Familiar Ground

Following the short interlude of the most recent pair of paintings (those based on the vintage Pifco electric hair trimmers packaging), we return to the familiar ground of the ongoing compositional exploration of selections from the stock of sawn cylinders of silver birch – again looking to the work of Edmund de Waal for a little inspiration – and the ‘homely’ environment of the still life.

The particular objects selected on this occasion were from a batch not previously utilised and contemplated, being a little slimmer and in some cases shorter than those used up until now, thus more have been accommodated within the relatively compact dimensions of the 20″ x 16″ canvas, which represents a more-or-less life-sized arrangement of shelves and objects.

Again, the in the observation and translation of the scene, the materiality of the medium and the manner of its manual application is of equal importance in the resolution of the picture-as-object, depicting objects in space (and here, these objects and their visual and physical qualities are rather user-friendly, it might be said)- as with Ivon Hitchens, the intention is that “the tree is paint and the paint is tree”.

'Silver Birch Still Life #5'

oil on canvas/20" x 16"/February 2019

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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

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Autumn Update

Having finally brought a painting of a third configuration of the sawn cylinders of silver birch on the shelving unit to some form of resolution this very morning and also managed to photograph both it and its as-yet unrecorded predecessor in the dim late-November day’light’, here then are presented the most recent pair of fruits of the studio practice.

The familiar concerns are in evidence, first and foremost that dialogue between the representation of objects and the painting as object, the material fact of the paint itself as applied to the surface, the communication of the act of looking intently and transcribing the results to be presented in physical form. The objects under contemplation are themselves rich in detail and the challenge becomes to capture something of this individually and collectively as well as a more universal ‘thingness’.

'Silver Birch Still Life #2'

oil and graphite on canvas/16 x 20"/November 2018

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'Silver Birch Still Life #3'

oil and graphite on canvas/16 x 20"/November 2018

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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

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Returning to the Woods

Following the recent immersion in the photorealist portrait project, the Christmas recess has encouraged a return to thoughts of engaging with the local woodland and representations of the experience of being amidst that was providing the grist to the creative mill at this time last year and indeed continued into the Spring.

These considerations turned to active contemplation, with brushes being taken up and applied to a canvas that had originally been composed and underpainted last June, becoming a painting featuring as its image-content a mossily-floored copse of silver birches, indigenous trees that feature sporadically around the peripheries of the larger areas of commercially-planted pines and larches that still, after extensive culling early last year, form the bulk of the woodland.

On Saturday, some form of resolution of the canvas was arrived-at, an image of the resulting object, on the easel, pictured below.

‘Woodscape #8: Silver Birches’

oil on canvas/50 x 100cm/January 2018 (begun June 2017)

Previous rules apply, with the intention of achieving a painterly surface, a physical record, a ‘tactile space’ analogous to the empirical experience of being present in the woodland with its profusion tending to over-abundance of visual and other sensory information. Whilst keen to emphasise the texture of the support and medium, this was reined-back somewhat from the previous explorations, feeling them perhaps to have had a bit too much paint thrown at them for its own sake, resulting in a certain clagginess, hopefully allowing this canvas to breathe a little more. At the same time, the painting process was freed from the rigid horizontal/vertical brushwork of the previous attempts, led by the strict verticality of the subject matter of the pine trunks, which in retrospect seem a little too obvious. The nature of the silver birch bark lends itself to a more horizontal approach and this in turn helps achieve a more ‘overall’ surface. As ever, whilst trying to plot a path at least some way in to represented spatial depth, the application of the paint is intended to return the spectator to the immediate picture plane at any given moment, as might be appreciated from the details below.

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