A LIFETIME IS NOT ENOUGH

Why couldn’t I have decided to paint the landscapes of Northumberland 30 years ago whilst still living in London?. That would have been a remarkable decision given where I am now. Instead I spent the intervening years heading off down various rabbit holes only too emerge confused and disappointed. My saving grace is that I just kept going but it seems like a long and tortuous path to finally arrive at the correct destination. It seems less of a destination, rather finally finding the right bus queue to join. I suppose it was a personal journey I had to travel. Now I am in the right place I have potentially another 30 years to enjoy the ride. Painting is going well, nearing completion.

Netherton, springtime. Day 5

A FOCUS ON ABSTRACTION

It is surprising when a painting starts to operate abstractly, areas you thought needed more detail now work better as a gestural mark. I think things become a lot more interesting when you are painting on instinct, rather than illustrating what is there. I know Francis Bacon would have backed me up on this. You move into an area of painting that is elemental and mysterious, where it is more to do with relationships of colour and shape and I think my painting has shifted more in this direction. The painting has now got to a point where the focus is now on subtle relationships rather than big changes.

Netherton, springtime. Day 4

A NORTH EUROPEAN PALETTE

I know the UK is not in Europe, I just refuse to accept it, anyway, enough of politics. I have brought my north European mindset to bear on this lovely spring day and have turned down the brightness a notch or two. I have done this quite consciously because this is Northumberland, not the Cote d’Azur. For some reason I can’t accept the Mediterranean palette so far north. Anyway, its definitely springtime and not winter. There are some extraordinary patterns in this landscape so I need to put my illustrators head on if I am to tackle them. The painting is starting to show signs of promise, still a long way to go.

Netherton, springtime. Day 3

DON'T SECOND GUESS

This is a lesson that has taken me decades to learn, and if I am honest I am still guilty of it. When I try and speculate as to how a painting may go I am always wrong. I always imagine the outcome to be no where near as good as it actually turns out to be. You cannot rehearse in your mind what you are going to do in the painting. There was a time when the opposite was true, when I had a brilliant painting in my mind and ended up with a canvas covered in sh*t. Needless to say I am a more content painter now but it has been a long journey getting here. Painting is going well. I am trying to capture what I saw on the day which is a landscape turned up to full volume in every respect. Its a type of landscape that I particularly like which is a random patchwork of brown heathland and grass, that has yet to come through as clearly as I would like.

Netherton, springtime. Day 2

NO EASY ROUTE

As Ben Fogle has said, ‘the hardest road has the sweetest views’. He may not be an ancient Chinese philosopher but he’s not wrong. I purposely never repeat a winning formula, firstly because its leads to nothing new, and secondly I never take the easy option. By winning formulas I mean my estimation of where my painting is right now. Winning for me simply because in my view what I am doing now is so much better even than 12 months ago. Slightly new location, Netherton. It was a day of mixed fortunes, its surprising how a photo is made or lost in a second, simply because of the dramatic changing light. This is one of my lucky shots. Good start.

Netherton, springtime. Day 1

FURTHER DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

Its a tight squeeze but I am going to keep going. My previous painting has set me on an unexpected course. There is definitely a shift in focus. At the back of my mind I always had this ambition of not being a ‘scene’ painter, when it comes to landscapes. That means not following the traditional focus, which is light and space. They are important but it seems no longer my primary motivation. It will be interesting to see how this develops because I don’t want to have a set of preconceived notions of how I am now going to make paintings. Lots of questions around this painting but it is finished.

Road through the countryside

A CAST OF CHARACTERS

I’ve seen these characters before in previous paintings I have done, I am talking about the trees. I have a problem with trees. I have never liked the indefinite nature of them, the fact that they are poorly defined in terms of their boundaries, how they all seem to merge as one and share the same shade of green. I like a muscular tree that identifies itself as an individual, my style is more Michelangelo than Monet and so that is how I paint them. The more I take this idiosyncratic approach the more I like what I see, and the more I stress the differences between them, the more it takes on a human element? I look at this painting and I see a big crowd of figures, all individuals . This rendition of them is slightly mad, but it seems to capture an individual spirit or identity and if you really look at trees you will see all sorts of fantastical shapes and relationships. I may be going down an odd route, but it is an interesting one. Only got a couple of hours done today due to domestic commitments but painting has improved.

Road through the countryside. Day 6

ALICE IN WONDERLAND

Two elements that are becoming increasingly important in my painting are curiosity and a willingness to follow the rabbit down the rabbit hole. They are the same thing really. What this means in reality is sometimes I don’t know where the painting is going, and surely this is always the situation any painter would want? If you are spending so much of your time on your art then don’t you want to go on a journey of surprises and wonder?. It seems to me that my painting is still going through significant change and I have a totally open mind as to where that is.

Road through the countryside. Day 5

A HELPING HAND?

Or divine intervention. If its the latter I would be asking for a bit more, maybe get me up to the level of Fra Angelico or Titian, only if for a day. I say this because my aim was to get rid of all the white ground so I was working with a certain urgency. At the end of the day I had a proper look at the painting and was really surprised to see what I thought were crudely painted areas actually could stand as they are. I don’t think the painting is finished, I think it can be improved but happy with the progress.

Road through the countryside. Day 4

HEAD FOR SHELTER

Tornado coming through Northumberland? the weight of the clouds are almost crushing the horizon line. I like the way the strong outline of the cloud on the left is almost touching ground and the contrast between the dark bluish purple tone and the brighter sky and field below. This is a summers day that is full of weather and a painters dream, as long as you are not going plein air. This composition has everything and yet it is a fairly mundane subject, ‘ road through the countryside’, this is what happens when you really stop and look at the landscape, it is actually packed with life and extraordinary sights. I like the way this painting is going. I do have another composition in mind for my next painting, again involving a road, that I have been thinking about for a long time.

Road through the countryside. Day 3

BACK ON COURSE

The previous painting felt like a bit of a diversion, in my mind it is a successful painting but I didn’t like the process of making it. It felt like I was forcing an idea onto the painting rather than it being a conversation between me and it. This new painting feels like a more natural process, I try something, sometimes it works, sometimes it needs modifying but the painting is telling me what it needs and it feels like a real learning process. Its going well. Really strange situation with the sky of yesterday, it almost photographed entirely in monochrome? I have been repainting some areas of the sky today and will continue doing that but overall it wont change a great deal.

Road through the countryside. Day 2

A1 heading north

I have always liked the way this section of road suddenly climbs skywards and cuts across the horizon line. The road shoots through the trees and then just as quickly disappears. This is countered by the equally dramatic movement of the hill as it dives right to left. Throw in a dramatic sky and you have a Soutine transported from the south of France to equally glamorous environs of Northumberland, namely the A1. I hadn’t realised I have painted the sky almost monochrome, but it has a good starting point to work with.

Road through the countryside. Day 1

CURIOSITY SATISFIED

The idea was to trace the light effects acting like fingers or veins across the landscape. I have given this quite a graphic interpretation, possibly more than I had initially intended but I wanted to see what was possible if I focussed on this exclusively. It is probably not as balanced with the existing landscape as I would have liked but has still lead to some interesting results that I want to retain going forward. I still want to explore this idea further but maybe wind it back a bit and try and integrate it a bit more subtly into my current painting style. The picture is finished.

Cloudburst over Lorbottle

A FICTITIOUS RENDERING

I would not recommend anyone uses my paintings for the purposes of navigation. You could only conclude you are either lost or on too much medication. I am at the outer limits of artistic license if I am still calling myself a figurative painter. As odd as it may seem the painting is going in the direction that I want it to go. I don’t know what interpretation I am using, Romantic, Gothic, but in my mind the landscape has a mysterious internal life and that is what I am trying to convey. The sky looks like a painting of the planets, but it somehow all fits together. Still a bit more to do.

Cloudburst over Lorbottle. Day 6

IS IT THE SAME PAINTING?

The first thing I realized when I sat in front of the painting today was that I had only got as far as laying down the foundations. The second thing I realized was that the photo was only going to take me halfway to making the painting I wanted to make. Today was make or break time, if I left the painting in its current state it would end up in a thixotropic graveyard. This idea that the photos are only a launchpad is becoming more apparent. I have got to develop a way of taking them in the direction I want them to go, and I think so far, with this painting it is successful. I can now see where it still needs pushing. Sorted out the photography problems with the sky, now looks a lot better.

Cloudburst over Lorbottle. Day 5

ACCUMULATED CORRECTIONS

I know what I want from this painting, but achieving it is another thing. What I am trying to capture is not the easy division of fields but the light moving across the underlying structure of the landscape. This is much more subtle and I have spent the afternoon staring at my photo for information that simply isn’t there! I have the image of this landscape in my mind as if Eric Ravilious had painted it. His graphic style is quite illustrative but I like his high key colour palette and the vitality of his mark making. The landscape that I want is slowly emerging and what I like about its particular quality is precisely that sense of a slow accumulation of colour shifts.

Cloudburst over Lorbottle. Day 4

GOD WALKS THROUGH MY PAINTINGS

Not yet, maybe one of his sheep. I was wondering why I always go for the expansive view. I think for the first time with this painting I am starting to understand why. It gives me the scope to paint the drama of light across the landscape. Nothing new in that, but this time it is really the focus of the painting. This painting has given me an insight into what might be possible. It also suggests I should be looking more at this subject.

Cloudburst over Lorbottle. Day 3

TOP DOWN

I know Lucian Freud spent a period of time building his pictures like a mosaic, first the eye, then the nose, all would be finished before moving on to the next bit. I can understand the benefits of such an approach but it wouldn’t work for me. I am a normal person, Freud wasn’t. My rendering of this scene looks exaggerated, I would like to call it enhanced. I think I am applying a more simplified graphic style in this painting, but I don’t want to create an abstract collaged effect. I like the way this painting is progressing and the emphasis on dramatic lighting is something I have not really considered before, but I would like to explore it more. I am still having issues with a reflective sky when photographing, must find a solution for this.

Cloudburst over Lorbottle. Day 2

PENTIMENTI

This was a very complicated picture to draw out. Unhelpfully the farmers did not follow the natural underlying contours of the land when they laid out their fields. The placement of them almost disguises and distorts the rhythms of the landscape but when you look across the whole area you can see the shape of the skeleton. On the subject of pentimenti, it is the idiosyncratic shapes of the fields that give this landscape a particular character. I am trying to capture the precise nature of these shapes rather than come to a poorly observed approximation.

Cloudburst over Lorbottle Day 1

A TIPPING POINT

I have done only 6 paintings that I have no reservations about and 5 of those are my last 5. That is not to say I understand everything that I am doing. Some of them contain all manner of curiosities in terms of their shapes and colour, many not intentional. But there is a life, a vitality and an intensity to them that I find compelling. I allow them to stand uncorrected, a lot of that has to do with my style of painting and influences. The last couple of years being Edward Burra and Paul Nash, then Soutine and Bacon, all troubled painters with a leaning towards the surreal. Given this influence I am intrigued to see where my painting is going. The painting is finished.

Harbottle