Further studies. The trunk of a tree.

The hard part for me is holding on to the flatness of the image in these. As I have mentioned before, there is a strong sense in the garden of the stage flat, the tilting towards me which is of course at variance with the idea of recessional space. I can get near to it in the drawings but the use of colour creates its own problems. Letting go of some aspects of the way that I put paint on is another issue. I was also amused to uncover Lucien Freud"s version of Constable's Study of the trunk of an elm tree.c.1821 in the Victoria and Albert Museum. amongst my papers

Not yet.....

But if ever I became an art thief, this would be high on my list. A wall in Naples. Thomas Jones, c.1782.

Three studies for another conversation.

In painting the space outside my window, a space which shifts backwards and forwards as my perspective changes, I am aware of how limited my focus can be. We think of the grand sweep, the eyes scanning the view left and right, up and down, backwards and forwards but my view is often limited to that moment before the sweep and before my brain brings all that a-priori knowledge into play. I have commented before upon how flat (like stage flats) the view can seem and it is especially so at this time of year with such bright light on the land.

Liberals Are Killing Art

How the Left became obsessed with ideology over beauty. 

I must thank my friend Sharon Knettle for pointing me to this article in The New Republic by Jed Pearl. it was an interesting adjunct to Seeing Through Berger by the late Peter Fuller which I read following on from reading a lot of Berger myself over the years. Peter Fuller edited Modern Painters which was eagerly awaited in our household once upon a time.

Emerging and not emerging

Thinking about what painting is and what it does and what the painter wants and makes happen I was interested in how critics read intentions into painting, often proffering a reading which does not allow for, or goes beyond the simple fact of being in the moment. That there is no more than the subject, the recognition of it and the interchange in paint. It is the paint which is essentially both the transiting vehicle and the subject. Heidegger talks of the subject emerging and not emerging in his writing about Van Gogh's painting of shoes. His is a phenomenological interpretation. In my painting and drawing of the bush, the resulting image is not the bush itself, not even the space out of which the bush emerges and not even my experience of the bush but rather the bush as paint.

A continued conversation with the little bush.

Most of the business of painting is doggedness, a determination to see what more can come of repeated looking, whether it be the ongoing dialogue with the object observed or with the object being made. One can never have too much information or else one would have to invent it but that does not prevent changes being made: I'm thinking of how John Constable would move a willow or change the scale of something to further the composition. Editing becomes necessary often: the painting requires it. The bush is the focus of these paintings and to make it so requires suppressing a lot of information but extracting a lot too.

Painting the bush. Merleau-Ponty, Martin Buber.

I was in conversation with a respected friend who spoke of Merleau-Ponty and his perception of the human experience to which, as a trade I offered Martin Buber with his I-Thou reciprocity.

So in regarding the bush I have to take into account that the act includes its relationship to me and for the purposes of the exchange paint becomes the intermediary, the facilitator, the thought anchor if you will.What we literally see, or notice, is hence not simply the objective world, but is conditioned by a myriad of factors that ensures that the relationship between perceiving subject and object perceived is not one of exclusion. Rather, each term exists only through its dialectical relation to the other, and from this analysis of the perceiving body-subject, Merleau-Ponty enigmatically concludes that "Inside and outside are inseparable. The world is wholly inside and I am wholly outside myself"

In this mode, which Martin Buber calls "encounter" (the mode of I–You), we enter into a relationship with the object encountered, we participate in something with that object, and both the I and the You are transformed by the relation between them. The You we encounter is encountered in its entirety, not as a sum of its qualities. The You is not encountered as a point in space and time, but, instead, it is encountered as if it were the entire universe, or rather, as if the entire universe somehow existed through the You. We can enter into encounter with any part of the object and with any part of the space in which the object exists.

This is what I am working towards in these paintings: it requires that I experience or understand a wholeness, a flow backward and forward through painting and drawing. I realize that I have been trying for this a long time but that I couldn't see it or if I was aware of it, it was something just on the edge of vision and understanding.

Painting the modern garden.

Painting the modern garden is the title of the current show at the Royal Academy of Art in London and since that seems to be what I am doing every day now it is relevant , though quite why the period stops at 1920 escapes me as there is an enormous amount of work which continues to be based upon the garden. Timing is everything and although I have a trip to England planned it doesn't coincide with the exhibition but for those of you who will be close to or in London, the closing date is Sunday 17th April.