1. A4, oil on paper

My two big influences were Elizabeth Peyton and German Expressionism.

I can’t decide if this works or not… I sort of think in painting terms it’s a bit like a teenager… it’s beginning to get muscular and assert its independence but it’s not there yet. But if, at the end of Level 1, I can begin to start flexing my artistic muscles I’m very happy.

I’ve painted over rather than painted into the monoprint but that’s where this exercise took me, and Diana said I didn’t have to slavishly follow the rules if my artistic voice took me outside the box.

Before I go any further… oils are wonderful to work with… and I’ve discovered none of my brushes really work, they’re hog bristles of very little quality that do dreadful things to the paint (and shed hairs) or watercolour brushes. So, I’ve just invested in a set of Daler Rowney Graduate brushes: Long Flat, short flat and round in a variety of sizes – and am going to bin all my other brushes, or at least put them away.

Oils are fantastic to blend with on the canvas.

Luckily I’d bought some decent filberts, which I’d never used before and even though they were too big they did the trick.

A new technique I learned from looking at Elizabeth Paynton paintings is painting into wet paint with red and blue instead of just using the pre-made skin colour and changing the tone, this radically improved my painting.

I tried to make the eyes connect with the viewer which is something Elizabeth Paynton does brilliantly. She takes iconic bland publicity photographs of famous people and makes them into your friends, she humanises them.

I tried to keep the simplicity of line from my original monoprint as you can see on the neck.

The German Expressionism is mainly in the bold almost fauvist colours I saw at the New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, Leicester on Saturday. I didn’t like a lot of the paintings but I loved their use of colour.

I used a wash for the background, both to pick up the red in the skin tones and to suggest fire; though I didn’t do obvious flames and kept it abstract. As it’s a wash there are no brush-marks, I liked the way the yellow layered onto the red. The grey top in the foreground is solid and has brush-marks which I thought would foreground it. So, even though I reversed the normal colour warmth by having red in the background and blue grey in the foreground I tried go suggest a separation by the difference in textural quality.

PS: The red and yellow is also a nod to a stunning Frank Bowling ‘abstract’ that I saw in the Guardian review of the Frank Bowling exhibition at the Tate Modern.

2. A4, blue tack and oil on paper

My influence for this was Picasso ceramics at Madoura.

I went to an exhibition of his ceramics at the New Walk Museum in Leicester. The way he’d used the shape of the pots as his canvas was wonderful, blurring the edge between sculpture and painting. He also used incisions and empreinte as part of his ‘painting’ technique. The colour and style was a mixture of naive/primitive art, ancient Greek and blocky print… and occasionally cubist.

I wanted to expand the definition of this exercise (Diana said to take risks, experiment and have fun… this is all three) and work back into the print using 3D and paint.

Also, I can see no reason why I have to try create a realistic image. What I’m trying to do is ‘speak’ visually, I feel a bit like a child trying out his voice and seeing what it sounds like. But alongside speaking I want to say something (this is totally different from where I started the course which was to paint something that looked real), so my aim is communicating something, the image – on one level – is just the vehicle.

As I don’t have access to clay – which is fantastically expressive and squidgy – I bought blue tack and put it over my print noting carefully where the eyes etc were. I then made impressions on my blue tack using the print underneath as a guide. I added incisions and empreinte as Picasso had done, and also tried to work boldly and quickly. It’s impossible in the blue tack but you can make the initial mark quickly, and then work slowly over that line.

Picasso used a limited range of colours and included decoration around his art, so I did the same. As much as I could I tried to keep the feel of speed and impish energy.

My colour scheme is a mixture of his black and red pots and some of his later more colourful ones.

I also used my new Georgian brushes which moved the paint well, left lovely brush-marks – which I tried to use – but also (disappointingly) shed hairs.

What I find interesting about the image is that, in a strange way, it works. However stylised and simplified it has a strange power. The contours under the paint help but it is the combination that is working. I could see doing a whole series and improving it, but it has the beginnings of art.

And here’s what it looked like as a naked sculpture before I turned it into a painting.

3. A4, oil on paper

Again, off piste a little, but as my artistic horizons expand I don’t feel as pressured to always go for realistic depictions. There is a whole world of visual languages that I’ve hardly touched and am itching to explore.

One of these is Cubism (but like Jazz piano needs an extremely competent musical understanding before you launch into it I don’t think I’m ready for Cubism yet).

However, I love the language of print – flat blocks of colour – flat surfaces like Julian Trevelyn (which he took into his paintings) and line as in linocut. I was just blown away by Picasso’s linocuts in The New Walk Museum, Leicester.  And there were three in the exhibition catalogue. Picassos’s linocuts had space, balance, Cubism, African art and a weird visual similitude… on one level they couldn’t be more unrealistic but on another they held the essence of a person so that you could almost ‘see’ them.

So, I decided to paint into this monotype to make it look like a Picasso linocut. I followed my print for the shape and positioning of the features but tried to remember what Picasso’s linocuts were like – I looked at them for ages – and capture the same feel, but with my interpretation.

I like all of it apart from inside the cheeks, chin and forehead (which I added later as the face was too dark). But the part I planned before I started is working quite well.

The ‘border’ outside the face and the neck/jumper was great fun… and feels balanced and dynamic to me… it reminded me of acting as I just had to be in the zone. I switched off my thinking (word based) brain and focussed on balancing shape, line, and the weighting of light and dark. It was like sculpting with light and I worked at  it till it sat in space properly. Which is an odd way to think of it as it’s a flat patterned space – but it ‘felt’ much more like a 3D sculpture.

I think I need to know the structure of the face better to ‘abstract’ it, and I know nothing of the language of African art… so inside the face is much weaker. However, the nose and eyebrows are beginning to register… but the rest of the face is too prosaic and realistic.

With my oil paint, which doesn’t dry (or rather oxidise) for months – it isn’t even touch dry for a couple of weeks – it’s very hard to paint over. And my brushes were too big for what I now thing of as a tiny piece of paper.

Diana is right, I need tom work bigger.

I think with oil paint you got to get it right first time, be bold, scrape off if it’s a real hash and leave little gaps between edges… use the canvas as part of your painting like Modigliani did.

….

I’ve really enjoyed this exercise and feel I’ve moved a step away from always going for a likeness. I started with a monotype and explored three very different ways of capturing a face, all equally valid, based on two famous artists (Elizabeth Paynton and Picasso) and two artistic styles German Expressionism and ‘Ceramic art’.

This was much harder than monoprinting by addition.

Self portrait 1, A4 Monoprint – Water based oils on acrylic plate.

This is my favourite, I love the way the image is fading and slightly abstracted. The texture of the paper becomes part of the image, not just a surface, which I really like too. It’s suggestive and I find it quite powerful.

Shame about the blob on the hair

Self portrait 2, A4 Monoprint – Water based oils on acrylic plate.

This is a striking image and I like the way the subtraction has allowed me to get the texture of the hair. The eyes are quite effective too, especially the images left eye (viewer’s right) and the nose has a 3D quality which for a few strokes of flat colour is really cool.

Self portrait 3, A4 Monoprint – Water based oils on acrylic plate.

The eyes don’t work as well (I may paint back into this one and refer to the eyes on Elizabeth Paynton).

Self portrait 4, A4 Monoprint – Water based oils on acrylic plate.

This has captured something of my personality. The hair is very effective and the eyes are working too. The nose has mass… I like the way the mouth and the shadow underneath mirror each other (it was deliberate).

It’s a bit of a mix between simplification and I worked on the nose, but I think it holds together.

Self portrait 5, A4 Monoprint – Water based oils on acrylic plate.

I like the nose, mouth and chin which have the same visual language and work together, if you hold your hand across the print and block of the top it’s quite strong.

However, I don’t think the top half works… the eyes lack clarity and don’t hold the viewer (another one I might paint into)… though the hair is just about passable.

And here are my ten original prints.

I found that my palette for oil paints wasn’t big enough so I’m now using an A2 piece of glass with white paper underneath. It’s a revelation that I can leave my palette overnight and the paints don’t dry. Another benefit is they don’t stiffen – acrylics change viscosity almost as you look at them. However if you thin the oil paint the thinner does slowly evaporate over a few hours and the paint reverts back to its normal viscosity.

Another huge benefit is that the paints don’t change colour as they dry so colour matching (with acrylics it’s almost impossible to match the tones even if you his the right colour) is much easier.

However, I find I need to mix with a palette knife rather than the brush and have to be much more careful about paint hygiene as if the colours even look at each other they mix together… I can see why artists such as Mondrian left blank canvas between edges. And why a ‘resting stick’ is necessary to avoid smudging your work.

Oils mix differently too… for some reason when I make black (burnt umber and ultramarine blue) and mix it with yellow it doesn’t turn greeny… so am having to learn some new mixing techniques… having zinc white is a godsend as it means I can lighten colours without changing their colour.

I bought a roller with a stand and found I can press down with the heel of my spare hand and get a lot of pressure. This caused me some problems as it spread the paint more. Pressure is one of the variables when you are monoprinting.

Effects… by removing paint I can control the depth of colour and spread so am learning the different effects I can get using different viscosities in different thicknesses. For instance I varied the amount of paint to get a richer colour/more or less spread… or a faded effect.

Another very useful technique was using a sponge on the hair, it removed and spread the paint leaving hair like threads, which when printed were very effective.

I hadn’t got any cotton buds (and they’re going to ban them soon anyway) so wrapped tissue round a pencil point. Unfortunately this was a very blunt tool and difficult to control. And although I could use a dry brush to remove paint very sensitively, to make sure I had a clean area was quite difficult to do with any accuracy.

I dabbed and smudge with my finger but this wasn’t very effective as it just moved the paint around, when I also wanted some of the paint removed… but it might have its uses.

I must buy some good oil brushes as my big brushes are course and of no use on A4, my acrylic brushes have splayed and my watercolour brushes aren’t firm enough to use with un-thinned oil paint.

Max of 1 minute on each painting – mid sized soft brush – 3 cups: undiluted ink/diluted ink and water.

Just to give me inspiration and this one took a lot more than a minute…  she kept on doing it till she got it ‘right’ (and captured some of his sparkle) is Marlene Dumas’ Hockney:

This looks like she’s painted into a very faint loose image when it was dry as there’s no bleeding effects.

Here goes…

And individually…

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This was the most fun and tiring activity I’ve done in the four years I’ve been doing this course – but I love the results. I had a practice in my sketchbook and decided that starting with the dilute ink first worked best.

I had three strengths of ink: full strength, watered down but still with a punch and light grey watery.

Annoyingly, the proportions are far more accurate on here than any sketch I spent hours (or days) on.

A minute’s not long and the more I did the more I saw in my face so the temptation was to start adding detail. And because the thin ink was still wet I got lots of bleeding, this causes some wonderful effects and you could control it a little by how you applied the thinner paint, but I would have liked the option of letting these dry and putting washes over.

On my last painting I introduced the technique of drying the wash/bleeding/drips/ with a kitchen cloth.

The combination of speed, fluidity, random (well – mostly…, it doesn’t bleed onto dry paper and bleeds more where it’s wetter) bleeding effects, drying, rubbing and painting in would give you a wonderful range of subtle effects. And that’s just in monochrome… if you added hints of colour you could multiply the effects.

In terms of results I was really pleased as I had no idea what was going to happen.

From about painting number 10 on they all started to have areas that work and there are a couple I really like.

What I did notice was that they all had different personalities/expressions (and that I’d shaved a good 30 years off my age with some of these… one even looks like I’m a child). However I can see me in all of them, which given the way they were created is nothing short of a miracle.

And, there’s a freshness and spontaneity about the images which `i really love, this is definitely a style, or at least a feel, I would like tom take through to my paintings.

(Five artist’s to look at – I’ve done two so far – really enjoyed Marlene Dumas… I’ll publish and try and add one a day.)

1) John Stezeker: b. 1949 – conceptual artist

(related to assignment/distortion of faces)

Bio: Higher Diploma from Slade in 1973 – reacted against Pop Art – used film stills, and publicity photographs – often collage – surreal in nature…

Art historian Julian Stallabrass said, “The contrast at the heart of these works is not between represented and real, but between the unknowing primitives of popular culture, and the conscious, ironic artist and viewer of post-modern images.” Which I take to be the difference between looking at an image and accepting it unquestioningly for what it is (Ooo… this is nice Pop Art!) and decoding it with a post-modern eye… (look at the degradation of post colonial male patriarchal values in the colour field combinations…).

Cited as a major influence on the Young British Artists (exhibited in London from 1988).

Mask XIII 2006

Marriage (Film Portrait Collage) LXI, 2010Collage, 28.5 x 21.5 cm

Interesting art but not painting… still, the idea is relevant.

Part of the face is obliterated by another photograph which gives you a different entry point into the composition. It brings an awareness and analysis that otherwise wouldn’t be… such as the two sides to a marriage argument/hiccup/falling out of love.

The superimposition (a bit like visual metaphors) of the two concepts/images being brought together brings a duality into the viewers experience. And painting over images seems quite common today on platforms like Saatchi Art, Curator’s Choice. However, they seem rather banal compared to the power of these images.

It’s not something that immediately appeals to me from a painting perspective as it’s concept driven and at the moment I’m driven to paint things that are meaningful to me (in whatever way and even if I can’t explain them) rather ideas.

However, I can appreciate the art and it’s useful to file away.

2) Marlene Dumas: b. 1953 

(unpredictable/simplified way of using inks)

(Notes from Tate biography): Born in Cape Town, South Africa – 1972 to 1975  Cape Town University (BA in Visual Arts)… completed studies in Haarlem, in the Netherlands.

Worked in Amsterdam since 1976. From 1978 she has exhibited internationally, and is one of Holland’s most widely admired artists.

Mediums: oil on canvas and ink on paper.

Sources: newspaper and magazine cuttings, personal memorabilia, Flemish paintings, and Polaroid photographs.

Style: portraits of an emotion or state of mind (not of a person).

Themes: race and sexuality, guilt and innocence, violence and tenderness.

I just watched a couple of You Tube videos… one of her working and as a younger woman and one of her talking about her work organising a lifetime retrospective.

Working method: She seems two have tow basic methods… firstly chance based where she splodges and rubs ink on the canvas (she is mainly ‘drawing’ based) then adds water, swirls it around and works into it with a brush ‘drawing’ out the outline; the other she ‘paints’ with the ink in a more conventional controlled way.

Source material: Although she is taking and holding found (and her own) images she is not making a ‘realist’ copy but using them as a key into the topic and painting the topic as she understands it.

It’s difficult to explain but her focus is not the exterior but the interior, it’s as if she’s trying to retain enough of the exterior to give figurative recognition but drawing the interior.

Also, she has a history of using text which stems from her playful art school sketchbooks. She loved texture, which was by definition often abstract, but would then ‘fix’ it with a quote to give it a visual or political/sexual etc contact.

Stern 2004
© Marlene Dumas

This looks like it’s painted, but is still very loose. I like the way the brushwork has been captured, the sharpness of the black and the very subtle tones on the face… though I’m not sure it captures ‘Stern’.

Couple Kissing, 2014

Ellen Gallagher: b 1965 (American)

Known for painting, paper, film and video… mixed media, collaging, limited palettes and playful arrangements.

Themes: race – so to do with identity… formality (as with some of her ‘curated’ artworks… racial stereotypes and the “ordering principles” society imposes… rules embedded in stereotypes and lazy labelling of ‘minority’ groups in order (or having the result of) maintaining the power of the dominant group.

Fascinating… she’s a visual ‘writer’ layering meanings and contexts from present day life and the past, and using sculptural and collage elements (but mainly sticking to a slight relief or flattish surface) to create new meanings. These can be unpicked as new thoughts enter the viewers head or ‘held’ in a meaningful gaze.

It never occurred to me before that this is one of the things a painter can be… well, in one sense it’s not really a ‘painter’… visual artist is a better description. But more importantly, that this is something I could do. That I’m not stupid and have things to say and needn’t be confined to copying visual perceptions.

There’s a quote about Ellen’s work: …’what will hold the visitor is the sheer fascination of the works… They are possessed of an intriguing force. You certainly won’t have seen an artist who sees the world in this way before.’
Rachel Campbell-Johnston, The Times ****

That phrase, ‘… sees the world in this way.’ is very moving for me. It means not only visually but emotionally and intellectually too. I can choose, and I have a voice.

Here are a couple of her works:

Odalisque, 2005

Here Ellen poses herself as a sex slave in Freud’s appartment, this riffs not only on high art like Ingres’ Odalisque… and the position of women in history… also it references art history in Manet’s Odalisque (so is carrying on a noble tradition)… white middle age, middle class power and hypocrisy… the stereotyping of black female sexuality… her taking power by putting herself in that position and the irony that invokes… the slave trade… and on it goes!

Bird in Hand, 2006

This is difficult to see but it’s quite 3D and involves extensive modelling.

Here she looks at how ‘History’ is survived, time consumes and new meanings are born.

The ‘painting’ shows a Caribbean pirate from Cape Verde, a slave port dealing in human cargo. But here everything returns to the sea, slavery dies, dreadlocks appear… the pirate is dissolved (by time) and black identity asserts/reasserts itself.

What I like about her visual art is that although you can write about it for a modern day audience (this might not be true in 500 years time)… as 1519 is to us today… you don’t need any explanation as the understandings are within the viewer and they can enter a dialogue with the art.

Brilliant.

Neo-Expressionist paintings:

I don’t know what Neo-Expressionism is so this is great… I know the German Expressionism of the 1930’s and intellectually this must be ‘New’ Expressionism, but beyond that it is meaningless.

My focus now (following Diana’s feedback on Part 2) in everything I research is to try and relate it to me and how I can use it in my practice. And to translate it into my sketchbook… VISUALLY.

Chief exponents USA: 

Philip Guston: b 1913  d. 1980.

Painter and printmaker (I like the flatness and boldness of printmaking – it has a language that excites me) associated with New York School. Representational, simplified (I have been trying to simplify my work and move away from realism)… renderings of personal symbols and objects. Limited palette – which I used successfully in some of my work in Part 2.

These are all things I respond to… maybe I could do a monoprint in his style in my sketchbook? Diana also said in my report to not worry about the meaning before I do the work but just have fun and launch in. If I just ‘did’ it it would have personal symbols I maybe didn’t understand.

Waking Up, by Philip Guston, 1975

This is so unlike anything I’ve done I’ve got to give it a go… it’s a cartoony character.. a bit surreal… it reminds me of Punch??? Obviously a personal language and a limited palette.

My visual response:

This was a very personal painting as it’s refers to a close acting friend who very nearly killed himself with alcohol and a long ago holiday when he said to his worried wife and children… I’m not an alcoholic, I can stop whenever I want. He ended up losing his career, his relationship and having a series of serious operations. Watching him drink himself into a near coma every night and over the months nearly to death, and see him start to lie as the alcohol took hold was awful.

It’s different from the tight exercises or representational paintings I’ve been used to doing, and is definitely something I want to explore in my practice. It feels as if it’s all part of a big change I’m going through at the moment.

I posted it on the East of England OCA group and and was surprised, given that that was a risk and people could have come back and said it was rubbish, that it has had a strong response. People have identified with the emotions and picked up exactly what I was trying to say.

Being listened to artistically is a new experience for me that I’m still processing. But having a voice is definitely the way I want to go in my practice.

Julian Schnabel: b. 1951 

Filmmaker – a good one – Cannes and BAFTA winner… and had fame (artistically) for his plate paintings.

So, he combines two things I love… film and art!

Difficult to date but his ‘plate’ paintings seems to have been late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Another thing he does which I love is constantly move on and explore… so he doesn’t get a brand and then mine it for the rest of his life. As soon as he has explored one surface he attacks another.

This technique fractures and abstracts the surface, which he works against with a bold style… the surface adds an element of chance but he almost overpowers this and stamps his own vision on the chaos… a true director.

Diana said she’d like me to work big and experiment… maybe I could clear the garage and stick things on a big bit of cardboard… then use poster paints with PVA (to make it stick) – and see what happens.

This is exciting… the OCA example of coffee cups and conkers was trite, tricksy, gimmicky and not at all exciting.

As that would be a big project… another thing my tutor said was I don’t have to finish things. So maybe I could have a go in miniature???? And just do part of a painting??

Britain:  

Christopher Le Brun: b 1951

He identifies as print maker and painter.

Paula Rego b. 1935 

Visual artist known for paintings and prints based on storybooks. Started abstract and moved to representational work.

Themes: power and possession, childhood, and sexual transgression.

The Policeman’s Daughter (1987), a girl polishes her absent father’s jackboot, her fist rammed in deep.

This is disturbing… as is the cat scratching its claws. I went to the exhibition and couldn’t put my finger on it… but it put me ill at ease.

Sunday, 11th November 2018: Guardian interview: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/nov/11/paula-rego-it-isnt-nice-in-my-mind

I like the simplified nature of the painting, the complicated dress is three shades of grey, almost print like. They are fascinating to look at as they have a strong narrative, yet the narrative is elusive and slips from consciousness when you approach it, like ripples on a pond shatter your reflection. Her work touches something inside just beyond consciousness.

So, although I like all the elements… figurative, ‘printy’… with a narrative there’s something slightly scary (surreal?) about the sexuality that frightens me… it’s not something I want to pick up in my practice.

Neo-Expressionism was also big in: Germany (the new Fauves or Neue Wilden); Italy  (Transavanguardia  or beyond the avant-garde); and France  (Figuration Libre – Robert Combas, Remi Blanchard, Francois Boisrond and Herve de Rosa.)

Elizabeth Peyton: b. 1965

American (New York)… portraits (famous from mid 90’s)  of friends, boyfriends, pop celebrities and European monarchy.

So, she must work from photographs? And translate these? Emotionally, psychologically? Visually? If she doesn’t know them personally (the famous people) what’s she adding????? Making publicity photographs human? Inventing a character for them out of her understanding? Is this a record of late 21st century viewpoint of celebrity???

Elizabeth Peyton, Angela, 2017. Oil on board 16.93 x 13.78 inches (43 x 35 cm). Copyright: Elizabeth Peyton Courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels. Photo Credit: Kristian Emdal

This is just stunning in it’s humanity – and is exactly how I’d like to work back in to my monoprint for 3.4. It’s bold, chunky, expressive, suggestive and the eye’s have it. Elizabeth is making remote world leaders into her friends who we can then relate to, it’s genius.

And I love the way she has left blank canvas. Lovely small dabs of paint.

This is in no way a copy of the sanitised empty publicity photograph.

It makes us think of these famous people as human, and increase our connection with them.

Jarvis, 1996. Oil on board, 11 x 14 inches, Hort Family Collection. From Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton

All the above with added brushstrokes.

She has achieved the same result but with much looser paint so this is much more fluid., which matches the personality she’s portraying.

The brushstrokes work well (I did a monoprint where I just moved about the paint left after a print with my fingers and loved the subtle effect).

In Elizabeths painting she’s used the fluidity (of her paint) as an alternative gestural/textural element to the stubby brushstrokes of her Angela Merkel painting.

As far as my practice goes, I hadn’t thought of the technique (stubby/loose) as matching the, in this case psychological, meaning and determining the feel of the finished painting. I’d just thought of different techniques as different hues all to be used together.

This will definitely help me with my Part 3 Assignment.

Research artists who have used monotype/monoprint or with loose paint, in particular to produce portraits.

Mono equals one off.

Print means print.

One off print

Think about painterly way of doing this while researching – and note to self… experiment in my sketchbook!!!!!!!

Things to look out for in my research:

1. How to capture brushstrokes (a particular way of understanding oil paint).
2. How to manipulate the consistency of paint.
3. How to remove paint.
4. How to paint on top of your print.

Monotype:

Yuko Nasu: b. 1974

Thin layers of oil paint which she wipes away with a turps covered rag. (3) This causes blurring and is unsettling. Similar portraits to Henry Tonks???

These were from am exhibition in 2010… These are comical and grotesque, they capture my attention because they show how much you can distort the human face and it remains a face. For me these are masks and very different from Henry Tonks.

He painted deformities and first World War wounds… they were normal people with a grotesque deformity caused by genetics, disease or war. They were real people carrying a burden and as such evoke in me an equal amount of horror, pity (wanting to look away but wanting to honour them as people).

Yuko paints unknown people who might be somebody, equally they might not exist. They do not evoke an emotional response, this is a game or a technique.

These especially, which are created by brushstrokes are much more comical than grotesque, she paints some where she lets the loose paint do its own thing and form ‘hideous’ half human beasts… these are much more disturbing and in the line of genetic experimentation art.

Eleanor Moreton b. 1956

Has produced a series of oils paintings of her female heroes. She smears paint to create movement (is this the same as removing it… or just moving it around without removal?).

(1) Wiping with a thick brush with diluted paint captures brushstrokes.

This has a narrative appeal and I like the colours, though it does remind me of Gaugin on a particularly washed out day – like his mojo has been sucked out and he’s on impulse engines.

It’s thin paint applied in a naive style… I can’t see much smearing (This is quite recent… 2017/18… maybe she smeared in her early work?).

I haven’t done and monoprint yet but this looks like thin paint on paper… because it’s thin it’s captured the brushstrokes.

I don’t like the lack of movement and vibrancy – she’s chosen a zinging palette and then muted all the colours, which drops the energy level.

Kim Edwards b. (early 1960’s?)

Works from drawings and photographs of Suffolk coast. (His or found… nicked?!)

Thick, opaque oil paint (2) and uses a lot of over painting (4) and trial and error.

This looks like an oil sketch… there’s something wrong with the composition, but that’s not what this research is about.

It’s thick paint so no obvious brushstrokes – the consistency of paint is very important in capturing brushstrokes… Apart from the muddy colour palette which captures none of the rich colours, even in a muddy day, this also appears remarkably flat.

I can’t find anything to like in this… neither figurativly or expressively.

Loose paint:

Annie Kevans b.1972 

Very thin paint onto oil primed paper/unsized paper. Unsized paper blurs image and creates a natural fluid look.

Annie has a mission statement and to quote Wikipedia: she paints series of ‘portraits’ that explore sometimes controversial concepts and alternative histories. They are “portraits only in a loose sense… her works being a composite of existing images, research and imagination”.

I love her work.

She captures soul and personality in an economy of light brushstrokes using loose thin paint.

Her eyes are stunning… a few deft strokes skewer the sitters soul.

And there are no flat areas as the subtlest suggestions of colour give us enough colours to read in the contours.

But as in ‘Andy Warhol in Drag’ above her subjects are also anatomically correct, recognisable, beautifully composed, show depth and have a real sense of colour… at least this one does with the red of the lips being picked up in the shadows of the hair and echoed in the further, orangey hair.

Kim Baker b. (No indication online – best guess 1960’s)

Very diluted oil paint on canvas, board and paper. Dark background and works on top with light paint. **** I could try this in my sketchbook.

Her blurb on her website says she uses gestural painting and often overpaints.

Dark Forest 6 110cm x 80cm oil on canvas 2019

Very diluted, drippy and light on dark so it does what it says on the tin.

And this is abstract from 17th Century flower paintings… a few gestural marks informed by years of practice.

That said, it’s not my favourite work of art… I can see the organic flower colours and the floretic sculptural movements. And it has depth… but, something isn’t working for me. This feels dashed off, it’s very subtle, but I can’t feel the connection with the canvas and the vision of the painter.

It feels like she might have done 20 in 10 minutes and picked the best two, titled them and sent them out into the market.

Alli Sharma b. 1967

Ingrid 2 (A Kind of Loving), 2012, oil on canvas, 50x40cm

and

Green Hell, 2017, oil on paper, 15x10cm

The earlier painting according to Alli explores notions of womanhood… but looks like a copy of a photograph from the film. Loose paint and it’s quite competent but it appears dead and flat.

Green hell is also gestural but much looser and more expressive. I like the economy of mark making and the feeling of energy. (even if I don’t like this particular painting).

Geraldine Swayne b. 1965

Works mainly in miniature in enamel on metal.

Geraldine Swayne, Camilla Horn, Blue Dress, 2012, enamel on steel, 6 ½ x 5 inches

This doesn’t appear that loose, with some heavy opaque splodges of paint on the face.

The background and dress appear looser.

Geraldine seems to paint slightly racy images a little out of time, in that they titillate the viewer and could be seen as mildly pornographic… or portraits of famous people. She also has the USP of painting on small metal plates with enamel which makes them unique and very collectable.

All power to her elbow, and I’m sure they sell, but I’m not as convinced she would be as successful if her paintings were on canvas and selling on their painterly merits alone. That said, if I had the skill to paint anything as effective as this image (and I love her use of colour) I’d be very pleased.

David Bomberg b. 1890 d. 1957

Self-Portrait, 1932, Oil on canvas, 606 x 511 mm

I couldn’t find any of his paintings that used loose paint.

However, he produced many portraits (he turned to figurative painting from the 1920’s onwards) which are very loose in terms of detail and resolution. His self portraits especially, his portraits of other people seem to have more clarity and detail, almost dissolving into a muddy wash of abstract colour but staying very firmly in the figurative camp: describing his face and personality with a surprising psychological clarity totally at odds with their visual dissolution.

I like this very much because it touches me with the humanity of the sitter.

Dioego Valasquez b. 1599 d. 1660.

From Wikipedia: Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez was a Spanish painter, the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV, and one of the most important painters of the Spanish Golden Age (a flourishing of art and literature from 1556 to 1659). He was an individualistic artist of the contemporary Baroque period.

Diego Velázquez (1599–1660), Innocent X (1650) [109], oil on canvas, 140 x 120 cm, Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome, Italy

I don’t know that he used loose paint in the modern sense of the word, but he manages a fantastic psychological realism with loose brushwork. The red top sparkles and yet is quick and bold carrying more weight than the most realist representation or photograph.

The face is equally wonderful, if more ‘finished’… it’s unlike the exuberant descriptive brushstrokes of Lucien Freud or the alabaster finish of Titian yet holds a world of personality.

(Unfinished portrait of country girl)

Diego Velázquez (1599–1660), A Country Lass (La Gallega) (1645-50) [106], oil on canvas, 65 x 51 cm, Private collection

I read that the face was finished but the clothes sketched. However, to a modern eye the clothes could easily be considered complete.

The face is wonderfully loose. You feel you are with this girl… her soul crosses the centuries and we feel she has time travelled (and that basically people don’t change however much the technology and fashion shifts around them) to sit before us.

Unknown…

I chose this because not just because it’s loose and wonderfully expressive, but I love the composition. The sitter looks like a famous dwarf actor peter Dinklage and it’s pure genius to accentuate his height by further diminishing it and having him sitting down while maintaining his ‘stature’.

Not loose with paint… but loose with painterly conventions.

Edouard Manet b. 1832 d. 1883

Wikipedia: Édouard Manet was a French modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, and a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.

………

Can’t put my finger on it but the looseness of impressionism is very specific… it’s a looseness tied to visual perception rather than psychological/spiritual or emotional perception. And I think the looseness, in the context of this research of monoprinting and ‘loose paint’ has less to do with visual perception more to do with psychological perception etc.

But Valasquèz managed both, and Manet bridged the realist impressionistic gap so he may well do the same. My memory is that they show character and are loose but I haven’t looked specifically with this question in mind.

Portrait Of Horsewoman

Portrait of horsewoman, by Edouard Manet (1832-1883), oil on canvas, 73×52 cm, 1882

I chose this because it is one of the few portraits where he doesn’t use the traditional dark brown sludgy background, and it is so full of joy and life.

This is loose in definition, not in the consistency of paint. The lack of detail and blurred edges let the viewer create the woman who is present on the canvas. Gestural loose brushstrokes fill the canvas from the almost abstract Turneresque bottom left where the hand seems to be moving, through the more figurative (but still very loose) gloved hand to the ambiguous face. What is this woman thinking… is that a girl behind the mask or does she have an edge.

Portrait of Henri Rochefort, 1881, oil on canvas, Height: 81.5 cm (32 ″); Width: 66.5 cm (26.1 ″)

Painted only a year before ‘Portrait of a Horsewoman’ this has a completely different style. Traditional background and more full realised dress suit. I suspect due to the gravitas of the named sitter decorum and tradition were in order, if not demanded for the fee.

However, the face is almost Lucien Freud, not swept along brushstrokes but an almost palpable sense of flesh, but unlike Lucien Freud who seems more concerned with the corporeality of the flesh here we have the mind and the moment of the sitter captured on the canvas.