18 February 2023

Five paintings, the air but not the wind




Evening Prayers Brunswick Heads, 18 January 2023, oil on canvas boards, 25 X 20 cm



Evening Prayers Brunswick Heads, 18 January 2023, oil on canvas board, 25 X 20 cm


These are all from one evening about three weeks ago. For some reason I decided to try a mini series on small boards, I think because I hadn't been out to the beach so much, and maybe I was feeling unsure of what I was going to do. Of course, I am never really sure what I'm going to do anyway until I begin mixing a palette. Tiny ideas bubble up like water when I prepare my colours and they begin to match up with what I'm starting to see in the sky already. But I rarely have an idea until the last minute because I don't know yet what the sea and sky want me to do. But they usually need a human sacrifice first, and it's always the painter, meaning ME, in this case.

So on this evening which was showing great promise, I set up and began to patiently await signs of life in the sky, wondering just what it would dictate for me. 


I had made the decision to work quickly, to try to find something simple to grasp onto, to capture it then leave it be. I'm like a lepidopterist who captures a butterfly in a large soft net only to let it go after a brief but intense inspection. 

I think it was because during those few days I was still thinking of that small Turner watercolour of which I wrote about a month ago. Images like that can take up lots of space in painter's head the same way as a melody in a musician's. This evening I wanted to keep them fresh and not get bogged down into laboured paintings, I wanted some delicate studies; I wanted the air, but not the wind. 

And so these came out of that evening and I was reasonably happy with them. I believe they are in order of execution. The last one at the bottom is actually a slightly larger canvas board, so by the fourth study, I must have been feeling more confident.

The first one was very compact, barely a breath of a thought, but I really like the way the sea came out, it was almost sliced in two and creates an unusual foreground almost like throwing a silk scarf around a wool jacket. 

These kinds of spontaneous decisions whilst painting are more natural to my process than to many other painters who might exercise more thoughtful care than me in front of a motif. After all, I'm a remnant of another tradition, one more casual than dour. But that said, I do like detail, but details are just nuts and bolts which fasten a structure together. Imagine Uccello's grand picture, The Battle of San Romano, in the National Gallery of London exhibited in someway close to a jet engine. (now that would be a fantastic piece of Conceptual Art).

In any event, the second painting became a little more involved as I became more entangled  with the sensuality of the paint like an artist from 18th century Holland.

The third one (here below) was also done quite quickly, it felt rushed, as if I wanted to get through the meal in a hurry, getting to the  desert even faster. And it even reminds me of a plum tarte, a Reine Claude, made in the late Autumn countryside of France.

The one below it (middle), is perhaps my favourite as it too came quickly, but with also  a real feeling of getting what I had desired out of this sky, not scratching haphazardly for an answer, but moving without hesitation to its resolution like a trained dog looking for survivors.

And lastly, the large one at the very bottom, is a depiction of when the sky has just peaked and feels mellow like a large hot air balloon releasing its chamber and slowly returning to earth.



Evening Prayers Brunswick Heads, 18 January 2023, oil on canvas board, 25 X 20 cm



Evening Prayers Brunswick Heads, 18 January 2023, oil on canvas board, 25 X 20 cm


Evening Prayers Brunswick Heads, 18 January 2023, oil on canvas boards, 30 X 25 cm



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