ARTISTS TALKING

# 1 [23 September 2009]

We were walking along the costal path as the sun was setting behind us and the moon was already up in front of us reflecting on the shallow waters of the mud flats. Then a low cloud which the kids thought looked like a crocodile drifted over and swallowed it up.  At such time the world around seems to bathe your soul in its beauty and wonder. So how do I respond to this in my art?

I feel like I am starting from the beginning again, exploring different ideas and media.

In this blog I want to look at various subjects such as:-

How to use my sketches and photographs, the mythic quality’s of landscape and how my environment work in computer games influences what I do in my painting.

# 2 [28 September 2009]

Sketches and photographs’, does the truth (not truth more what I want to say) lie between them or somewhere else completely.

Why am I looking at this again shouldn’t I have it worked out by now. I think in the past I would have taken a snap developed it and just used it as reference how it was. Now I take many snaps download them and bring them into Photoshop. There I can manipulate them, compose, blend, and draw into them. I can also scan in the sketches and do the same then bring the whole lot together and rework. I recently made a drawing based on a photo then overlaid it back onto the photo. My partner who is also a computer games artist, took a look and said oh that’s cool which filter is that...it was the me filter, the edges blur but it’s always the me filter. Is manipulating images in Photoshop very different from manipulating paint on canvas?

I sometimes wonder if the reference then becomes the work itself, or just remains a study for some final work.

# 3 [29 September 2009]

Landscape and myth, the story that tries to explain. This subject is board and something which I cannot separate out when trying to respond to an environment. The moon and the crocodile brought this home to me. It was there with us that night, new and in the moment, but the sight and feelings it evoked were ancient and forever and global.

I feel a thread pulling my past and present together. This echoes ideas I played with for my degree work and dissertation all those years ago.

I have just come back from Snowdonia where I spent the weekend on a yoga retreat. The surrounding landscape was quite stunning; again I found time to gather some sketches and photos. This time there was also plenty of time just to be in the landscape. I am worried to say I am going to do this or that, I am playing with the images but in truth I don’t know what I am going to do. I did have some ideas but I can’t seem to quite get hold of it. I think I just need to get messy and experiment.

# 4 [16 October 2009]

I sat in my studio space last night....stopped, but time is precious do something! I used some old paint left over from a monoprint I had done in the afternoon and slapped it on a canvas that I may know what I am doing with...

I have started working on some monoprints from the reference I have. My thinking is that I can experiment a bit more with smaller works, the medium will keep me quite loose and stop me getting hung up on the detail before I know what it is I am trying to get at. Another reason for this is its messy painterly and I had forgotten quite how much I love working this way. I think I will continue to play with some of these images and see where it takes me. I already feel like I am loosening up. I am also interested in trying to portray the viewer (me) in some way...maybe a toe or an elbow or maybe this belongs to another project I have on the back burner.

# 5 [27 October 2009]

I am continuing to paint on glass for monoprinting. I like the quick build up of wet paint and the stickiness the printing medium gives it. I seem to have a confidence and a directness that I am loosing when I move over to larger canvases. I am giving them a heavy ground to reduce the absorbency, although I am thinking of getting some wood or gesso panels to try, maybe a bigger brush a different painting medium. Oh I love to play with paint! So what of the subject, I often feel it is more about the seductive qualities of the paint but I want (think I want) my marks to describe something, water, sand, sky, lichen, rock, light, mood, feelings. I can’t quite believe I have got to this point and feel like I am starting out brand new. Is it the beginning of something or am I having some sort of mid life crisis. I feel like what I am trying to do is so close I could just reach out and touch it. Then the paintings would flow out of me like water from a broken dam. Think I better shush and go get that big brush.

# 6 [27 November 2009]

I have been trying to finish some paintings that I have on the go I want to push them as far as I can, to that golden point just before I kill them. I have no idea where that is at the moment, I keep falling through the floor, it’s a computer game thing but pretty much how everything is going this week!

 I am finding the monoprinting is helping a great deal when I move over to canvas I can hold some of the way I handle the paint on the glass. Things are bump along; I work as much as I can but Birthday and Christmas prep, domestic crisis and a bad back are trying to stop me. I shut my eyes and see a brush stroke; I sometimes think painting occupies my thoughts more than it should.

I have also been getting a bit of a bio together for next year’s East Cheshire Art Fair it’s a big biannual event and if it’s anything like last years it should be fab. I have trouble writing things, I am dyslexic so even with spell-check these things take me longer. I have little confidence writing which does make me wonder why I blog.

# 7 [11 December 2009]

Last week I felt compelled to do something I do about once every 10 years or so I made a self portrait. There is an idea rumbling on in my sketch book to do with fragmentation and self image and this was a kind of beginning/exercise to get into the ideas and see what came out of a traditional-ish self portrait. I have been monoprinting a lot so I did it as a monoprint. The result disturbed me I was having a bad week anyway. When my partner saw it he looked at me suspiciously and said what made you do that. Good question I thought. The fact it was a print made it disturbing, with a painting I would have gone back in corrected the fact that the eyes are doing different things tidied it up tried to make it better or just painted over it. I painted the plate and choose the point to stop and make the print; I don’t like to retouch my mono prints so that was that. Also because it was painted from the mirror then mirrored back in the print it’s a view of self I am not used to. It may or may not have palace in the work I am hoping to do but I wonder if the fact it disturbed me so much made it successful on some level.

The mono print made me think about how I wanted to be seen. I like a lot of people hate to have my photo taken but I found one I quite liked and played with it against the print. In the photo I was happy I had just been sketching and the rain had come and washed it all away. Although the sketch was lost it had been one of those precious moment s of joy and connection. That was how I wanted to be seen.

I include an image this is likely to be the only place it’s ever seen!

# 8 [17 December 2009]

Aliens and Knitting

I went out for a couple of drinks last night and went to bed late, pondering in the darkness the three (work in progress) painting I had hung on the wall downstairs to evaluate, some promise but all falling short of the mark. That crocodile that other thing I am after, the words to say it, that expression, response. I imagined it bursting out of my chest like the alien in the film.

This morning with the school holidays starting tomorrow family coming for Christmas etc, I am thinking more practically about how to keep some work going over the next couple of weeks. I am planning on taking the knitting approach. When I was young I remember my mum always sitting in the evenings with some knitting or sewing on her lap. So I will do the same with some small lino cuts I have been planning. I just need to get the images drawn out onto the blocks and I can whittle away tray on lap with the family, tv on, glass of wine. I have found in the past working this way even if I only get 10 mins here and there work gets done.

I just hope my alien doesn’t burst out all over the living room and make mess on Christmas day, not that anyone would probably notice!

# 9 [7 January 2010]

Itching to get going and a little frustrated by the snow, the school has been closed and the not getting into work didn’t bother me as much as the not getting into my studio. Yesterday however my partner took the kids sledging and gave me a couple of hours up there. I managed to take a proof print off the lino I had been cutting but it needs more work (didn’t get as much cutting as I had hoped to but hey ho that’s Christmas).

So I decided to do a monotype I had been planning. At last some satisfaction messy painty, colour, summer colours!. I was having fun but I over ran, the family came back and I lost my flow a little pleading with my 4 year old that he could watch but please don’t touch.....he just couldn’t help it. I cleaned him up and managed to finish my print I think I was quite pleased with it...so a good start.

# 10 [22 January 2010]

FOUND THINGS

I found and image the other day it was just a bit of pavement near the kid’s school, broken and mended and worn. The soft pale greys contrasting beautifully with the red of the left over grit. It got me thinking about the images I use, about what gets me going and  how I am more about trying to present what I have found than actually making the images myself. It also made me think of the girl who won the school of Saatchi programme and some of the conversations that were going on at that time amongst family and friends, about it not being “real art” because she just found it. Perhaps then the art is in the finding of the images, or maybe I am not a real artist ether;) I just wish I didn’t find the presenting them such a struggle sometimes. Mind you at other times I find the process a sheer joy even if the results don’t always hit the mark.

I am going back to that bit of pavement this weekend weather permitting with my camera.