A PAINTER’S PROGRESS
As a landscape painter you have two options. One is to take the path to where green skies are possible. The other is to take the path to where green skies are not possible. I am glad to be following in the footsteps of Van Gogh.
Despite the use of vivid green in the sky I am going to use a reduced palette. The craft of any good artist is to convince you that green skies are possible.
Shapes crawling across the landscape. Day 2
If in a year from now I am turning out slightly more polished versions of my current landscapes I would be disappointed. I also don’t know how motivated I would be to continue. I want to keep the door open to surprise and I therefore expect my painting to go through a slow metamorphosis, from caterpillar to butterfly, hence the use of the green ground.
Shapes crawling across the landscape. Day 1
I can’t keep using the headline “finished” every time I finish a painting so I am now exhausting other possibilities. A little bit more definition to the middle distance trees and I am now done. I seem to be oscillating stylistically but I’m not unduly concerned about this.
Landscape
As much as I try to maintain order in my garden against nature, so there is a similar fight in the larger landscape between man and nature. This current painting seems to be trying to find a balance between the natural rolling landscape and the rigid lines imposed on it. I like the idea of this continual struggle. If my garden experiences are anything to go by then the farmers around here will need more determination than I posses.
Landscape. Day 5
If you don’t sell work, if your work doesn’t show in galleries, if you are against the idea of storing work and most of your work is painted over then the logical outcome is to exist as a virtual painter. This is not a bitter rant, but a unique solution that was never available to the vast “school of” or “workshop of” in art history.
Your website is a 21st century repository against the notion of the “undiscovered” artist taking his work to landfill. It is the gallery you could never get into. All that is required is a mental shift. Does the physical object need to exist? Much as Spotify has replaced the CD, which has replaced the vinyl record, will the digital tablet replace the canvas? Hockney started this 10 years ago.
To secure immortality in this brave new world, all you need is a legacy payment system to cover your annual website subscription and your work can orbit the virtual galaxy for future generations to discover. Long after you are gone.
It’s an idea that has genuine appeal to me, mostly for the amusement value.
As dumb as it may sound, this is some of the best advice you can give to a painter. You will often see painters sat in their chair staring at their painting, looking for solutions. Its something I do myself. The problem with this is, the longer you sit around thinking the easier it is to talk yourself out of doing anything.
Its only through the act of doing that solutions are discovered, a great deal of patience may also be required. Anyway, I have heeded my own advice, and the painting is slowly improving.
Landscape. Day 4
I like to compare my paintings to the great masters, it gives me a sense of hope.
Not a long session today. This painting is sailing on a sea of mud and my feeling is that it will emerge very slowly. Its not obvious to me how this will happen. I think it is a painting that will be built with subtle layers and at some point it will give me the direction.
There is hope.
Landscape. Day 3
I wish I was painting like this 30 years ago not because of some deluded idea that ’I could have made it!’ but because there seems such a long way to go!
The positive aspect to this is that I am enthusiastically engaged with something that I think is worthwhile. There has also been a nagging thought in my mind that art rewards hard work.
I will deal with my conscience some other time.
Landscape. Day 2
In life we look for security, stability, routine, the hope we don’t get lost when travelling. All of this gives us some comfort but it can make life seem very dull.
Painting offers an antidote to this. There is no destination. Chance and accident are welcomed. A well formulated plan can be quickly discarded when the painting offers us a better and unforeseen outcome.
In many ways painting is beguiling, it offers us a journey into the unknown, you only need the willingness to follow.
Landscape. Day 1
This painting looks like an unlikely collaboration between Grant Wood and Kenny Scharf. I like this balance between realism and simplification. I would not use the word ‘cartoon’ although some of the shapes in this painting almost have that aspect.
What is interesting is that despite a cartoon like appearance there is a serious attempt to depict space and structure. I find this approach to landscape far more interesting than my earlier more conventional interpretations. I think I would have lost interest very quickly.
Anyway, this painting is finished.
The ploughed field
It’s not every day that I go straight to the studio after breakfast. Normally I can fill an hour with unnecessary and meaningless tasks.
I am finding the chaos and haphazardness of the landscape still finds a subtle balance with the landscape. Even though mans shaping of the landscape looks random it still follows the contours and undulations of the land. That is what I have been trying to work on this morning. I think the underlying structure of the landscape is becoming more apparent.
The ploughed field. Day 4
Apologies for the tabloid styled headline .
The aim of the day was to establish the ploughed field. Not following the delicately scored lines that exist but to create a crude ‘expressionist’ response to the landscape. I wanted the same energy and approach to finding shapes that I have used in the rest of the painting.
I quite like this cartoon like interpretation of ‘ a ploughed field’. It’s almost there in terms of a final state.
This painting appears wildly out of control and I like the appearance of this mad chaos. It does reflect how the landscape has been haphazardly carved up.
The ploughed field. Day 3
Haven’t I covered this subject before? Yes I have.
I allow my critical thoughts to get in the way of just doing the work. And guess what, if you just do the work the painting will improve! It’s such a simple lesson, why do I struggle with it?
It’s a failing that we are all familiar with and I am consciously trying to minimise it.
Anyway, to the painting, it has improved!. I am liking some of the eccentric shapes that are appearing such as the snake of trees in the middle distance. Intriguingly, these shapes exist in the landscape and I want to emphasise this.
The ploughed field. Day 2
I really like these extended elevated views. The way man has shaped the landscape looks quite chaotic and not managed at all. The shapes of the fields and clumps of trees are quite random and curious. They seem to have been constructed by a mad man with a sense of humour. In this painting I am hoping to emphasize this haphazard ‘country planning’. I am liking the painting already, it reminds me of early Miro for some reason.
The ploughed field. Day 1
I may do some very minor adjustments but this painting is finished.
Tapestry, Northumberland.
The painting is no longer a tapestry. The trees have given clarity scale and space to the landscape.
I really like the character of this particular area. I like the way the landscape appears manicured with its little groups of trees. Their shapes suggest random decisions designed to amuse. I may focus on these in a future painting.
This painting is almost finished.
Tapestry, Northumberland. Day 4
The painting is still in a rough state. The aim today was to work on defining the space and structure of the landscape. The acid green has been reduced which I think has improved things a little. My doubts as to whether the painting will remain abstract have been answered. The trees will appear in a subtle way, the painting is so small that it has to be this way.
I think the basic structure of the landscape has been found.
Tapestry, Northumberland. Day 3
This is an unexpected development. At the moment this painting would qualify as an abstract. I had no intention of going in this direction but it already has enough of the elements I am interested in to make me stop and think. I will let the painting guide me as to how it will eventually be finished.
My belief is that the strongest connection between the viewer and the painting is made when the viewer can identify objects within the painting and then understand them against their own idea of ‘reality’. It is that duality between the object and how it is depicted that holds the fascination and there needs to be enough ‘realism’ in the depiction to create this tension.
Only time will tell what these landscapes may look like in the future.
Tapestry, Northumberland. Day 2
Tapestry is the first thing that springs to mind in terms of a title. The landscape looks like a patchwork of random shapes thrown together. If I was an uncompromising artist I would see this painting sized in metres rather than centimetres and the style would be a delicate coming together of Bruegel and Rothko. Painted in a slow contemplative manner, it would be a decorative colour field painting. Maybe one for the future.
Tapestry, Northumberland. Day 1
This painting seems like it has been packed with information and yet it contains only a fraction of what I was looking at. I have tried to simplify the composition so that the rhythms and undulations of the landscape take precedent. For me it works, the essential elements are in place and it makes sense spatially. I think this is the starting point for future paintings. The painting is finished.
Across a valley, Northumberland. Finished.