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

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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.

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.

‘Wabi-sabi Vessels #1’

oil on canvas/16″ x 20″/August 2018

‘Wabi-sabi Vessels #2’

oil on canvas/16″ x 20″/August 2018

‘Wabi-sabi Vessels #3’

oil on canvas/16″ x 20″/August 2018

‘Wabi-sabi Vessels #4'

oil on canvas/16″ x 20″/August 2018

‘Wabi-sabi Vessels #5’

oil on canvas/16″ x 20″/August 2018

‘Wabi-sabi Vessels #6’

oil on canvas/16″ x 20″/August 2018

‘Wabi-sabi Vessels #7’

oil on canvas/16″ x 20″/August 2018

'Woodscape #10'

Being the third of the current silver birch ‘woodscapes’, this composition takes as its inspiration and starting point a location and view a few yards to the right of the first in the sequence and features a representation of information gathered from a photographic snapshot and then mostly from empirical observation and notated sketches over a series of return visits in accordance with
working practice in relation to the woodscapes as subject matter.

'Woodscape #10'

oil on canvas/50 x 100cm/February 2018

Again, the technical emphasis is on communicating the nature of oil paint as a textural, fluid medium and the act of painting with it and attempting to present an analogy to the physical presence of the landscape and being present within such an environment, with its profusion of sensual information.

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'Woodscape #9'

A little late in the posting, but a second silver birch-centric ‘woodscape’ composition based upon information collected from the local woodland was recently ‘resolved’, following quite a protracted wrestle, a harder-won image than is sometimes the case, and is presented below.

'Woodscape #9'

oil on canvas/50 x 100cm/Jan - Feb 2018

The process began from the choice of a photographic snapshot taken on a summer evening during last year, featuring the basic composition of the tree-lined rough pathway that forms the left third of the canvas and the denser area of trees of the remainder, this being something inspired to some degree by certain of Ivon Hitchens’ paintings employing a device suggestive of a particularly recessive space to one side of the picture plane.

Subsequently, empirical observation was carried out on a frequent basis in order to establish details, the space as experienced and so on, as has become the habitual working practice in relation to the ‘woodscape’ paintings.

More silver birches have been transplanted into the scene of the painting than were present in the image of the woods as they exist, exchanged for the ubiquitous pines (this being a small area that was not subject to ‘management’ last year), these being based on observation of nearby examples and represented in a manner to be consistent with the sense of the whole, e.g. the fall of dappled sun-lit highlights in particular.

As with the others in the ‘woodscapes’ series (plural – i.e. the original seven of 2016-17 and these latter three comprising the latest development of the aesthetic), the materiality of the paint and its presence and presentation as such directs the technical approach to the process, emphasising the physical qualities of the medium in terms of texture, fluidity and so on – the painting is about the act of painting, with the medium of oil paint, demonstrably so, supported by the armature of the visual subject.

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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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Showtime!

Saturday evening and, as one of the selected exhibiting artists, the opportunity to attend the Private View and opening of the North Wales Open 2017 at Theatr Clwyd in Mold, our regular cinema-going and theatrical venue, augmented by a programme of visual art and design displays, where many a fine and entertaining evening has been spent.

Despite having made a point of seeing the NWO or its predecessor prior to local government reorganisation the Clwyd Open many years over the last 30+ and previously exhibiting at Theatr Clwyd as an invitee of the ‘Group 75’ show in 2001, this was actually the first time I’d entered work (up to two pieces per individual) for consideration for selection, and was gratified not to hear news that I’d not got both in, as per the judging process (!), building up some momentum after the Wrexham Open success of April. Rather than rest on the old laurels and rely on those tried-and-tested, I decided to submit another of the ‘woodscapes’ (#5) and, for variety but possibly taking a risk in presenting two distinct aspects of painterly activity, one of the recent larger-scale ‘White Pears’ compositions (#29).

Anyway, suitably uninformed, Anna and I made our way to the venue where it was pleasing to see and be part of a well-attended event, lots of milling, viewing and relaxed chat in evidence and a wide variety of art, traditional and modern as they say, the work of professional and amateur practitioners alike, some familiar names, on show.

Anna studying the selection...

With the focus towards the personal, here follows a small group of spectators before ‘Woodscape #5’, the painting in its immediate context and in isolation and then ‘White Pears #29’ in the company of other still life compositions (paintings and a collagraph) and on its own – both paintings were favourably hung, in nice central, well-lit locations in the main and Community galleries, it must be said, so we’ve done very well out of the experience.