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.

Points of Focus.

Points of focus. oil on canvas, 80x80 cms.

This painting is a couple of years old: I have kept it because I keep coming back to the idea that observation is a matter of constantly refocussing as one looks and I would like to have made a painting about how this might work. It was Spring when I tried this for the first time and subsequently lost the plot. Not being able to work for more than ten minutes at a time at the moment has given me pause for thought as to how to engage with this again.

Ivon Hitchens

Painting has come to a temporary halt due to the return of the dreaded sciatica. Doesn't interfere with reading, so I have this on the go.

Painting in December.

mid- winter. Salabert. oil on canvas. 120x120 cms.

It is unusual for me to be able to make a painting straight out of the box. I am an inveterate fiddler and find it difficult to leave things alone to the point of reworking whole areas long after I have put a painting aside. They are rarely precious enough to keep as they are, but this one has come together in a seemless movement during the weeks of mid-winter.

I like Francis Bacon's remarks about splashing the stuff on, but also what he said about the way in which the painter deliberately loses what is there in order to risk some new gain. That ebb and flow on the canvas delights me, trying not to worry about what might be but what is now.

It is a different painting to that with which I ended last year: I am still exploring the photograph as a means of seeking out areas of light and dark, detail and spatial ambiguities. The last two paintings are based upon small areas, seen through my workroom door and it is these that I think offer clues to some that might be done during the new year.

Heads Up.

Over at Painters Table there have been some interesting posts on drawing and the portrait: Ingres, Philip Pearlstein, Paul Housley, Freud, Lorenzo Lotto. Very little is mentioned these days of Sickert, or Gilbert Spenser, Mathew Smith, or Keith Vaughn.

Painting the head, that closest of observation, is a fascinating commitment. John Rothenstein opined that it shouldn't be done too often but looking at Rembrandt's recurring visage suggests that there is much to learn by so doing.

On my table at the moment is a monologue on the Israeli artist Avigdor Arikha. Because I never learned to paint the head I need to look at a range of good work and I am grateful for Painters Table, and for books of course.