18 November 2022
Turner at the riverbank
At the beach the other night came this study, one of two from the evening. All day it had been extremely hazy and humid, and a stickiness in the air seemed to glue everything together. When I arrived at the beach it felt even worse than at home so I set up quickly then went down to slip into the sea.
Once I got to mixing colours on the palette I jumped into this intense yellow sky. After almost a month of not working at the beach, I felt typically nervous, ambivalent even about getting into my car to drive there. Although I’m in the studio working, it’s an awful feeling not wanting to get out to the beach for my therapy seesion. As is always the case, whenever I show up there, I feel instantly better.
About a million years ago I read the first chapter or so of a biography about J.M.W. Turner but I couldn’t get into it for any number of reasons. I was in the South of England and somehow I thought should read about Turner after visiting Petworth. But I do remember an anecdote recounted by one of the sons of George Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont, whose patronage of Turner made him a frequent guest at Petworth House in Sussex, where he made many gouaches of its interior and conceived large paintings from around the vast park.
According to one of the Earl’s sons, Turner could usually be found down at the riverbank and fishing with the young boy. Although Turner always brought his small bag of watercolours, brushes and pads, the boy claimed he never saw Turner painting because he seemed so obsessed with fishing. I love that the great prolific Turner took time off to fish.
This study was left in its current of state of suspension because I liked it that way and wanted to preserve its freshness. I also saw that there was little more I could to do to make it any better other than to completely reconfigure everything so better to stop and make another one I wisely thought to myself. A good choice, but sometimes I’m not so smart. This is what it is, in this netherworld of the unfinished. I does however possess something for the future, I’m sure of it.
Regardless, what amazed me was just how fast my feelings came out while painting at the beach. It’s like going on a date when suddenly one is flushed with both expectation and terror.
I saw a short reel that came to me on Instagram the other day. It was a painter who filmed herself working on several things in her bright airy studio. She said it was important for her to leave the works in a state such that “they left the viewer with an open-ended space to interpret the image". Seeing a few pieces in the video I could understand what she meant and it opened up a whole dialogue within me about what constitutes an image. This is after all, a valid question in this time of so much change in the multi-disciplinary fields of Art, and yet I was left feeling underwhelmed by her work somehow. Either it took me nowhere, or I else I didn’t like where it took me. But I liked her cool attitude, her vibe as it were. But, as we do, I immediately began thinking about my own motives. Where am I trying to lead the viewer?
As I have already admitted, the initial motors for me in this series of rapid oil paintings, were J.M.W. Turner’s watercolours of the sea and sky that he made in Venice. Of course, he made them in lots of other places but it’s the works of Venice that the painter in me remembered most vividly. As ‘abstract’ or ‘non-objective’ as so many of them are, there is a persistent structure inherent within them that directs a viewer specifically towards both what was represented, but also all that was left out. Looking at his small, abbreviated watercolours, I always get the feeling that they were born not just in his eyes but in his mind also.
What does it mean for an image to be evocative of the original motif? How much space does an ‘interpretation’ require of us to see what the artist had in mind? Is it on a graded scale? Is this even important for an artist today? If it is, then what does any artist wish for their viewer to see and feel today? Does it even matter?
Everyone will have their own answer, but mine would cautiously follow in J.M.W. Turner’s footpath. His watercolours, made over two hundred years ago, are innovations unparalleled in what we call Contemporary Art today. Indeed, for me, these small things which he made on the fly, often eclipse so much ‘abstract’ or ‘non-objective art’ created in the whole 20th century. A large portion of his entire oeuvre in watercolours is an existential threat to Non-Figurative and Expressionist Painting. I say all this with caveats of course. There are many Non-figurative painters whose work I personally love, two of my favourites are Joan Miró and Philip Guston. But there is so much to say about all this, for another day because I too, make non-figurative work in my studio.
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