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.

A few thoughts on painting.

Hedge. oil on paper. 120x120 cms.

The last few weeks have been spent in re-reading Modern English Painters, by John Rothenstein. Published in 1952 it is an interesting book, and although in some ways out of synch with current thinking it sets out values which whilst being very personal, would be worthy of reappraisal.

I was shocked at my lack of knowledge of some of the painters included, but found that I wanted to think more about them as a result - my own Shock of the not so new and not new at all.

In addition to this, another expansive read has been Still Life with a Bridle, Zbigniew Herbert, published by Ecco Press. One of those collections that one can return to often.

Lost and found.

oil on canvas. 160x120 cms.

There come times when painters feel that what they are doing is somehow arbitrary, that the marks are too subject to chance and that the work is too soon over. This is the something that one wants to strive against: to be in control some of the time whilst acknowledging that once started, the painting process throws up surprises. I for one would not want to know how it ends.

There is a sense of arriving and leaving, moving away, losing in order to gain.

Here is a piece from Rilke:

Who turned us round like this, so

that,

No matter what we do, we have

the air

Of somebody departing? As a

traveller

On the last hill, for the last time

seeing

All the home valley, turns, and stands, and lingers,

so we live, forever taking leave.

Nothing to do with painting but......

This is still something akin to beauty.

Unquiet landscape.

in progress, oil on wood panel. 150x150 cms.

Landscape painting has always been about what it is like to be in the world and in a particular condition. Landscape painting catches at those unexpected ideas and emotions that come, and so easily go, on days of no particular importance. It shows life not as a development but as a condition.

I have been reading and recommend highly, Unquiet Landscape, Places and Ideas in 20th Century English Painting. The author is Christopher Neve. Published by Faber and Faber. 1990.

In search of the self.

Charcoal on paper. 80x50 cms.

In the same way that not every painting of a man,woman or child is a portrait, not every portrait is intended to be recognised as such but there is an adventure, the adventure perhaps of seeing something unknown appear each day in front of the mirror. We approach the surface to be worked upon with a sense of setting out, of seeing what will happen, under scrutiny, sometimes working quickly, other times revisiting the same drawing or painting until it feels right. But no two are the same.

Thanks to the photograph, we think we know what we look like: but I think that the act of making the image in front of the mirror allows us to find out what we feel like when doing so.

oil on wood. 40x25 cms.

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