Something shared.

I have been reading from essays by Rackstraw Downes and thought to share this part: he talks about Joe Fiore, who, before going out to paint, would immerse himself in reading. Stendhal, whilst writing his The Charterhouse of Palma, would read from the Civil Code. I was pleased to come across this as a shared activity, settling the mind before committing oneself whatever might be the task to be engaged with.

New landscape.

180x160cms oil on canvas.

There are many paintings of my garden made in the last sixteen years and they are all different as it seems that as it changes, so do I and so does my approach to it. There are times when I take a much more objective approach, a more analytical direction of what I am seeing and then, something broader like this.

Reciprocity and the age of an oak.

78x60cms

                                                                       78x60cms

                                                                     78x60cms

What might be the painting of space might also be the painting of relation , the reciprocity of seeing and being. This is a well worn theme of mine wanting to meld the two. This is of course impossible, given the immutable plasticity of paint and the complexity of the space which we inhabit. So perhaps it is also to do with memory, if these two are not incompatible. I am not painting what I see and yet I am and I am painting what I feel too. Yesterday set myself to draw a large oak tree in the garden ( a quick measure around the trunk at my chest height times Pi, which give the diameter, and multiplying by the growth coefficient for oak x5 comes out at 216 years give or take) by spending time looking at it and then not looking at it whilst I drew - a common enough exercise - so as to try to feel it , to draw the feel of it. Of course there is such a huge gap between the two things and I have no idea what happens in that space between looking and drawing, but it is very interesting never the less.

The bush and garden.

100x80cms

150x120cms

150x120cms

162x130cms

The number of times that I have thought that I could move on from the
 bush and the garden have brought me no further: there is it seems, so much more to gain. Artists return again and again to their subject. The fact of doing so gives me a lifeline. I have spent sixteen years now in this small landscape, watching and feeling the changes in it and in me. It will of course outlast me but whilst I am in it, it is in me and that engagement continues to hold me close.

In the thick of it.

                                                       large garden. oil on canvas.72x56 ins

I read a piece today about being in the painting which seemed about right. Also it feels right that being in the painting is conjoined with being in the thing painted and that the painting is in me. I noted before that I have taken to work up close to the support so that I try to immerse myself in the process of painting, of the texture and touch and only see the whole later, when of course it could be all wrong.

January painting

I began these paintings before the New Year but they have only come together since January.  There have been several drawings made during their construction and it really has been an attempt, in the drawings, to concentrate on the marks and to allow the image to arrive on its own. However, the paintings are to do with other kinds of mark, tracks on a field, shadow and light.

Five hedges

One of the many interesting things about working from a narrow aspect, in this case, a door/window of narrow proportions, is that, due to the closeness of my self to the surface and the closeness of the outside to the inside, is that often, I am not sure what I am looking at and because of that, the marks on the surface start to have a life of their own, related to but not of the hedge, in this case. I like that. I like that one can just let go of it. I observe the hedge, sometimes that is all I do in a day and then start to make something that is itself primarily.