A CAST OF CHARACTERS

I’ve seen these characters before in previous paintings I have done, I am talking about the trees. I have a problem with trees. I have never liked the indefinite nature of them, the fact that they are poorly defined in terms of their boundaries, how they all seem to merge as one and share the same shade of green. I like a muscular tree that identifies itself as an individual, my style is more Michelangelo than Monet and so that is how I paint them. The more I take this idiosyncratic approach the more I like what I see, and the more I stress the differences between them, the more it takes on a human element? I look at this painting and I see a big crowd of figures, all individuals . This rendition of them is slightly mad, but it seems to capture an individual spirit or identity and if you really look at trees you will see all sorts of fantastical shapes and relationships. I may be going down an odd route, but it is an interesting one. Only got a couple of hours done today due to domestic commitments but painting has improved.

Road through the countryside. Day 6

ALICE IN WONDERLAND

Two elements that are becoming increasingly important in my painting are curiosity and a willingness to follow the rabbit down the rabbit hole. They are the same thing really. What this means in reality is sometimes I don’t know where the painting is going, and surely this is always the situation any painter would want? If you are spending so much of your time on your art then don’t you want to go on a journey of surprises and wonder?. It seems to me that my painting is still going through significant change and I have a totally open mind as to where that is.

Road through the countryside. Day 5

A HELPING HAND?

Or divine intervention. If its the latter I would be asking for a bit more, maybe get me up to the level of Fra Angelico or Titian, only if for a day. I say this because my aim was to get rid of all the white ground so I was working with a certain urgency. At the end of the day I had a proper look at the painting and was really surprised to see what I thought were crudely painted areas actually could stand as they are. I don’t think the painting is finished, I think it can be improved but happy with the progress.

Road through the countryside. Day 4

HEAD FOR SHELTER

Tornado coming through Northumberland? the weight of the clouds are almost crushing the horizon line. I like the way the strong outline of the cloud on the left is almost touching ground and the contrast between the dark bluish purple tone and the brighter sky and field below. This is a summers day that is full of weather and a painters dream, as long as you are not going plein air. This composition has everything and yet it is a fairly mundane subject, ‘ road through the countryside’, this is what happens when you really stop and look at the landscape, it is actually packed with life and extraordinary sights. I like the way this painting is going. I do have another composition in mind for my next painting, again involving a road, that I have been thinking about for a long time.

Road through the countryside. Day 3

BACK ON COURSE

The previous painting felt like a bit of a diversion, in my mind it is a successful painting but I didn’t like the process of making it. It felt like I was forcing an idea onto the painting rather than it being a conversation between me and it. This new painting feels like a more natural process, I try something, sometimes it works, sometimes it needs modifying but the painting is telling me what it needs and it feels like a real learning process. Its going well. Really strange situation with the sky of yesterday, it almost photographed entirely in monochrome? I have been repainting some areas of the sky today and will continue doing that but overall it wont change a great deal.

Road through the countryside. Day 2

A1 heading north

I have always liked the way this section of road suddenly climbs skywards and cuts across the horizon line. The road shoots through the trees and then just as quickly disappears. This is countered by the equally dramatic movement of the hill as it dives right to left. Throw in a dramatic sky and you have a Soutine transported from the south of France to equally glamorous environs of Northumberland, namely the A1. I hadn’t realised I have painted the sky almost monochrome, but it has a good starting point to work with.

Road through the countryside. Day 1

CURIOSITY SATISFIED

The idea was to trace the light effects acting like fingers or veins across the landscape. I have given this quite a graphic interpretation, possibly more than I had initially intended but I wanted to see what was possible if I focussed on this exclusively. It is probably not as balanced with the existing landscape as I would have liked but has still lead to some interesting results that I want to retain going forward. I still want to explore this idea further but maybe wind it back a bit and try and integrate it a bit more subtly into my current painting style. The picture is finished.

Cloudburst over Lorbottle

A FICTITIOUS RENDERING

I would not recommend anyone uses my paintings for the purposes of navigation. You could only conclude you are either lost or on too much medication. I am at the outer limits of artistic license if I am still calling myself a figurative painter. As odd as it may seem the painting is going in the direction that I want it to go. I don’t know what interpretation I am using, Romantic, Gothic, but in my mind the landscape has a mysterious internal life and that is what I am trying to convey. The sky looks like a painting of the planets, but it somehow all fits together. Still a bit more to do.

Cloudburst over Lorbottle. Day 6

IS IT THE SAME PAINTING?

The first thing I realized when I sat in front of the painting today was that I had only got as far as laying down the foundations. The second thing I realized was that the photo was only going to take me halfway to making the painting I wanted to make. Today was make or break time, if I left the painting in its current state it would end up in a thixotropic graveyard. This idea that the photos are only a launchpad is becoming more apparent. I have got to develop a way of taking them in the direction I want them to go, and I think so far, with this painting it is successful. I can now see where it still needs pushing. Sorted out the photography problems with the sky, now looks a lot better.

Cloudburst over Lorbottle. Day 5

ACCUMULATED CORRECTIONS

I know what I want from this painting, but achieving it is another thing. What I am trying to capture is not the easy division of fields but the light moving across the underlying structure of the landscape. This is much more subtle and I have spent the afternoon staring at my photo for information that simply isn’t there! I have the image of this landscape in my mind as if Eric Ravilious had painted it. His graphic style is quite illustrative but I like his high key colour palette and the vitality of his mark making. The landscape that I want is slowly emerging and what I like about its particular quality is precisely that sense of a slow accumulation of colour shifts.

Cloudburst over Lorbottle. Day 4

GOD WALKS THROUGH MY PAINTINGS

Not yet, maybe one of his sheep. I was wondering why I always go for the expansive view. I think for the first time with this painting I am starting to understand why. It gives me the scope to paint the drama of light across the landscape. Nothing new in that, but this time it is really the focus of the painting. This painting has given me an insight into what might be possible. It also suggests I should be looking more at this subject.

Cloudburst over Lorbottle. Day 3

TOP DOWN

I know Lucian Freud spent a period of time building his pictures like a mosaic, first the eye, then the nose, all would be finished before moving on to the next bit. I can understand the benefits of such an approach but it wouldn’t work for me. I am a normal person, Freud wasn’t. My rendering of this scene looks exaggerated, I would like to call it enhanced. I think I am applying a more simplified graphic style in this painting, but I don’t want to create an abstract collaged effect. I like the way this painting is progressing and the emphasis on dramatic lighting is something I have not really considered before, but I would like to explore it more. I am still having issues with a reflective sky when photographing, must find a solution for this.

Cloudburst over Lorbottle. Day 2

PENTIMENTI

This was a very complicated picture to draw out. Unhelpfully the farmers did not follow the natural underlying contours of the land when they laid out their fields. The placement of them almost disguises and distorts the rhythms of the landscape but when you look across the whole area you can see the shape of the skeleton. On the subject of pentimenti, it is the idiosyncratic shapes of the fields that give this landscape a particular character. I am trying to capture the precise nature of these shapes rather than come to a poorly observed approximation.

Cloudburst over Lorbottle Day 1

A TIPPING POINT

I have done only 6 paintings that I have no reservations about and 5 of those are my last 5. That is not to say I understand everything that I am doing. Some of them contain all manner of curiosities in terms of their shapes and colour, many not intentional. But there is a life, a vitality and an intensity to them that I find compelling. I allow them to stand uncorrected, a lot of that has to do with my style of painting and influences. The last couple of years being Edward Burra and Paul Nash, then Soutine and Bacon, all troubled painters with a leaning towards the surreal. Given this influence I am intrigued to see where my painting is going. The painting is finished.

Harbottle

WHY DID I CHOOSE PAINTING?

This question arose after tackling what I thought would be a difficult task, building a wall with randomly shaped stones, reasonably successfully I thought. Why didn’t I choose the piano? or maybe a stone mason, with confidence still brimming. Surely an easier pursuit, more satisfying, a much more obvious understanding of what is right or wrong? Would I have been happier?, I could master the art of stone wall building, the piano is more difficult but there is a mathematical technique that can be learnt. I am stuck with painting. It is satisfying, most of the time, (if I forget the first 10 years), I enjoy it, but I always feel why can’t I just do better?

Harbottle. Day 5

SLOW AND FOCUSED

The first one I am very good at, the second I struggle with sometimes. There is an observed intensity that I like in the right mid ground of the picture. I want to take this across the rest of the picture. Not so long ago I would have called this illustration and it would have troubled me. Now I look at it and it intrigues me. Mostly because I don’t know where it is leading me. Only one way to find out. In my college days style used to be a theme that I spent too much time worrying about, mostly because many of us were practicing a ‘house style’ that seemed fashionable. What I am finding now is that any style can succeed, it just needs to be considered and developed.

Harbottle. Day 4

FOR A SUBLIME AFTERNOON

I would recommend Chopins’ Nocturnes and a painting that is going well. Is it so ridiculous that the world and my mood is so dependent on my painting going well?, yes, because it matters. Its quite comforting to know that that is all I need for the world to seem like a better place. Up until my previous, now deleted painting, there was a consistent upward trajectory. To infinity and beyond?, maybe, with a few dips along the way. This painting is going well and for some reason I keep thinking about Paul Nash. I like his simplification of the landscape subject, although I think his paintings are quite sophisticated in their reduced means.

Harbottle. Day 3

A PICTURE SHOULD BE MIRACULOUS

I am stealing a quote from Mark Rothko and I wholeheartedly agree with his conviction. It also helps if you believe your subject is miraculous. When I am out in the landscape in Northumberland my thought is how could it not be. I want to present an image that has a sense of wonder but its knowing how far to push it. A case in point is this sky in my current painting, the photo alludes to these shapes and contrasts but I have exaggerated the effect, my feeling is its just the right side of being plausible (should I really care?). What I am trying to do is understand the complexities of how a sky is formed so I can stretch the truth. No one can say I lack ambition!

Harbottle. Day 2

COMPOSITION IS EVERYTHING

That’s my main learning from my ‘expired’ painting. Despite decades of practice I obviously hadn’t realized this until February 2024. I know I’m a slow learner but that is embarrassing. However, I am talking about a particular type of composition. I have always liked the slightly chaotic, unstable, expressionistic interpretation of the landscape, hence why I favour Soutine to Cezanne. I think the static composition takes the life out of a landscape, and when I see the landscape in Northumberland it is never still. I suppose if I was living in Holland I would go mad like Van Gogh and move to France. Anyway, back on familiar ground, I do not have any doubts about this new painting.

Harbottle. Day 1

NO TECHNICAL ISSUES HERE

At least not of the digital type. I had a friend query if there were some technical issues with the website as all the February postings had disappeared. The only technical issues in February were of a painterly nature, mostly compositional ones. Despite labouring on the painting I knew the end result was only going to be disappointing. The painting is already deceased, lying under a layer of Thixotropic primer. I will resume again this week with a new painting after lessons learned. The reason for this post is I really do appreciate everyone who logs in to see my ‘progress’, it still amazes me that anyone would be interested. This website acts as a visual diary for me with the underlying premise being one of continual improvement so any painting that falls short of this ideal will suffer a similar digital execution.