Painting before noon.

Early morning, Spring. oil on canvas. 80x80 cms.


The light can be luminous here, in all seasons but in the early part of the year it glows and shadows can be a vivid blue. The land continues to offer so much information: it is often a real problem paring down that
information to pin down the essence of what is being experienced to form an image that will convey the sensation as well as create the object. Martin Buber spoke of Gegenstandt und Gegenwart, Presence and Object.

First bonfire of Spring. V2.

oil on canvas. 120x120 cms.

I just could not leave it alone, and even at this stage, having repainted it a number of times, I still feel that I could keep going. 

There is an interesting piece about Cezanne, from Merleau - Ponty describing the paradox of Cezanne's art, in which he says: he was pursuing reality without giving up the sensuous surface, with no other guide than the immediate impression of nature, without following the contours, with no outline to enclose the colour, with no perspectival or pictorial arrangement......aiming for reality while denying himself the means to attain it.

Repainting.

    

surface. oil on canvas. 61x46 cms.

The reworking of paintings is a common and in itself very interesting activity. The temptation to see what else can be done or the realisation that something is not right or even the need to re-use the surface can all lead to a new direction, or resolution of an idea.

This painting is an attempt to explore the ambiguity that arises often through looking at a surface and not being sure what the initial focus is and how it shifts.

Not walking but looking.

First bonfire in Spring. oil on canvas. 120x120 cms.



After a forced absence from my workplace I have spent some time on this, as winter releases its grip. At this time of the year one of the local farmers can be relied upon to set fire to a swathe of land and give the fire brigade an opportunity that they could probably do without. On a more intimate scale garden bonfires are commonplace.

Because I have not been walking, I have been looking at at small area within the purview of my window again. Like previous posts, this is a painting subject to change and it has changed a lot already in response both to the light on the land, as well as the demands of the painting process. The shifting light was very noticeable some days: it's a problem that requires a solution. It has affected this painting more than I realised because I thought that I was not making a piece about this bit of garden, but using the view to help make a painting.

Some years ago, I made paintings which clearly articulated an idea of the clash of natural phenomena and the threat to man whose implied image was fragile. What I find interesting is that that inter-relation
is still there in what I paint, but small in scale, through the walking, observing, and the standing still. There is this temporal bodily experience relating to a painting made up of successive, overlayering.

I think that making a landscape based (or perhaps a place based) painting requires one to be cereberally,
as well as physically present. The making of the painting proceeds then with all that that implies connected to the sense of place.

At Christmas I received a copy of Chris Stephens's monograph of Peter Lanyon.( 21 Publishing. 2000.)
and though I was aware of his name I had not seen any of his work. It is next on my reading list.