What We Did On Our Holidays

Today the opposite of tomato is more or less a wide slice of the action.

Beginning with a continuation of the ‘Spectral Stone Circles’ and featuring numbers 2 to 5 in that particular series, which, following the initial snowswept example, has taken a turn into misty environments that are best described as being not necessarily invented or generic but, rather, based on and adapted from observation of or sketches (sometimes historical) of actual locations, for example a local woodland. The circles themselves are composed of stone chippings approximately 8 - 10cm in height, collected on various perambulations, chosen for efficacy and arranged in circular form on the back lawn at home and photographed/sketched in situ, thus being both invented and real as, in effect, are the resulting paintings. Small in scale (all being 12” x 16”), the surfaces are all considerably more thinly painted than had become the norm with previous landscape/’woodscape’ subject matter although hopefully retain certain physical attributes that establish them as paintings.

'Spectral Stone Circle #2'

oil on canvas/16 x 12"/June 2019

'Spectral Stone Circle #3'

oil on canvas/16 x 12"/July 2019

'Spectral Stone Circle #4'

oil on canvas/16 x 12"/July 2019

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'Spectral Stone Circle #5'

oil on canvas/16 x 12"/July 2019

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The next painting continues with the ‘invented’ stone circle theme but, following a short break in the Shropshire countryside, departs from the ‘spectral’ and instead presents something that might be said to tend towards the picturesque, in keeping with the bucolic setting, which is in fact a view of the approximately 15 miles-distant Wrekin from an empty field in the Pulverbatch area, sketched on the spot which then provided suitable reference for the painting to proceed once back in the studio at home.

'Imaginary Stone Circle: a Field in Shropshire'

oil on canvas10016 x 75cm/August 2019

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As summer began to dwindle, I then had the notion to begin a nostalgic project based on subject matter familiar from a 1970s British childhood, intended to encompass anything that might be redolent of the period, beginning with a couple of objects that are further grist to the Uglowian mill in providing different materials and surfaces to represent in the individual forms of a carved wooden antelope and one of the Homepride ‘Fred’ flour-grader figures that have made numerous appearances in paintings already this year. These again are small-format works with the objects being represented at more-or-less life size.

'Seventies Project 1: Wooden Antelope'

oil on canvas/35 x 25cm/August 2019

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'Seventies Project 2: Homepride Fred'

oil on canvas/35 x 25cm/August 2019

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Return of the Crucial Three

Returning to the subject matter of the ‘Homepride Fred-the flour-grader’ compositions, this one again featuring an arrangement of all three of the iconic figures in the collection, arranged against a ground of a hand-drawn-and-painted approximation of a Dekoplus fabric design of 1960s vintage that might be said to make a nod toward the similar device of the representation of bold wallpaper patterns employed by Patrick Caulfield as an element of the complex visual language of his paintings: the ghost of Euan Uglow always haunts the painting of the ‘Freds’, of course.

As always, the play of natural light over the plastic surfaces of the objects and the manner in which fleeting little ‘pings’ of reflected colour occur, with the challenge of recording them, is a constant delight in the process and reason enough to continue mining this particular seam of pictorial interest.  Additionally, a little light research has unearthed the discovery that the Homepride ‘Fred’ character – advertising icon to-be – was ‘born’, being the idea of Bobs Geers and Gross, in 1964, the very year of my own birth, so that feels like another connection, however tenuous and arbitrary.

‘Three Homepride Freds and Dekoplus Design’

oil and graphite on canvas/16″ x 20″/April 2019

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The finished painting on the easel in front of the composition,

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Revisiting Old Friends

'Three Freds and Retro Wallpaper'

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

Returning to previous-visited subject/object-matter in the form of the Homepride ‘Fred’ plastic figures (please see here), this time incorporating a third and more recently-acquired member of the team, its facial features more weather-worn and thus offering a more ambiguous expression than the other broadly-smiling pair.

The objects were actively observed as placed upon a horizontal shelf against a backdrop of boldly-patterned wallpaper of recent vintage referencing a Sixties-Seventies’ design trope.

The use of both the ‘Freds’ and the patterned ground are influenced by Euan Uglow, a frequent visitor to these parts, of course, encouraging a ‘measured’ approach to proceedings, in the interest of a convincing verité up to a certain point at the same time as an ‘all-over’ approach to the picture surface, with a degree of licence taken in the pursuit of creating a picture in its own right, the wallpaper offering the opportunity to represent a painterly equivalent to itself.

The light-reflective surfaces of the plastic figures, each subtly or a little more obviously different from the others, as ever present the opportunity of responding to and recording any fleeting moments as observed under the mercurial conditions of natural daylight, and engaging specifically with that Uglowian challenge of depicting (the appearance of) plastic, within the general concern of representing form.

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The finished painting on the easel in front of the composition, as painted

Blue Sunday

'Subbuteo Footballer #3'

oil on canvas/40cm x 30cm/May 2018

Continuing the current theme and series of small paintings, this most recent one, brought to a resolution yesterday afternoon after a substantial session on Saturday, depicts another of the recently-acquired late-1980s' vintage Subbuteo 'lightweight' football (soccer) player figures, enlarged on the canvas to around x 10 scale, this one being from the 'blue' team in the boxed set, opposing the 'reds'.

Again, part of the challenge involves the 'Uglowian' representation of different types of plastic (the cup of the base into which the figure is fixed being of a particularly 'polished', highly-reflective-surfaced type not unlike a ceramic glaze), some of which has, obviously, a hand-painted finish applied to it, thus opening-up a dialogue between two forms of hand-painted object in the figure and the painting itself.

Hand-Painted Figure

‘Subbuteo Footballer’
oil on canvas/40 x 30cm/May 2018

Following-on from the previous pair of entries and paintings, this latest effort on the easel, considered now to be at a point of resolution, depicts, via the painterly process, one of the miniature football player figures from a recently-acquired vintage ‘Subbuteo’team (the upscaling is about x10).

Contrary to the identifier scrawled upon the box by a previous owner (a name to which we are unable to subscribe in these parts), the thinking here is that the presence of the black-clad goalkeeper figure (surely inspired by the style preference of the legendary Lev Yashin) suggests, rather, that the team is intended to represent the Soviet Union circa early-1960s, a more palatable and indeed exotic and Europhilic, prospect. Nostalgia, naturally, pervades such an object containing a collection of objects, the ghosts of both one’s own and another’s (or others’) childhood making their presence felt – this is precisely the vintage of such toys, that have undergone various transitions since, that I was familiar with in the mid-1970s, the things to be collected and enjoyed immediately prior to developing a usurping passion in recorded music with an immersion in the contemporary post-punk sound (the two subsequently being brought together in the form of The Undertones‘ ‘My Perfect Cousin’ single and its accompanying artwork).

To return to the painting, as before there’s a little dialogue between the (quite roughly) ‘hand-painted’ nature of subject/object* and the painting itself and also a little something of that challenge of Euan Uglow‘s in representing the surface quality of plastic (as in the Homepride ‘Fred the flour-grader’ figure Uglow painted, followed suit by myself, in conversation with, last summer), more than one of which are present here – the base, its cup, is of a high-gloss nature that suggests nothing so much as a ceramic glaze, something to which we are no strangers here at TOoT and indeed have done battle with, again, to unsatisfactory effect, once again, quite recently (it occurs that this painting is, in effect, the familiar bowl-form – most often glazed or otherwise glass itself, highly reflective, with which I have been engaged on-and-off since undergraduate studies – with a vertical form filling and emerging from it!).

* A favourite pastime was to repaint the team sets one acquired to one’s own specifications, to ‘perfectionistically’ improve upon the quality-as-purchased, to take account of changing fashions/styles or otherwise individualise particular players.

Three Pears

‘Three Pears with Geometric Shape’  oil on canvas/20″ x 16″

On a recent grocery shop, Anna picked up this trio of pears and then, once home, deposited them on a shelf in the conservatory/studio. A quick reorganisation and they were in place and ready to be actively contemplated and the findings represented on canvas. A brief ray of sunlight observed one morning before the day’s painting process began suggested the geometrical shape thus projected might be incorporated into the composition and thus it came to pass, as an additional element to the familiar and habitual.

As ever, one’s mind turns to the various pears painted by Euan Uglow, particularly with these objects displaying a combination of yellow and red skins as did examples studied by the master.

July, a Not-Quite Fruitless Month...

July, although without day job commitments (an academic term-time contract means regular breaks and a nice long summer recess, of course), also seems to have passed without a great deal of painting being done, although a little has been processed.

By way of context, I must admit here to being a long-time admirer of the work of Euan Uglow and his commitment to a particular way of looking at and recording the visual world. Having invested-in the essential ‘Complete Paintings’ some years ago and frequently studied its contents since, I’d always had a certain fondness for Uglow’s representation of a Homepride ‘Fred the flour man’ figure, a familiar advertising icon remembered from childhood and youth.

Euan Uglow ‘Flour Man’ 1972-4

It transpires that Fred figures, smiling and friendly in appearance even with those ‘Clockwork Orange’ bowler hat cultural associations of a similar vintage, were manufactured for commercial purposes in a number of forms, some of such functional value to the baking process as flour sifters, water vessels, etc, and encountering a couple of these objects during a recent potter around a local antiques/vintage emporium presented the opportunity, too tempting to pass up with such art historical associations as they possess to those of us in the know, to invest in as potential grist to the painting mill.

Soon, the newly-homed pair of ‘Freds’ were in position, upon and against a ground of cardboard not unlike that of the Uglow painting in hue and tone, to pose for a pencil sketch that evolved into a rudimentary watercolour study of the form and reflective properties of (the surface appearance of) the plastic figures.

‘Flour men figures’ watercolour/30 x 21cm (sheet size)/July 2017

Thus completed, the progression into oil on canvas became the next stage of investigation into, as reportedly piqued the interest of Uglow, the challenge of depicting plastic, in this instance not one but two kinds, the larger object on the left having a more reflective surface quality than the more ‘silk-matt’ one to the right, with the result, more thinly and finely painted than the more physically textured technique applied to the ‘white pears’ and ‘woodscapes’ of the past year, presented below: an enjoyable challenge.

‘Mr Uglow and Me’ oil on canvas/20″ x 16″/July 2017

‘Mr Uglow and Me’ in context with the model figures, as the painting set-up.

Tea(pot) for Two #11

coloured pencil, graphite & putty eraser/30x21cm

This drawing expands the formal repertoire of the summer’s teapot series by incorporating a representative description of the spatial environment in which the object is situated for observation, including the close-toned & similarly-hued horizontal planes of the circular wooden board & table top, which contrast nicely with the pale grey & blue of the crackle-glazed teapot, & the vertical plane of the wall behind that delimits the recessive depth of the space, upon which has been tacked a squared-up sheet of paper that acts as a form of measuring device to aid the drawing of the object(s).

Such a formal device owes something of a debt of influence & inspiration to the work of Euan Uglow, of course, an artist much admired here at TOoT as regular readers might be aware, whose measured approach was a significant feature of his ever-compelling practice.

Frequent recourse is made to the essential 'Euan Uglow: the Complete Paintings’ in the interests of visual research & here, in a scene from the studio, we see Pickle the cat in close proximity to the very volume: she may appear to be sleeping, as is often her wont, but one prefers to imagine that she is instead engaged in Zen-like contemplation of art...

Just Milling Around...

After the yellow submarine tea infuser drawn & blogged immediately previously comes another example of a watercolour drawing of Beatles-related subject/object matter in the form of the rather fetching ‘Sergeant’ peppermill, another recently invested-in must-have addition to the kitchen & home for the retromaniacally-inclined…


graphite & putty eraser, with watercolour/20x30cm

Such a study might find contextual company in the form of Euan Uglow’s painting of a Homepride ‘Flour Man’ figure, itself another retro icon to those of us able to recall such a marketing device, what might appear a humorous aside but still subject, as is obvious, to the same measured rigour of scrutiny & representation as any of the artist’s other source matter, as might be expected, & also claimed of & for the peppermill too.



Soundtrack:


Dome '1 & 2' & '3 & 4'
Wire ‘The A List’
Hanne Hukkelberg ‘Rykestrasse 68’

Not necessarily the expected soundtrack (although there’s a hopefully-still-playable cassette tape of a wonderful ’20 Years Ago’ anniversary of the Sgt Pepper album’s release Radio One documentary broadcast I’d love to listen to again, considering) but, rather, another blast of retromania, & an altogether more obscure corner of, with the delights of the collected works of Gilbert & Lewis’s Wire-offshoot Dome, none of which was ever previously owned but the memory of one track – ‘Ritual View’ from volume 2, with its snuffily-nasal ‘chorus’ – had endured from a hearing on a dim-&-distant John Peel show: a treat it is to be reunited with, at last, & now in tangible form, along with some other rather good stuff contained within the layers & labyrinths of sonic textures & explorations. By one of those quirks of memory, & the unreliability of, I had somehow conflated the recollection of ‘Ritual View’ with that of Dome-collaborator AC Marias’ ‘Drop’, reacquainted with & mentioned in these parts recently, where its separateness became apparent, so it’s been an especial mission to locate & establish the certainty of the facts of ‘Ritual View’, which have, it transpires, not disappointed: not least, the lyrics at one point make reference to "graphite marks", which is rather appropriate under the circumstances.
In the interests of verity, it should be stated that Dome were listened to earlier in the week, whilst completing a couple of job application forms: the Wire compilation & the enchanting world of Hanne H’s ‘Rykestrasse 68', too-long unvisited, actually accompanied the two sessions of the drawing process.