A PAINTER’S PROGRESS
I hope Tom Keating would approve, though I am not up there with his beloved Titian and Constable, he can see I am trying. The idea was to spend several hours knocking this painting around in an attempt to unify the picture space and capture the textures of the foliage. There is still some way to go but I can see some areas of subtlety coming through that I like. The actual scene is quite magical and other worldly, this is what I am aiming for.
The secret garden. Day 3
Burst being the operative word as these things never last long with me, I prefer to plod along at a leisurely pace. An evening session, part enthusiasm and part trying to do a dozen different things at once. I am going in all directions at the moment and its eating into my painting time. I think these evening sessions will become more frequent. Decent start with this painting, the paving seems to be the trickiest aspect of all this.
The secret garden. Day 2
The first figure to appear in a painting of mine for 35 years, this isn’t why I’ve kept it so small. This is a stately home with a walled garden that is quite a walk from the main house. It really could be a secret garden, hidden beyond some woods and a lake with only a small gated entrance. If it wasn’t sign posted you would never knew it existed. The viewpoint is from a terrace and the large patio area is a mixture of random paving that is sunk in some places.
The secret garden. Day 1
in other words, not entirely successful, but it has enough good painting in it to convince me that change is necessary and worthwhile. Going in a new direction where your not sure of the destination, as an ‘artist’, is surely a path that you should be on, always. I need something to keep me interested and curious. I see this as the only way to keep me returning to the easel. This painting is now finished, although the truth is I didn’t know how to finish it. On to the next one for more answers.
Sweet peas
and some luck, or as Bob Ross would say, some happy accidents. Moving away from a traditional landscape approach is I think an important step for me. I needed to re-ignite my curiosity by going down an unfamiliar path, to get lost for a while, if you like, in order to find out what I really want to paint about. This new approach is already in play and what I find interesting in other peoples work is the ‘unexpected’ both in terms of a subject and style of painting. It is in the creative approach to both that the interest lies. I already know the way forward and this will become apparent with each new painting.
Sweet peas. Day 5
Struggling halfway through a short afternoon session the thought crossed my mind that life would be a lot easier if I had the disposition of a ‘leisure painter’. I would be satisfied just to get a few hours of painting in now and then. All thoughts of futility would be replaced by an unfocussed fuzzy warm contentment. My pitiful output would not cause me any concern. I would smile a lot more. As odd as it may sound I want to get to a point where I think all of this is worthwhile.
Sweet peas. Day 4
Suerat must have been a very patient and disciplined man. I imagine he kept his bedroom neat and tidy. I have been trying to find the forms within this scene with the dab, dab technique, more Monet than Seurat in reality. My temperament is not really suited to this style of painting and I have never tended to use this style in the past but I feel I need to push my technique and subject matter in a new direction. I want my paintings to become unfamiliar to me and I want to find a new way of making paintings. This picture is going well and my patience is expanding.
Sweet peas. Day 3
An all too rare event, but I’d be lying if I said all I want to do is paint all day every day. However, I am going to Wales tomorrow and I wanted to get the painting to a state where I could at least see its proper potential. This is almost a nocturn but I am ok with that. The sky was cloudy but naturally did not resemble this apocalyptic scene. Its been saved by the brighter tones in the foreground. I am going to have to step out of my comfort zone and adopt an Impressionistic touch, it will be interesting to see how this turns out.
Sweet peas. Day 2
I am starting to realize that my village can provide all the subject matter I could ever wish for. The only limiting factor is my imagination. I have been walking around here for the last 2 years thinking, that would make a good subject, and then getting in the car and driving 15 miles to photograph some favoured area of landscape. This just seems like a terrible waste. This scene comes from a local allotment yet there are many different types of subject around here including my garden. For some reason I have disregarded anything close thinking making an effort to travel distances is a sign of commitment. That is going to change. Good start with this painting. The sweet peas are a firework display but won’t appear until later in the painting.
Sweet peas. Day 1
by my absence. This may upset most people, but if your wanting to slip away to your studio when you have your mother and in-laws over from Mexico, it is a positive benefit. I managed to get in an afternoons painting and on returning to the house I was expecting some kind of negative reaction. I was welcomed back as if nothing had happened, there are upsides to being dull and uninteresting. This painting is finished. I think it is the first painting that has enabled me to break away from my familiar style of landscape painting. Although I will come back occasionally to a ‘traditional landscape’ I want to move further away from that format and I have something in mind.
The farmhouse
If you want to put order and control into nature then this will take over your life because nature is relentless. How can you balance an obsessive tendency towards order and neatness and at the same time contend with nature which doesn’t care about either? This is the subject of this painting. The landscape is overwhelming and if your going to make your living from it then you are dealing with something that is far more powerful than yourself. I think this is coming through in this painting. One of the details I find amusing is that the owners of the farmhouse, despite being surrounded by nature have planted rose bushes in their front garden. I have yet to paint these perfect blooms but this will become apparent.
The farmhouse. Day 5
Is the ultimate aim, what is in my way is a large garden that has been neglected for several years. Progress is being made to ensure the garden goes from an unkept jungle to a low maintenance English Gentlemans Retreat. This means lots of hard landscaping and acres of plastic sheeting topped with gravel. This painting feels like a significant shift forward. I don’t really know what I am aiming at but this will become more clear once I can get some consistent painting time. In-laws from Mexico arrive tomorrow for 3 weeks so I will have to grab time where I can.
The farmhouse. Day 4
Some things are necessary, like fixing the guttering on your house (now finished), other things like watching endless YouTube videos aren’t. The danger with needing to do necessary things is that it takes me away from my painting and allows me too much time to think, and this is never a good thing. I find my thoughts tend to become more negative and my enthusiasm evaporates. As soon as I start painting again the reverse happens, every time. This is an endless battle and lessons are never learned. Painting is going well and is deserving of more attention.
The farmhouse. Day 3
Is that a problem? It seems to me that as a landscape painter I find myself mixing quantities of these colours at the beginning of each new painting almost as if there is no alternative. Yet I am a little disappointed by my conventional approach to colour choice. I don’t know if these doubts are predicters of change, I suspect that they are though I feel it will be a subtle shift. I am finding with the more recent paintings they need to be worked and pushed around a lot before they reveal their real potential.
The farmhouse. Day 2
I am currently being side-tracked by a project that I had been able to shelve for the last 12 months. That is restoring the cast iron gutters on our 250 year old cottage. It was suggested to me that simply scrapping them and replacing them with a plastic alternative was a much quicker and cheaper option. Sensible advice, but that’s an option I often ignore. Now I am involved in the laborious task of paint stripping, priming and re-painting knowing full well that nobody is going to notice or care about the results. Luckily, under those circumstances I carry on regardless. Anyway, back to more serious matters. I am trying to make a shift in my painting. I am not sure where it is going but my feeling is that my subject matter and the treatment of it was getting too familiar. I like the look of this new painting. It struck me that the farmhouse, as big as it is looks vulnerable and is about to be overwhelmed by its surroundings. Taking out the sky compresses the space and gives a sense of the oppressive power of the landscape.
The farmhouse. Day 1
I often wonder whether squeezing the last 5% of goodness out of a picture is worthwhile. Its like panning for gold, sifting through all the mud in search of something shiny and valuable. At the moment its all mud, but like any good prospector, you keep going. Its my belief that sooner or later all this faith will be rewarded, maybe not with nuggets but a few good paintings. Its still a long way off but the journey is getting more interesting and there is enough in this painting to make me think it will be worthwhile.
View across a field
I don’t know what that feels like anymore. RFT is a mantra I try and apply to everything I do in life. I often achieve this, but not when it comes to painting. It seems to me that one of the key qualities a painter needs is the willingness to fail an infinite number of times whilst at the same time suppressing the desire to destroy what is in front of them out of sheer frustration. I find that if I can paint through the pain barrier then I am usually rewarded with a more interesting and compelling picture on the other side. I think I have just passed this point and it is starting to make more sense as a landscape. I like the flatness of the view and the way the background is tilted up. I wanted to get rid of the sky in this painting as it often seems to me a bit of a ‘filler’ that creates a too familiar format for a landscape painting. I also like the way the far distant acid green hedges seem to float on the red earth, I may push this effect a bit further.
View across a field. Day 5
I didn’t give any thought at all to the choice of title for this painting. In fact I started it with no enthusiasm taking hardly any time to choose the view. I thought I should be able to make something of any view. And when you think about it this is very true, to the point of Morandi choosing to paint old clay bottles. What has started with so little promise has turned out to be an extraordinary view, just by looking and eventually properly engaging with the subject. I am trying to be lead by accident in the process of painting. A bit like Francis Bacon, willing to take a more interesting path than merely illustrating a scene, this painting is showing some promise.
View across a field. Day 4
There is never a stillness in my landscapes, mostly because I never see a stillness in nature. I’m not talking about a windy day, I am talking about the fantastical clash of random shapes that come together to make up a landscape. A lot of the juxtapositions just seem improbable and can make your interpretation of it just as improbable. But that is what I like about the landscape, the things I see are so unexpected. This painting is starting to mirror that and putting them together requires the dexterity of Harry Potter.
View across a field. Day 3
I have confirmed to myself once again that it is better to be engaged with something even if it is not a constant source of pleasure than to drift aimlessly through life. I seemed to have suffered a very mild form of artists block lasting two weeks. This is hardly a crisis. I am back on board my stella trajectory with all my delusions fully intact. Better to live the life of a fantasist than a realist, that way there is always hope. In terms of my painting I am still drifting but the fact that I am questioning and persisting with it is a positive.
View across a field. Day 2