Galerie la Tour, Montsales. Autoportraits. October 4th 2014.

In October, Galerie la Tour Montsalès will show Autoportraits. Four painters have been invited to show there. Patrick Laroche, Daniel Lefranc, Charles de Rodat, and I. So I am continuing to explore this in readiness. Actually I wrote, I am continuing to expire first instead of explore and that got me thinking because one of the things that might motivate me is that very fact, that I am in the process of disappearing so the point is to pin something down while I can. That takes in to account that everything changes minute by minute. Each new attempt must acknowledge that not only is each time different i.e. what one wants to achieve but that the reference shifts too, in the act of looking. Will the real Ian Warburton please stand up? One only has to look at Rembrandts selfies to understand what is taking place. Not only is his face changing but so too is the way he sees it.
I think it was Lucien Freud who commented that painting a portrait was like trying to hit a moving target.

Last of old England.

oil on canvas. 80x80cm

oil on board. 120x120cm

oil on paper 90x90cm.

In one of the few shows I have contributed to here someone commented that a painting was not at all like the Aveyron, too green, too English. Well they may want to think about that again after all the rain we have had because from an aeroplane the landscape looks very verdant. It got me thinking though: I have an old book on John Constable, published by Phaidon years ago and I have it open on my desk to look at. I cannot find fault with the colour reproduction because it is some time since I saw one one of his paintings face to face. It is the lovely handling of paint in the large preliminary paintings that jumps out at me. There is a little anecdote about him coming downstairs to work on one by candle light that conjures up an image.

Anyway we are now into July and I have these on the go:

Painting in Summer.

Summer painting. oil on board. 120x120cm.

There is too much information to be had looking. Or so much that it is necessary to pare it down or include it all. We have different approaches to this. Landscape painting is all of this and more. The image formed on the surface is a distillation of that formed on the retina and the subconscious, an interplay of decisions made and experience, perception and interpretation. 

After making drawings of a part of my garden I turned my back on it and felt my way into the painting.

So I began with drawing.

And what followed really was a tussle to both move away from and yet work from the drawing and the others which had proceeded it.

A week has elapsed and I have made some progress but it doesn't seem to be working out quite yet. The fun is in seeing what happens day to day and also in looking back at older work and finding clues that were missed or simply weren't being looked for at the time.

Back to basics.

Focussing on the thing seen as well as the thing experienced has caused me to return to drawing directly from observation and making small paintings. At the moment the drawings are bigger and made with a stick, printing ink and white emulsion. As ever I'm hoping that one thing will feed into the other. To begin with the drawing is descriptive: it then presents me with the problem of how to activate the surface in formalist terms. The paintings vary in what I want from them. I am trying NOT to get too close to what is there (or what I think is there) but the paintings insist on looking like that space, those objects. Nothing wrong with that except that it feels too representational. I am not, I tell myself, translating the outside into paint squeezed from tubes applied to a flat surface to make a painting which refers to light and air, space and solids but is something else entirely, with its own qualities. So back to the drawing board in more senses than one.

Artistses de Montsales et du Causse.

Garden. oil on canvas. 160x120cm

The first of the seasons exhibitions at La Tour Montsales, Aveyron opens Thursday !st May at 6:00p.m.

I'll be showing this.

Failing better.

I know how this feels : the portrait is a map, a terrain to be examined, studied, learnt even, placing one foot in front of the other, losing the way, regaining it. It can't be rushed and we all have to start somewhere. Engaging with the subject is as likely to bring its disappointments as its small triumphs but this is the choice made and so confronted over and over again. Maybe, at some point it will begin to come together and perhaps a beautiful line will be made , a passage will give a direction if only it can be recognized. There is no safety in staying within bounds so each attempt has to be made anew as if, as if seeing the face for the first time, as if putting down that first mark for the first time. That is what we do, one step at a time and with luck we will fail better.