Not giving a damn

ghost in the making. oil on canvas. 50x50cm.

I was reflecting on the notion of not giving a damn whether anyone sees what I do or not and whether I meant it. Fresh from reading The Art Fair by David Lipsky, and being amused by the story of the need to be seen and being seen to be seen, I am the very worst of self promoters because of course this, here, is what I am doing but doing it in a relatively defendable way. There is no one (other than my wife)  coming to my painting and offering criticism face to face.  I can post an image and walk away. 

Sharon Knettle sharonknettell.blogspot Painting from Life posted a piece from Jed Perl which is worth reading and the I found by chance something written by the actor James Cromwell. Both of these observations are relevant for all of us who work day in day out on our own and work because to not do so would pose an even bigger risk to ourselves.

From Jed Perl,

What happens to an artist whose development receives so little public recognition? I am not talking about unfulfilled promise. I am referring to artists who have done an immense amount and now, at mid-career, are at the point where they have to find it within themselves to do even more. Can artists keep on doing their damnedest when the wide world doesn't give a damn.

                                                                  
From James Cromwell,

The antidote to this malaise exists, as it always has, in immediate felt experience, full self-expression, the inspiration of the imagination, the power in the collective celebration of the ecstatic, and the revolutionary potential of all art to transform the commonplace into the miraculous. All this is anathema to the status quo, and a dire threat to the agendas of power. “To hold the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure” is today an act of insurrection. In our drug addicted, violence prone, greed induced and celebrity besotted culture, where the one tenth of one percent have a stranglehold on the organs of communication, it is imperative to raise our collective voice in resistance. 

and so to the idea of looking at and making a portrait. Think of this: Every portrait exposes a truth that rides on the inherent lies. Our existence is transitional and subjective and this is the condition that portraiture tries to absolve. Every portrait then is a fight or, you could say prayer, that calls out from the most troubled condition of our humanity. Portraiture wants what cannot be had. Life to stop without being dead. It is an art with a built in condition of failure and that is why it is so interesting.

Debra Brehmer. Director National Portrait Gallery, London.

Birthday portrait. One year on.

                                                                
                                                              oil on canvas. 60x40 cm.



I have been working a lot on the things that I might show this summer in the autoportrait exhibition at La Tour de Montsalès in the Aveyron. There will be three other painters, Patrick Laroche, Daniel Lefranc and Charles de Rodat showing paintings and drawings.
Nothing is settled yet but this one might be in it, along with the painting made on my birthday last year. There are seven months to go yet : time to come up with something else. Time to consider more fully the space in a painting and how it can appear to push and pull . There is a very interesting post by Ilaria del Turco regarding architects use of space in a new exhibition at the Royal Academy in London.

A man for all reasons.

    
                                              Man in a grey fleece. oil on canvas. 20x60cm


There are many reasons for going on with this: it is never the same ; the start varies as does the methodology of the painting; the light varies day to day; the mood in which the painting is approached changes from the beginning through to the end of the working day. I wear this expression and then that, am buoyed along by events and just as easily crushed by the futility of the enterprise. Sometimes at the end of the day everything seems okay but at the commencement of the day following it is a disaster and there is nothing for it but to start again. You all know this: we take risks, we know we take them: therefore we have no cause for complaint.

The Selfie and the plain old slog.

Now that Selfie is no longer a neologism and takes its place in the O.E.D. as word of the year I can tip my hat to it. It is an old hat though: the selfie has always been with us. The apps which now facilitate an airbrushed view of ourselves are quick to apply and having made ourselves more presentable but never less, we can bask in the assumption that we were never so beautiful. Never so desirable. Manicured and manipulated, you will recognise the altered state in countless self portraits and I imagine that we aim to flatter ourselves one way or another.

When I go into my shed to make a self portrait I have no idea of the outcome or how long it will take or how many times it will be repainted or redrawn or how successfully I will make the image. It will be based on me of course but it will be more about the drawing or the act of painting than about me for I still don't know how it is that the me changes so much during the time spent working. So much happens in that time. It must affect the image that is made - whereas the photo selfie captures an instant the drawing is a slog which has now taken more than fifty years. It's a journey isn't it, one step at a time.

Here's my shed.

and a couple of selfies.

Parochial ambitions.

I have a narrow outlook: the space I look at is bounded by a limited opening. I think that I read widely, politics, history, art and literary criticism : I love a good read and often do that when in my shed for the purpose of painting. I like diverse views. My painting though is narrowing its focus. That can be a good thing and it is why I like to draw and paint  my head and my garden. Zadie Smith said that she thought writing wasn't about being experimental but rather about finding something true and I think that that can be applied equally to painting.

I have made one large painting over the last months and several small ones. In between times I try to work on my head but the image that I carry within it keeps shifting. In no particular order then are some of the garden paintings.

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                                     160 x 120cm

                     

Deep breath - painters progress, ten years on.

I don't exhibit much, just twice in the last decade. I am lazy I suspect, preferring to just get on with it: both exhibitions were invitations so I had only to see if there was something worth showing and then turn up. It is a risk, sticking one's neck out and part of me wants to and the other would rather not.

For a very long time I would not describe myself as painter; there is a historical reason for that and I won't bore anyone with it: suffice it to say that it was a step too far. Now I have been invited to show some self portraits in a show next year which means I have to get to it because like all that I do it will be a start/stop/redo/start again affair.

There are a lot of excellent portrait painters who have learnt their craft the hard way. I am interested in that slow accretion of expertise and I like very much to see a hard won image. I don't know my limitations yet so I am going to go into this with a degree of naivety and see if anything can be done. I have made a start. The months ahead will suggest a direction and if these tentative beginnings yield anything at all I'll put it here.


I found this today.

Jan Veth. 1888. Cornelia, Clara and Joanna Veth.

and these are  my beginnings - long way to go then.

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Room with a view.

oil on paper. 30x30 cm.

ink, charcoal, emulsion. 170x136 cm.

ink, charcoal, emulsion. 170x136 cm.

oil on canvas. 30x30 cm.

oil on canvas. 30x30 cm.

oil on paper. 30x30 cm.

It is interesting how one thing leads to another and how the process of drawing and painting together cross-fertilises marks and gestures. I have made a number of these over the recent weeks, looking out of the window. When I first moved here and worked in the cellar, it was my daily practice to paint from the view out of the window there and now, after a couple of years in my new space I find that I'm doing it again. The purpose behind drawing and painting together is to see if they can influence one another, not consciously but through the spirit in which they are approached.  I am not a planner, I rarely set out a composition and even if that happens it is quickly altered as the work gets into its stride. However the idea (noted by Ivon Hitchens) of a painting carefully planned and built up stage by stage, carried about in the mind, "felt" for some while and then on the spot various elements being extracted and woven together is clearly a way of working that creates a structure to explore problems of form ,

tone, line.

I am hoping that this interchange will lead to tougher images: I came in this morning and looked around  to find that it all seemed too slight. Would the small paintings work if they were bigger? Do they work as they are? What if the drawings were paintings?  Trying to reconcile something like truth to nature with the demands of the picture, the subject and object dilemma, is truly like being on a knife edge. 

And then that voice in ones head chiding, asking," have you any idea what you are doing?"