Towards another thought.

Plum. A present from my parents.

Small Spring bush 2 in progress.

drawing for small Spring bush.

When as often the painting stalls, it is the act of drawing that can resolve things. Looking at the subject can be confusing and I need to reconstruct what I see through drawing: the process being, looking; drawing; painting; looking, drawing. It is the drawing which enables me to do things that the painting needs but which I am too invested in or too cautious to implement even though I know that lost is lost and to move on can be a good thing.

By the way, Towards another picture is an anthology of artist's writings edited by Andrew Brighton and Lynda Morris. My old and tattered copy is published by Midland Group Nottingham. 24/32 Carlton Street, Nottingham. It is still available at Amazon.co.uk.

Towards another painting - part 2.

 These few photographs are in no particular order but my normally tidy workspace is getting congested and I'll need to sort it out soon.

and here are some of the drawings. 

Towards another painting.

small bush in early Spring.

oil on canvas, 100x80cm

There is a wealth of information outside of my workplace even though I deliberately keep the 

area of concentration small. Sometimes there seems to be too much and to counteract this I try to reconstruct the space through drawing. There are many drawings of this and the process sees them made before, at the same time as, and after painting. I have had to tell myself to work from the drawings

because of information overload.

         I didn't foresee this painting, I never do and that sense of having the image in my head does not hold true for me. In another post I will show some of the drawings and some views of the untidy space that my shed has become whilst this series is worked on.

A more than bearable life and a journey.

small view. oil on canvas.160x120cm

My son berates me for not going anywhere: he wants to know why I don't want to travel. I do, I have. But actually I go lots of places and I do it in paint. Sometimes I time travel and visit the Renaissance, or NewYork in the fifties. I walk  down the lane, I walk in the garden around the house and this journeying is here, now, past and future. The movement of paint is the movement of time and it is memorable for me and more immediate than visiting another place which fades when I come home. The place where I make my paintings changes all the time and my painting changes with it: I never know where it will take me or how it will change my point of view. It is no wonder that painters are so enthralled by paint which occupies the mind so profoundly, a finely tuned antenna to our bodies and minds. The thoughtful observer of a painting sees where the painter has been and where that painter wanted to go. The marks describe the nuances of the hand's motion, the eye's motion, the mind's ranging.

It is in this act of traveling, when so much that we think we know about the world is packaged and fleeting that the slow journey through paint can be so lasting and sustaining - and fun.

                    
                                                                 oil on canvas.30x30cm

garden drawing, winter. ink and emulsion.

90x75cm

Painting the Ashes.

These two paintings are beginning to help coalesce my thinking. The garden with its trees are all around me and so provide a focus. If at all possible I want to fuse paint and subject, surface and space. A big painting is leaning against the wall and but the problem that I have with it is that using the ash as my starting point, my locus, and drawing in paint, the painting encourages too small marks ,which doesn't seem to be a problem in the drawings. Anyway, it will stand a lot of work yet and these two feel better, or at least I feel better about them. For now.

Working on the Red Ash, now in winter.

                                                             

I began looking at this back in the summer and since the autumn have made a number of drawings towards a new set of paintings. The paring down of the information as the tree sheds its foliage sets new problems in terms of space and picture surface. Looking at various texts today I found Martin Buber and this seemed appropriate:

Through all of this the tree remains my object and has its place and its time span, its kind and condition.But it can also happen,if will and grace are joined, that I am drawn into a relation and the tree ceases to be an IT. The power of exclusiveness has seized me. The tree is no impression, no play of my imagination,no aspect of a mood; it confronts me bodily and has to deal with me as I must deal with it, only differently.

SP @ 69

                                                            oil on canvas . 86x 44cm.

Although I often make a s.p. I do like to make one on or around a birthday and so this is this years. Each time it is different, elusive as always. I like to approach it as if for the first time and bring it through from chaos to some kind of resolution but of course as I am a plodder there are moments of utter chaos, panic and despair as the edifice crumbles and I try to save something from it. Working from the figure is not something that I am familiar with which makes it all the more interesting to do.