as starting points. At the moment I’m not using photographs of any kind as I’m trying to learn how to draw, not copy photographs. But I may have to think about using them as source material (as Peter Doig does) if I can make sure I’ve broken the link with copying, use it as a stimulus, and continue to learn to draw.

Secondly, and potentially more worryingly, is that he has a unique process… a brand identity… a unique selling point. It may be the most wonderful art ever made but if he has to paint everything the same way because that’s his brand then I don’t see how he can grow as an artist and keep his work fresh?

That’s not my concern, if he’s selling and people are happy, that’s great. But in terms of taking artists as models of how I would like to grow my practice I would like the freedom of expression that experimentation allows not a mono-process approach – however commercially useful. Though, if I found something that sold I might bang them out in order to fund my practice while I develop a reputation.

You can’t see it on this small photograph but he’s gridded up his photograph and canvas and I can only assume he’s copying it across.

It produces a very naturalistic painting…

This is hugely skilful but I would argue that it’s not art as, apart from the selection and cropping of his original video photograph, it’s all about process not about meaning or ideas. It may produces naturalistic paintings with people ‘caught in life’, but it says nothing.

What it does show me is that you can paint anything and sell it. Here, the act of painting a photograph of no commercial value transforms it into an object he can sell and earn a living from.

Robert Priseman

(b. 1965) A summary of his Wikipedia entry: British artist, collector, writer, curator and publisher – read Aesthetics and Art Theory at university – started his working life as a book designer – moved onto portraits – in 2004 he embarked on a thematic series of works aimed to engage the viewer in dialogue on provocative psychological and socio-political issues.

It’s interesting how where he ended up relates to what he read at university… aesthetics and art.

An intensive care unit in a hospital. Oil painting by R. Priseman, 2004.

This is obviously a painting, in a realist style… but I can’t see the point. I’ve been in hospitals, it doesn’t say anything to me. I admire it’s skill but wouldn’t want to paint or buy it.

However, his earlier portraits are much more famous, and have meaning in the way he uses the religious iconography with the modern ‘tragic superstar’. This ‘portrait’ of Amy Winehouse immediately connects with me and raises all sorts of questions about how fame has become a modern religion.

I’ve seen this and the portrait is painted like fan art, which is obviously deliberate as looking at his other work he is highly skilful.

Kathy Prendergast

(b. 1958) Irish sculptor and artist.

Lost, 1999

Computer generated inkjet print, this is number 19 of 25 and is exhibited by the Tate.

The map appears completely normal but all the place names apart from those with ‘Lost’ in them, like… Lost Creek have been removed. This completely transforms a functional objective object into a functional artistic one. It repositions our relationship with America by stripping away our comfort blanket… we are suddenly lost in a vast land mass with no way of finding help, it reconnects us to reality… there are existential questions as well as practical ones. It may even remind us of the lost Indian cultures wiped off the map by the civilised invader… or war and ownership.

It’s a concept piece involving no artistic skill… though a lot of time erasing all the place names from the map.

However, I would say it’s art because I connect with it and it makes me think.

The cartographical skill, it’s a beautiful map, are supplied by the mapmaker, and the artistic skill by Kathy Prendergast. Which raises the whole question of whether an artist needs any skill themselves or can, like an architect, buy in somebody else’s skill (the builder’s). My answer at the moment is that as long as there is skill in it if the idea comes from the artist they don’t have to physically make it – is there a parallel with medieval studios where the master painter sold under his brand and 80% of his paintings were painted by his assistants under his direction.

My take for my practice is that I can take something commonplace and artistically meaningless and turn it into art… if I have the right idea.

Tanya Wood

(No dates but she’s around 30 so was born 1989 ish) On her website she says: Tanya is a Hampshire based artist exploring the nature of being through meticulous pencil drawing.

The first thing that hits me is the lack of context, Tanya hasn’t drawn the rest of the platform. Which makes me think about how we see, and how we often don’t ‘see’ much of what’s around us. If most people saw this scene in real life they’d probably remember the row of people, and maybe one person if they stood out, and not much else. The rest of the platform would be invisible.

So, that’s one thing to take on board for this exercise is that like Victorian specimens I can ‘pin up’ one thing out of a scene and don’t always need to paint everything.

Secondly, is how all her drawings (given the sometimes impossible angles and cropping) is that she must copy photographs. No doubt there is some looseness of interpretation which stops it being merely a transcription and turns it into an art object.

Thirdly is her consummate skill… tonal monochrome.

Sadly, though I can see why people would want to own it does nothing more, and in some ways less, than a professional photograph of the same scene. I travel on the train at different times of day and am endlessly fascinated by the different people and bits of beauty or abstraction that frame themselves… and this doesn’t feed me any more than real life. There is no ‘artistic transformation’, just a mind bogglingly skilful recording.

Cornelia Parker

(born 1956) – Cornelia is best know for her large part time sculptures (she builds them for an exhibition and then takes them down, they don’t exist in reality like Rodin’s, The Thinker but in potentiality in a box… then phoenix like they are constructed for an exhibition before turning back into ashes and put back in their box.

I like the idea that you can make an artwork that you can rent out, so it’s not like an object you sell… but you keep the box of bits, and then a museum phones you up, you negotiate a price and they send a big lorry.

One of her most famous works in Mass (Colder Darker Matter) (1997), where she got all the bits from a church struck down by lightning in Texas and suspended them in mid air.

This would be fantastic to see in real life and freezing a moment you would never normally experience, like walking into an exploding church, is really cool. The dangers are sucked out but your imagination can fill in the heat and light, which is fun and novel,  but has as much the feel of theme park spectacle as art.

Also, the price tag, unlike a small painting, of collecting a burnt out church in Texas, crafting it into an installation, and assembling it in a museum – like a star turns they have in the Tate Modern Turbine Hall which travel the world – is beyond the pockets of 99.9% of artists.

Very good for museum footfall I would think… and I’d go.

Maybe I could adapt this idea for Part 5 and take a decayed plant, put it back into a living position on some kind of frame as a living thing and photograph that? Then print the photograph and put that in.

It’s all about using the traces of an event, like Pollack’s drips capturing his artistic dance.

Alex Hanna

(born 1964) – his Wikipedia entry says: His paintings display arrangements of disposable packaging and objects which have little or no material value. These objects are arranged in a traditional still life format and painted using process based and traditional painting techniques.

I expected the objects to be arranged like traditional still lifes format, multiple objects in a composition, but they are not. Looking at his work there is usually just one object, like a pillow or as here, a pack of tablets. And I would say the arrangement veers much more towards geometric abstract than still life.

This is a pleasing piece much more about tonal relationships and shapes than the packaging, which is the vehicle for his true subject… which is beauty. His work reminds me of Giorgio Morandi.

Still Life, 1946

Though Morandi used colour and had an arrangement of multiple objects it has the same ‘feel’.

His more recent work seems to confirm this:

The packaging has vanished and we have an impasto monochrome abstraction.

I like his suggestive brushwork so it would be fun to paint some rubbish, or wrapping, in the same or a similar style for Part 5. Though I think for Part 5 I’d need to keep the figurative element.

James Quin

(born 1962) – He’s a member of Contemporary British Painting and has a page on their website, but the bio doesn’t make sense to me and doesn’t appear to match his paintings… of which there are a wide range, and lots on paper.

So, I’m going to look at some of his paintings, find some relevant to Part 5, pick one… and comment on that.

I’m really struggling… There seems to be no consistent style, on Saatchi Art online his work is either copies of photographs of famous people or abstractions… on Contemporary British Artists I found this:

38 x 42cm, Oil on board, 2010

It’s a style I could ape.

But I can see no purpose or point to the painting… nothing to recommend it.

Archie Franks

Have clicked around and he’s obviously quite young, and successful, but there’s very little internet information about his life or approach to art.

This is where a good library and contact with tutors/librarians would come in.

‘Still life with Monster Munch’ 2016

I absolutely love the style (if not the cost implications of using that much oil paint).n The loose unformed background is perfect backcloth to the star if the moment, Mr… (musical fanfare)… Monseterrrrrr MUNCH!!!!

The clarity, the crispness, the texture working in for tonal 3D, the mix of unreadable flatness and yet it is a packet of Monster Munch.

And it looks like it’s been painted straight onto the canvas from life.

I don’t want to copy anybody’s voice but I’d love to have a go at painting something like this…

Tim Stoner

(born 1970)

I couldn’t find a useful comment on his work but he has a nice website. Looking at his recent paintings, as with all young artists, he seems to be trying on styles and process like jackets at a jumble sale (only much more classy)… each one reminds me of a string of painters, a style, a genre, and then he’ll change.

I can see Hopper, cubist, Impressionistic, Japanese prints, simplified Gaugin, fauvism, a detail from Rueil Fields by Vlaminck which I have on my wall Richard Hamilton and Patrick Caulfield. It’s very interesting to see which the OCA have picked for the course material – a very loose sketchy one from 2014 not exactly typical of his work.

The one thing they have in common is a flatness of colour, and they seem to be getting bolder and less figurative as he goes on. Maybe that’s going to be his style.

Dia de los Muertos (Casares), 2016-19, oil on linen, 204 x 245 cm

This reminds me of paired down Gaugin and he still has the empty figure he uses as a bit of a motif.

It would be fun to try and simplify my nearby environment this much.

Karen Densham

No dates but she looks young… so is definitely contemporary. She works in ceramics, sculpture, photographs, drawing, painting and videos.

Her work is not contained by a brand and is an equally mixture of fine and applied art (craft). This leads her to an awareness of the the medium and art works evolving out of the medium… so the medium being a driver as well as the idea. Her recurrent themes are function, gender, class play and the poetic which she examines speculatively.

Which is all very good but her lack of brand and speculative approach can lead to a lack of clarity and connection for the viewer.

I liked her ceramics which were playful, like pot mice with human ears but (for me) more craft than art. And I had a look at the paintings on her website.

Confession. 2014

This is like a concept driven watercolour sketch. The upside down rose and title.

I am afraid it doesn’t touch me in any way so I can’t see myself using her work.

Terry Bond

(born. 1960) I couldn’t find much but he is humorous and works mainly with the everyday world around him from which he finds/composes photographs… so sleeping silver haired granddad with a fish tank behind and a silver fishing swimming towards his open mouth… or two trees next to each other and growing symmetrically, but different species. The sort of things we see in everyday life, make us smile, but we don’t capture.

I chose one of his photographs that looked like it could be a painting because I don’t think his photographs would translate into painting, and I want to paint. I photograph quite a lot as a hobby and semi professionally taking actor head and shoulders.

I like photography but it’s not where I want to go.

Dark Matter’ 2013-14. 61 x 50 cm.

I could imagine somebody having painted this but it has no meaning or appeal for me.

Marrio Rossi

(b. 1958) He’s obviously done a lot, and he teaches at St Martin’s, but I keep bucking up against the inadequacies of the internet for research as I can’t find much about him… apart from he’s Scottish.

Here’s one of his paintings.

Mario Rossi, Red Buckets, 2005, Acrylic on canvas, 30.5 x 20.3 cm

The sky’s imbued with red and the water’s purple, the red buckets make a splash and possibly give it a concept (container lost off a ship… world transport/pollution… currents… global warming etc) but apart from the sheer skill and time it must have taken to paint it’s flat. There’s nothing that grabs the heart, soul or intellect.

Sadly, another one I’m not going to use. Though this reserach has been amazing and I’ve found some stunning artists and lots of ideas.

Michael Landy (Semi Detached at Home and Weeds)

(b. 1963) Known as one of the Young British Artists (The YBA’s exhibited together in London from 1988). Much of his work in line with commented on consumerism and society (and used the mundane as his medium) like an installation where he set up empty market stalls, or  Break Down in 2001 where he catalogued and destroyed all his 7227 worldly possessions from his car to his odd socks and then destroyed them all in industrial fashion, this brought him to the public eye.

His next artistic endeavour was a solo show in late 2002, Nourishment. This was a series of intricate botanically detailed etchings of weeds. He then returned to large installations.

The concept of using the mundane to comment on consumerism, using rubbish to create art and critique capitalism is intriguing… maybe I could use the leaflets that come through my door to make a frame for some of my art might work?

His large installations aren’t relevant, neither (for me) are his botanical illustrations – that’s not what I want to do. But to respect the fact I’ve written about him I think I should include some of his work.

Creeping Buttercup, 2002

I chose Archie Franks because his work excites me.

Like:

The energy and the impasto. The dynamic of a loose curtained background and impastoed foregrounded star. The way the essence of the object is captured and yet the form is ambiguous… how the sculptural element is used to give the subject form over textural description. And how it is powerful without being loud.

Technically I like how he’s painted straight onto the canvas and captured the impasto first time without it being sludgy.

Dislike:

There’s nothing I dislike about it.

How view own environment through their eyes:

I’m not sure I could view the whole environment but I could take elements… for me it might be Pork Scratchings and paint the taste, excitement and focus of the slaty crunchiness and golden packet.

The style could be applied to anything in my environment that had importance but who’s commercial packaging and ubiquity had rendered ordinary.

Paintings in their style:

Oil on A3 Oil paper.

Not Archie Franks but a huge step away from my usual style. Each journey begins with a step and is to move from where I am, so I’m happy with this. It has impasto and is suggestive.

Lighting the eggs with two lights doesn’t work as the eggs have two reflections and it’s confusing, and the eggs are overpainted… but in terms of the impasto box, and thin loose background I think it’s beginning to work.

It’s frustrating because I would like it to be better, but hopeful for the future.

I’ve decided to pick oil paint and look at Constable’s oil sketches as compared to Elizabeth Peyton’s finished paintings.

My argument is that oil paint is a medium that can be used for magic (to paint trompe l’oeil, a  window on the world… an aesthetic ‘photograph’) or as a way of capturing the essence of being human.

Because of when he was working Constable had to produce a market product, a beautiful realistic landscape, which oil paint as a medium is very good at. But he was a genius painter so also captured, in his oil sketches, the essence of what it is to be human and look at those views. So although he was involved in a skill based profession he rose above it and included an essence of something else (of humanity) which he took from his oil sketches. Today, his oil sketches, or a development of them, might be more popular than his ‘realist’ paintings.

He had to use his sketches to make his ‘finished’ paintings but because of photography and the revolution in painting painters are now free to express their humanity in whatever way they want. They don’t have to paint aesthetically finished realistic paintings. Elizabeth Peyton can capture the need of a fan to see a star as human, and cut though all the mythologising. In the past she might have been asked to create the myth in a ‘traditional’ portrait.

This in essence is exactly what Constable did with his oil sketches, he saw nature with love and passion, and captured it in a few masterful strokes.

So my conclusion would be that the contemporary and historic use of oil paint in thin and loose oil sketches is the same but that it’s value changes because of cultural, historic and artistic changes.

I’d also put in some personal, social, cultural and political context and relate it to my practice.

And finish up with how the influence of both artists in capturing ‘meaning’ in a non verbal/visual language feeds into my developing voice; particularly the suggestive and gestural qualities of loose work as a way of capturing immediacy, the painting process and a personal artistic response to the world.

Demonstration of visual skills:

I have used a range of media including pencil, pencil crayon, acrylic and oil paint and gloss varnish, both in combination and individually to create a range of successful images. This has involved a range of techniques, especially with my first ‘proper’ oil painting, and compositional skills.

I’m especially p[leased at how my observational skills have improved since I banned photographs and started going to life drawing every week. I got back to the level I was at the end of Drawing 1 and started to move forward again. This is both very exciting and satisfying.

Quality of outcome:

Not all my exercises work but I am very happy with my Assignment which I think captures both my conceptual and visual ideas.

The work I put into creating geometric abstraction within the work creates interest and adds energy without destroying the seeming realism.

And the concept of travelling through our own internal space, we can only see out through our eyes and know the world through our senses, is conveyed by the viewer having to travel through the interior space to look out of the window.

This was achieved by by applying all my knowledge from reading the Essential reading on the course and applying it to how artists achieve internal coherence in their work.

Demonstration of creativity:

I experimented with my Assignment by drawing a series of sketches before choosing the best one to develop, something I would never have done before and that I discussed with my tutor.

Having selected the best sketch I then developed it with my imagination, I only used the sketch as a rough guide and changed lots of elements to give my painting its own internal language.

My personal voice is developing.

I know that I want to paint meaningful paintings where I can abandon myself to the process. Ultimately I’m drawn to semi abstract dream like loose style which is a mixture of Peter Doig and Elizabeth Peyton.

So far, I haven’t painted in the physical ‘style’ that I think will be my voice but discovering oil paint has been a huge step forward. And even though this Assignment wasn’t thin, loose or gestural it was mentally free and that’s a step forward.

Context, reflection and research:

I looked at all the OCA suggested tondo artists in depth though the examples didn’t feel very well thought out. The artists only used a tondo on special occasions (many weren’t available online) and all of the paintings could have been equally successful if re-framed in a rectangle. But, it got me thinking about the shape and why artists might use it.

Reflection is a big part of my learning process and I apply all my reading the the ideas I pick up to my painting. I’m starting to go to more real exhibitions (of every level) much more – though cost is a restriction as they always involve travel and usually an entrance fee.

Qualities of the medium I’ve chosen and how do I hope to exploit these?

Oil paint has a lovely buttery texture and dries to a gorgeous sheen. It has a natural physicality whereas acrylic always has an acidic chemically edge. The colours don’t change as they’re drying and you can work on un-thinned paint for a week or more.

You can varnish oil but the finished paintings look complete and don’t have that slightly arid, sharp edged quality of acrylic canvases.

The most appealing visual quality is the naturalness of the colours, even bright colours have a mellow edge. If it was an instrument oil would always have a gentle burr rather than a brittle screech.

I intend to exploit this by painting atmosphere like Richard Diebenkorn and emotions like Van Gough… I want to paint what I see and feel, and oil paints feel like I could wear them like an old jacket. So, it’s an emotional choice.

Financially acrylic is much cheaper so I’ll still probably use that for larger paintings.

Demonstration of visual skills:

I feel my visual skills are improving as I continue to ban photographs and go to weekly life drawing classes. As I paint from sketches I am learning what information I need to record, and my skill at capturing a 3D shape in space is developing.

In this exercise, even though my primary aim isn’t to ‘paint a photograph’ of reality my improved drawing and visual skills are helping me use my subject as a vehicle for what I really want to say.

Quality of outcome?

I think my viewer can connect with what I’m trying to say, though that’s obviously a difficult call without asking people.

And some of what I’m communicating isn’t meant to be on the surface such as my clothes basket. I want the viewer to be pleased and held by the image without entirely being aware of why. I don’t want them to think and rationalise/reflect on the painting in the same way I am… they shouldn’t be theorising about the nature of our house as an extension of our body, the walls as a second skin… how we decorate our living space like we tattoo our bodies, or want to pick up the clothes basket and take it upstairs.

I want them to be aesthetically pleased by the patterns and drawn in in a way they’re unaware of.

In short I want them to be held by the painting and enter into the picture space physically and spiritually, not look at it and think about it in words.

Demonstration of creativity:

Because I am working from drawings (and learning to draw rather than copy photographs) I have a much richer source of raw materials to draw from. As I own the experience what I can make from it, how creative I can be, expands exponentially.

Everything I read from my Essential reading list changes and feeds back into my understanding of what I’m painting. This can be worked out in my log book, in sketches, in words in my learning log or creatively by letting the work suggest new directions to me as I’m painting it.

Equally, in an ironic sense, it can come when I review my work and realise why it hasn’t worked, which isn’t usually down to a lack of skill (although that’s obviously a factor) but because of a lack of creativity. If I’ve failed to connect to the subject in a creative way the painting is boring and doesn’t work.

If my painting is full of meaning for me it’s creative and interests the viewer. So, to an extent, the work itself is also a demonstration of creativity.

Context:

I research all the artists mentioned in the critical brief and reflect in depth on my own work and the artists who influence me.

At the moment I’m reading a few pages of Painting Today by Tony Godfrey every day which is a huge revelation. Everything he talks about, and all the artists he mentions, change everything I’ve read and understood so far about painting, both in my own work and placing artists in their wider historical and social context.

I may not mention them all as it’s like a huge cavern with a big river pouring in artists, history, convention, personality… all swirling round and bubbling away. So for my paintings and the paintings I’m viewing I’m constantly thinking about different contexts.

A final note on this is that having spent years avidly reading populist art books cover to cover, and being swamped in illustrations in text books, I’ve been seized by a great desire to see real paintings… the good, the bad, the stars and the ugly.

The thin fluid acrylic paintings are on the left and the same paintings with thicker oil paint added are on the right. These were all painted on a flat table.

1. 60 cm diameter brown corrugated card painted standing up using a palette knife.

It shouldn’t be my first reaction but what struck me was the cost, I probably used at least a tube of oil paint which is about £6. Not huge if you’re selling a painting but it would soon add up on exercises and on a large canvas would be a significant cost.

This raises the issue of being in control of the means of production and access to different styles of painting such s painting large canvases or using heavy impasto.

One way round the cost of impasto would be to work on small canvases and scale up as you become more skilful and started to sell your paintings, or to use small areas of impasto on conventional paintings.

What I’m quickly learning is that painting with a brush, smearing oil paint onto a flat surface to produce a thin film of paint resembling a ‘photograph’ (a realistic 3D image on a 2D surface) is only a very small part of what painting is about today. And that you can use anything to apply your ‘paint’ to any surface – the restrictions being the durability of the finished product (arte povera is not yet proven to stand the ravishes of time and has built in obsolescence, like modern cars they fall to pieces after a given number of years, unlike traditional oil paintings which last for centuries) and and whether anybody will buy something that is going to fall to pieces. Which raises the issue of painting as investment? Painting as a political/social comment? Painting for a market? To what extent is a painting ephemeral (like performance art) or a permanent object (a commodity) to be bought and sold?  And how does the artists pays his bills?

Back to this painting… I love the effects created by impasto paint laid on with a palette knife.

A few carefully placed dabs of white and black are enough to flag taps… you don’t need the detail. And I think these taps are stronger than if I’d painted them ‘realistically’.

I also love the texture created between the taps and underneath the cloth. This could be part of a bigger painting and is visually arresting. Aesthetically the lines, indents in the card, and tonal shifts are very engaging and couldn’t have been created in any other way.

Equally the slabs of colour on the flat work surface have a different quality than if they’d been brushed on.

On the cloth and tiles I’ve used impasto with a knife as if it was a brush a brush and it doesn’t work. Impasto has its own technique and visual language in the same way that a tune played on a mandolin is very different to one played on an amped up electric guitar.

2) 23 cm diameter drawing paper – painted using small brushes sitting at a table.

The thinner paint on the carpet drew attention away from basket of clothes and highlighted the painting surface. The thick paint makes it into a solid patterned carpet: both solid in a Mondrian sense of graphic abstract and also as a carpet, which is flat like the painting surface.

Adding white to the wood lightened the painting, added grain for more realism and made the floor into a solid surface; while the reflections indicated a well lit room and cared for wooden floor. So made it into a middle class household with all the meanings that brings.

I decided to show the carpet through the holes in the basket to maintain an element of realism and put the basket on top of the carpet, and the heavy paint let me do this.

I left the clothes thin, just adding a tiny bit of detail, as I wanted to paint them differently from the carpet and the floor.

My idea was to counterpoise the random pattern of the clothes against the structured pattern of the carpet as a way to capture my different feelings for the clothes and the floor, something we’re not usually aware of. The basket is going to be picked up and the clothes ironed, folded and worn, so we have different connection to this than the floor. The floor is a fixed and part of the ‘skin’ of the room, whereas the clothes are passing through, we wear the clothes… we don’t wear the carpet.

3) 53 cm diameter white mount board  painted sitting down and standing up using a variety of brushes.

I decided to enhance the colours on this and go cartoony.

The overall painting is not entirely successful as there are two contrasting styles.

The slabby almost impasto oil paint (though applied with a brush rather than a knife) works for the tiles, candles and essential oils. My idea was to use the heavy paint to see how little I could add and still signify real objects… and even though the shapes are off and there’s no subtle tones or modelling it works well. The surface zings and we have two opposing gangs, the candles and the oils. It begins to set up a cartoony dialogue.

However the rest of the painting is dead. I tried to make the brickwork and wall ‘real’ but it just looks flat and lifeless.

It’s partly the composition but the heavy paint on the bricks looks like paint on a canvas, not a brick nor a pattern. So I needed to paint this in a different style and not ape realistic painting.

In this painting I needed to harmonise my technique for the heavy paint.

4) 34 cm corrugated packing card painted sitting down using medium and small brushes.

These two paintings are not hugely different as I’ve used the heavy paint in the same way as the loose paint, using the loose paint as an underpainting.  The heavy paint corrects local colour and make sense of the light holder.

I did have in mind some of the Futurist painters with my lines of power coming out of the light, but it looks more like a chrysanthemum.

To be honest I couldn’t find a link to this painting so it became about describing physical space, which I find boring. Like painting the vehicle (the outer subject of any painting) without a driver. A car is only useful if it’s taking you somewhere and this subject is parked in the driveway.

The main thing I got out of this (as I’m still on my ‘No photographs’ allowed) is just how much information/and what information you need to capture in your sketches to enable you to paint reality… how much can you add by suggestion… and what you can work out through your knowledge of light source and 3D shapes in space.

5) 34 cm white mounting board painted sitting down with small brushes.

This is one of my favourite paintings because it looks real but was painted from a sketch; because it adds a narrative: Who’s shoes are these? What is their owner like? Can I imagine the house around them? And it also works on the level of laying down a pattern of squares, rectangles and curves against the more natural (but still man made) pattern made by the shoes.

I want to pick up the deck shoes and go off on an adventure… on holiday? On a boat? So I have a physical connection with the painting, it gives me the feeling of an adventure about to begin.

I used the heavy paint to model the background wood and just a little bit on the tongues of the shoes. I like the way the outer leather shoes are loose and the central blue shoes are heavily painted, as well as the colour this is what draws me to them… their physical reality.

Here, even though I used the heavy paint to complete a loose underpainting it works because I was connected to the painting and wasn’t really painting the shoes – I was painting everything else and the shoes were just a vehicle.

It also works on a colourist level as I used the heavy paint to add a bit of redness to the wood, so the yellow and orange wood harmonises. The aquamarine blue splits the difference between being a complementary colour to the yellow (blue, blue purple) and to the orange (blue with a drop of red) while its pinch of red ties it into the red brown shoes and reddy wood. So the painting has a peaceful energy – ready for action – which matches its narrative.