The Opposite of Tomato: process

Showing posts with label process. Show all posts

Friday, May 03, 2019

The Past Revisited

Something of a deviation from the habitual roster of visual subject matter in this instance, but the resultant painting came from something of a need to return to a past concern via the medium of a specific drawing.

Going back the better part of 30 years - before, indeed, I even embarked upon a programme and process of formal art education that took me from foundation to postgraduate level - I’d been interested in the recording of stone circles, initially inspired by the fact that one such was present and often walked past in the town in which I ‘grew up’, Flint in north Wales. This particular monument had no ancient provenance, as a number in the British Isles do, dating rather from the 1960s when it had been erected to acknowledge the fact of a cultural event (the Welsh National Eisteddfod) being staged locally, but still it became an object of fascination purely in itself and material fact, it’s ‘being there’. Accordingly, I stood and drew and photographed the circle and its individual stones on a number of occasions, into my foundation year - where such preparatory material was developed into at least one painting - and, having discovered the existence of another Gorsedd circle at Bailey Hill in the neighbouring settlement of Mold (curiously the ‘county town’ of Flintshire), which subsequently became the subject of some sketches and a large painting completed in the unintentional ‘gap’ year between foundation and undergraduate courses. Relocating to Manchester to pursue what soon become an abortive initial attempt at the latter, during what transpired to be my first and only term there, there was presented the opportunity to go on a few days’ field trip north to the southern Lake District, being based in Keswick, and, from there, to visit the Castlerigg stone circle, a genuine, bona fide ancient site (as described on the English Heritage website for readers who might wish some background information as to its history), which naturally was appealing given my ‘previous’ with the subject matter.
An on-site sketch duly took place and it has become this record, almost 25 years hence, that forms the basis for the painting (re)presented today, the reconnection with inspired as it has been by an ‘archaeological’ dig through the archive of sketchbooks (recalling its existence as a fact) itself initiated by the recent discovery of another Gorsedd stone circle in Acton Park on the way into Wrexham, but a couple of miles from where is now home (it transpires that north Wales, and indeed the wider country, is dotted with such formations), which has duly been visited and photographed and is consequently on the back-burner as potential grist to the drawing/painting mill. I might add that stone circles disappeared from the artistic horizon after the curtailment of the Manchester enterprise and have featured only to be photographed on a few occasions when revisiting Flint since (blogged here).

So to the painting and the process of its making.

It was decided that the single drawing made in situ at the Castlerigg circle would serve as the point of departure and, essentially, the sole reference: I took no photographs on the occasion of being there and, although there is a multitude of photographic evidence of Castlerigg available online, not one image seemed to capture the scene from the viewpoint I’d assumed to observe and draw. Such an image was sought so that it might support the evidence I’d collected on the day, although photography, of course, that monocular beast, will never (be able to) offer the same binocular visual experience (let alone the multi-sensory one) of being present before the motif, as was the case in this instance. Subjectivity is obviously also a factor, however objective one might intend to be in the recording of such empirical experience, in the act of drawing (whilst looking), thus my ‘memory’ of the experience could be regarded, particularly allowing for a time-lapse of 25 years, as having only a limited reliability.

This being the case, it was taken as a positive that the drawing and nothing more of real substance (save a glance at few photos illustrating a sense of the general environment) would provide the means from which to create the painting, that it would be the physical instantiation of ‘memory’ upon which I’d have to rely in the absence of any other recollection (of which there really was none, specifically, other than a general knowledge of the extreme mutability of the Lake District weather/light conditions and so on that could be gleaned from memory and other drawings made during the field trip).

'Castlerigg Stone Circle, 4pm, 26/10/94'

charcoal, watercolour and pastel on 2 x A3 sheets of paper(landscape)

At first, this seemed daunting - as readers familiar with this blog and my work will know, paintings are habitually made from either close, constant study of an arrangement of still life objects within a defined domestic space, or otherwise from reference to life and familiar, lived experience, supported by drawings (with the occasional photo as supporting evidence or compositional inspiration), as in the ‘woodscapes’ I have periodically painted over the last few years and to which I can refer either as I paint or otherwise pop into as and when required to confirm certain details of form, texture, colour, space, etc, as they are literally beyond the garden fence at home/studio and accessible at all times.

I decided to paint over an existing ‘failed’ canvas (this one), another novelty, using its texture as the first physical layer, and proceeded accordingly, to this end, a painting of a drawing of an empirical experience, the making concrete of a memory of sorts, which might have a certain ‘hauntological’ aspect (?).

'Castlerigg Stone Circle, after a 25 year-old sketch'

oil on canvas/50 x 100cm/April 2019

[detail]

[detail - viewed from left-side angle]

[detail - viewed from right-side angle]

As ever, communication of the physicality of the medium and the means of its application are a primary concern, and landscape, especially featuring such objects as standing stones, seems a most appropriate vehicle to do this, particularly having to contend with the underlying texture of the already painted surface, encouraging the making of lovely buttery marks of oil paint.

This might be a one-off or lead to continued experiments of the kind, either in terms of stone circles as subject matter or old drawings as source material, or indeed both, but first, another still life beckons – although, somehow, there seems something very like a still life, albeit an exterior one, about a stone circle when I look at this painting.

Friday, April 12, 2019

And Then There Were Two...

Following the previous entry, the latest painting to be brought to a conclusion features a different composition of the same subject matter and context, with but two of the collected 'Homepride Fred' figures rather than three and a slightly more 'measured'/geometrical approach applied to the representation of the patterned wallpaper and consideration of the placement of the objects in relation to (the figure to the left might be observed to be 'pinned' at the shoulders within the confines of an aspect of the pattern, for example), all being a bit more 'Uglowian' in conception, perhaps, which returns us to the original image to feature the Freds dating from almost two years ago.

Again, the active observation of the play of natural light upon the surface of the objects, those fleeting, momentary 'flashes' that enliven the whole set-up, describing aspects of their form and nature, is the motivating factor in engaging with such a challenge and the hoped-for result is a convincing pictorial representation of such, a record of the environmental activity, the time spent looking and painting.

'Two Freds and Retro Wallpaper'

oil on canvas/16 x 20"/March - April 2019

[detail]

The finished painting on the easel, in position as observed and painted

During a little light workplace research, hoping to find suitable examples of wallpaper design that might provide grist to the creative mill and extend the project, it was something of a delight to find an example of a ‘Fred’ amongst the pages of a rather fine book:

Thursday, January 24, 2019

Widescreen Version

Today the opposite of tomato is 'Code: Selfish'

Finally, an update of recent painting practice, this example being the latest in the series of still life studies of a selection of the sawn cylinders of silver birch, (re)presented as a panorama suggesting a woodland space rather than the domestic arrangement it in fact is.

The physical support is a length of shelf from a deconstructed unit (which thus has a relationship to the similar horizontal plane on which the objects are composed and actively observed), over which canvas has been stretched.

As is habitual, the application of the paint is intended to make of the painting an object and foreground itself as handmade material fact as it represents other objects in space.

'Silver Birch Still Life #4'

oil on canvas on board/15.5 x 78cm/January 2019

[angled view]

[detail]

Friday, October 19, 2018

Nature Encroaches

Regular readers may recognise that I have long been enamoured of the work of Edmund de Waal and certain of my paintings have reflected the influence of this artist on my own process of thinking and making (some of the ‘white pears’ series make this explicit, for example).

Thus the most recent painting to be brought to a conclusion, (re)presented here, can be said to be haunted by a de Waalian spirit. Another still life, it yet incorporates a significant element from subject matter explored in what essentially constitutes my alternative painting practice, i.e. the world of objects and forms in spaces beyond the domestic realm, in the form of a collection of cylinders of silver birch, between about 12 – 18cm in height, sawn from a length of discarded trunk found in the woods close to home. Such ‘white’ cylindrical objects pay a certain homage to de Waal’s familiar white porcelain pots and are arranged within a shelving unit that in effect resembles the vitrines in which he exhibits such collections of handmade objects.

That’s the background, anyway. What follows is the habitual process of ‘active contemplation’, first through a pencil drawing and subsequently, with slight compositional modifications in the interest of achieving a more harmonious visual balance (the sketch made obvious what wasn’t working that hadn’t occurred to the eye), in oil paint on canvas.

Silver birch still life compositional sketch

graphite on paper/30 x 21cm/30th Sept. 2018

The usual rules apply, of the communication of the physical nature of the objects and ‘tactile’ space and the making of the painting though the materiality of the medium, paint as paint and the painting itself as a discrete object before it resolves itself into a representation of the observed world. Far from being white, of course, the cylinders of silver birch each display shared and their own particular characteristics in terms of subtle earthy colouration (greens, ochres, siennas, umbers), as distinct from the purity of de Waal’s white porcelain objects, and light and shadow describes and differentiates the form of the shelving unit on and in which they stand, but it is to be hoped something of a dialogue is at least suggested with the influential source. Furthermore, by introducing such barely-modified natural objects into the realm of the still life, a dialogue is opened-up between the two genres of painting that effectively constitute my practice and continuing areas of exploration, the woodland, albeit mediated, encroaches into the domestic environment, outside meets inside.

‘Silver Birch Still Life’

oil and graphite on canvas/40″ x 30″ (101cm x 76cm)/October 2018

[detail]

Monday, September 24, 2018

Enmeshed Again...

In the zone after last weekend’s painting session, this Saturday and Sunday I continued the exploration of the subject/objects with an active contemplation of a second example of the recently-acquired pears in foam-mesh protective sleeves. On this occasion, a twist of the inner lining of tissue paper can be observed peeping up through the top aperture.

'Pear in a Jacket #2'

oil on canvas/35 x 25cm/22-23 September 2018

[detail]

Wednesday, September 19, 2018

Autumnal Object

Having brought the summer project to a point not necessarily of conclusion but rather a pause for consideration of how and where it might develop, thoughts (re)turned to one of those subjects that just keeps on recurring.

Pears as objects have been a staple of my drawing and painting practice for over twenty years, since, in fact, I was a second-year Fine Art undergraduate at university. More recently, at various points during the last few years, I’ve been representing them in altered form, ultimately whitewashed and placed within white spaces, exploring their form in terms of tone rather than colour. Further back, early in 2006, coincidentally shortly after I’d launched this blog, I discovered in a local greengrocers what were termed Chinese ‘Ya’ pears which came double-wrapped in firstly white tissue paper and then, as an outer protective coat, in ‘jackets’ of foam mesh cylindrical sleeves which objects imbue the pears with a certain ‘otherness’ one might say.

Blogged, excitedly, at the time here, these jacketed pears have remained somewhere in mind as a vague possibility to be pursued creatively. Five years or so ago, during a weekend in London, a visit to a supermarket in Chinatown resulted in the discovery and purchase of a selection of such objects, a pair of which were explored in but a single watercolour sketch before, for whatever reason, I concentrated my attentions upon the undressed fruit whilst it remained fresh and firm in a subsequent series of sketches.

Remaining dormant again since, I recently felt the aesthetic pull of the foam jackets and searched the studio for what I imagined were the stash I’d kept for such an occasion, alas and frustratingly to discover that they were nowhere to be found when required to respond to the spark of inspiration. A trip to Liverpool last week – primarily to collect a couple of unsold paintings that had been exhibited during the course of the Liverpool Art Fair 2018 (which it was remiss of me to fail to blog, following on from a similar failure to mention other of my work’s almost-concurrent appearance in this year’s North Wales Open at Theatr Clwyd) – afforded the opportunity to locate and purchase a small selection of the jacketed pears and, after a couple of painting sessions, on Sunday and to resolve on Monday, the first visual evidence of a single example of this find is (re)presented below – the very first oil painting of an object of long-harboured desire. The familiar environment of white horizontal and vertical planes is evident, with the object suggested as existing within as subtly as possible.

'Pear in a Jacket'

oil on canvas/35 x 25cm/16-17 September 2018

[detail]

Monday, September 03, 2018

Summer Update

When not sat a desktop PC at work (which commitment coincides with the term-time of the typical UK academic year), I tend not to have any great desire to log in and use a computer, thus blogging about matters cultural and one’s creative practice (as distinct from Instagramming on a mobile device and, of course, actually pursuing one's creative practice) tends to take a back seat, as has been the case since late June.

However, the painting produced thus far over the ‘vacation’ has reached a point where it sort-of demands to be blogged in order to maintain that particular aspect of the process of creative practice and to maintain a currency of presence in cyberspace.

To this end, I now (re)present the seven examples of a body of paintings that have been developed over the course of the last couple of months, which take advantage of the seasonal availability of greater and brighter amounts of natural daylight in which to produce ‘white paintings’ (other project ideas and further developments of bodies of work in progress have accordingly been placed on the back burner until the autumn).

The objects represented are a selection of objects, vessels, moulded in air-drying clay from existing vessels, and display certain wonky characteristics such as finger and thumb marks and imperfect forms resulting from this process of hand-making which seem to coincide with the Japanese aesthetic of ‘wabi-sabi’, hence the titles of the works.

The vessels are composed in subtly changing configurations of relationships in the manner of most artists who work within the genre of still life and are painted in a manner that aims to communicate something of the nature of the fluctuations of natural light as it describes objects in space and the surfaces upon and against which they are arranged.