ARTISTS TALKING

# 8 [24 March 2010]

Wouldn't it be amazing to paint like Titian? I recently saw in the Louvre his portrait of a young boy, 'Ranuccio Farnese' (normally in the National Gallery of Art, Washington). The way Titian can use paint to be skin, to be fabric, to be metal... To say it's clever imitation misses the point, for me. It's more than that. My reaction to paint is a bodily thing, a felt thing, I can't quite explain it. Although I love looking at really good photographs, I don't get that kinaesthetic reaction to them that I get when I look at this painting.

# 7 [23 March 2010]

I am surprised how upset I am.  I submitted work for an open submission exhibition (the Eastern Open, in this case) and yet again it was rejected. I’m so used to this, and I’m so used to trying not to mind, but it’s actually quite hard sometimes, particularly coming on the heels of so many rejections just recently. They should teach this module at art college: Toughness of Skin, And How to Keep on Not Being Bitter.

It’s expensive to enter these things, and time-consuming. My friend Robert says I’m crazy to even bother: “If you want to throw your money away, why don’t you do the lottery? Think how many tickets you could have bought...”  Robert’s away this week in New York, where the first of his two solo shows there opens in Lower Manhattan. He tells me that once, when he needed some money, he saw that the local big town was holding an open competition for paintings of the town centre. The winning painting would be purchased for a significant sum. Robert worked hard on his painting, did it really well, and submitted it. The person to whom he handed it over was bowled over by the painting, and said they thought it was bound to win.  So Robert was really surprised when it was rejected straight away, and not even hung. He went along to see the show, thinking that the standard must have been impressively high: but it was full of amateur paintings. The winning piece was nondescript and poorly executed. Presumably, if Robert’s painting had been shown, it would have been an obvious choice for winner, and the judges already had someone else earmarked to win.

Now, I’m not saying this applies in the case of the Eastern Open – I’m sure the standard must be genuinely high, and it’s curated by people who know a lot about art. But - I think the paintings I submitted are strong. Ah well. I did at least get a painting into the Royal West of England Academy this week. I kind of feel a bit silly about that, since the total cost of entering 3 works, plus taking them to London and back, plus carrier’s fees between London and Bristol, comes to around £100. What was I thinking? If the painting sells, or wins something, or leads to a show somewhere, all well and good, but if not, I’m a bit of a mug...

# 6 [21 March 2010]

I set up a painters' group last year; we meet every six weeks or so, taking turns to meet in someone's studio and look at/discuss their recent work. This  morning we found ourselves once again turning someone's canvases upside down... It's very transformative, and often brings out a whole new aspect to a painting. It's something I do a lot in the studio by myself, too, part-way through a piece of work.

So - my main piece of advice to a painter who feels stuck: turn it upside down!

# 5 [19 March 2010]

In the studio I worked on Alice’s Adventures again. Thinking about how we cope with change, of the body and of the psyche. Coping with things changing around us, with unpredictability and with bewildering circumstances. How does Alice keep a calm inner strength, and a voice, when all this is going on?

 I read a bit, I draw a bit. I’m struggling a bit with the acrylics, but I love being able to combine them with pastel, ink and conte. The studio is rapidly filling up with chalk and charcoal dust, and ink splatters on the walls and floor. I don’t seem to make quite as much mess with oil paints...

# 4 [18 March 2010]

To Ipswich School today, with its fantastic Art department, to work on a portrait of my friend Claudia Bose, who’s currently their artist-in-residence. Claudia has generously been sitting for me once a week for 4 weeks, ever since I mentioned to her that I’d like to have another go at painting someone from life. Initially we were doing the portrait in her studio, but then we thought that the Ipswich School students could get another interesting take on artistic practice by watching and dialoguing with us about the work in progress. Normally, none of my studio work is ever from life, or even from sketches: the process depends on a particular intense energy between myself and the materials. But it’s always interesting to see what happens in a different setting, working in a different way. Painting a friend, and one who is herself an artist, is freeing: there’s no pressure to please the sitter as there might be in a commission situation. We were joined part of the time by a few students who worked alongside us. It’s quite nice to blur the boundary between making art and teaching, sometimes. I didn’t take a photo, so can’t show you the work in progress today – maybe next week. I’ll show one of Claudia’s recent paintings instead. See more at www.claudiaboese.info.

# 3 [15 March 2010]

Lately I’ve been re-reading ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’, because it’s sometimes labelled ‘the first great Surrealist novel’ ... and I’m curious (and curiouser) to see what might happen if I were to keep a theme at the back of my mind when working. I’m not used to thinking/working in terms of ‘projects’ – I’ve always resisted defining – or is it structuring – my work in this way. I’m going to try taking ‘Alice’ as a loose theme for a while, and see what happens.

I’ve started by working on very large sheets of paper. Ink, conte, acrylic, graphite. I know I really don’t want this work to be illustrative. But why? What does ‘illustrative’ actually mean, for me, and why don’t I want it at the moment? I would love to listen to people who are more articulate than me having a discussion about this. Perhaps I should start a new thread on the artists talking forums. It might help me clarify my thoughts, and perhaps change my mind!

# 2 [12 March 2010]

After 20 years of persistently painting I finally feel more rooted, and can hear and dialogue with other people's views whilst a piece of work is still in progress; and also I'm finding myself increasingly open to new, surprising ways within myself of looking at/thinking about painting.

I showed work in progress to some fellow painters recently. As usual, there were around fifteen unfinished canvases in the studio. Until now I've been very wary of showing and discussing unfinished work with anyone (even my family): I think I needed to search so hard inside myself for the thread that leads the way in the process of making a painting, and this thread was very, very delicate and too liable to be blown away or off-course by someone else's views. But now I find myself more able to hear and respond to the thoughtful, inventive, and invigoratingly challenging reactions of my peers.

# 1 [10 March 2010]

I use Flake White - white lead - a poison, hard to obtain and horrifying to use. It’s often a battle with white. Thick white, a clumsy doorman not letting us pass. Or white when it crushes and deadens and obliterates and makes me despair that all delicacy is lost. White a sullen spoiler, muddying the colours and messing up their clarity and their strength. All of those whites are needed at times. Then there’s thin white, moving and swirling, each brushmark a possibility. White over white, inviting us to ponder the space between the two (how can this space be infinite, yet non-existent?). White when it floats and sings breathily of soft sweet puffs, gentle vaporous wisps. Warm fat white sitting plump on top of the canvas, creating a stepping-stone between the viewer and the deeper, sinking, more troubling layers of paint. White like a capable nurse, making things clean and decisive. 

I wrote the above in November and I was thinking about it today in the studio, as I threw white paint (this time acrylic) over much-drawn-on paper.