4.5.1

Painting 1 The Practice of painting

PART 4 Looking out

Project 5 Working from drawings and photographs

Exercise 1 Painting from a working drawing

I found this exercise a really interesting challenge and I learned much from completing it. Most people look at my paintings and say “but it is so real it looks like a photograph”, but I am beginning to understand the difference between painting and a photograph. In the bad old days I would not have let a painting out of the studio if it didn’t look like a photograph to me, but I am beginning to realise that what looks like a painting to me looks like a photograph to a lot of people. Reality is relative to the ability to see and only by training and practice can you gain the ability to see.

From a drawing and a colour study I have painted what I believe to be a fully believable painting with form and colour and composition that could hang on a wall and never be confused with reality, yet will by some people be confused with reality. It is a painting, an illusion, something pretty to hang on your wall that will brighten it up, but it is not real and never will be, it is my reality and i can rip it to pieces in the blink of an eye, point out where the perspective is wrong or the tonality is wrong, where the colour is invented, or where there wasn’t enough information in the original sketch so I just made it up to make the picture pretty enough to hang on your wall.

If I want to, I think I can do reality (see figure 1) but I don’t think I need to do reality anymore, I need to paint things that a gallery can hang on its walls, something with pazaz, something with originality, something that lives and breathes but at the end of the day is a pretty thing to hang on the wall. I believe with this exercise I have achieved this not once but three times.

The drawing in a petty frame could stand on its own as a work of art, it has energy and feeling and a certain je ne sais quoi that I can’t quite put my finger on that makes it stand out from my usual drawings. The colour sketch could be a complete work in its own right and the final painting belies the lack of detail in either.

I used Cézanne’s technique of putting a few coins under one side of the bowl and was totally surprised at the difference it made to the end results. I think I am beginning to master the technique of the six colour palette without resorting to the addition of white or black or even earth colours to darken or lighten the mix and on this basis alone I am pleased with the way my technique is developing my practice in completing this course. I have been paying attention during my gallery visits to the way the thinness of the paint, not just the impasto, contribute to a work of art and have been consciously trying to embody this in my work.

I have also been thinking about stages and the theatre, I don’t seem to get to the theatre nearly enough these days. My main player, the solitary apple, is on the thirds commanding the stage and the chorus mid backstage right so as not to detract from the star of the show. The backcloth, thin and grainy in parts, leads the eye to the main player with its shooting diagonals, one of them broken by the star of the show, to emphasise her importance, this zigzag table edge a precipice over which she may fall at any second. I worry about her so much, that I can almost hear the change in tempo of the orchestra as she plunges deep into the smoky drifting hazy blue beyond. It is amazing what goes through your mind as you are painting.

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Figure 1 (4.1.1.1) an old concept of reality water mixable oils on 25 x 18 canvas board

Figure 2 (4.1.1.2) The new reality sharpie on A4 cartridge

Figure 2 (4.1.1.2) The new reality colour study 1 water mixable oils on 250 x 180  canvas board

Figure 3 (4.1.1.3) The new reality colour study 2 water mixable oils on 250 x 180 canvas board

Figure 4 (4.1.1.4) The new reality first statement water mixable oils on 400 x 500 canvas board

Figure 5 (4.1.1.5) The new reality second statement water mixable oils on 400 x 500 canvas board

Figure 6 (4.1.1.6) The new reality mixable oils on 400 x 500 canvas board

5.1.1

Painting 1 The Practice of painting

PART 5 Personel Development

Project 1 Different ways of applying paint

Exercise 1 Research point

Look at a range of painting with particular attention to the way the paint has been applied. For example look at the paintings of Monet, Pissarro, Cezanne Van Gogh and the expressionist painters. Look at some twentieth century pastel paintings and make notes about the range of effects you find.

Matisse

I went to the Tate Liverpool to see the Matisse exhibition. In the earliest works, done while Matisse was studying in Paris, the paintings, Studio Interior and Nude Study in Blue were dark browns and greys using thinned down fluid oil paint with only accents of slightly thicker pure colour. The Portrait of Andre Derain, the early Fauvist work, which was quite impasto maybe this is because the Fauves were heavily influenced by Van Gogh and Gauguin. Standing nude was also quite impasto but then this was painted at a time when Matisse was interested in sculpture.

In most of the later paintings, Reading Woman with Parasol, Draped Nude, Triveau Pond , The Inattentive Reader and Cap d’Antibes, the oil paint was quite thin and scrubbed into the canvas in places The weight of the plaster in the Backs series, now cast in bronze, was very impressive. In his cut outs Matisse used sheets of paper painted with flat gouache by his assistants. That is a whole lot of different ways of applying paint and plaster by one artist during the course of his career.

Van Gogh

I went on a trip to the National Gallery at the weekend I go quite regularly now to pay attention to how different artists handle the paint on their canvas. Van Gogh is famous for his thick impasto painting, however, looking closely at his work on display at the gallery I was a little underwhelmed by the thickness of his paint. I think the awards for best impasto go to the early works of Frank Auerbach and Constables six foot sketches, which have such energy. In the Van Gogh works on show, whilst there is enough paint to leave the impression of the brush marks, the paint handling in the case of Wheatfield with Cypresses is really quite delicate. Maybe the impasto effects demonstrated here have something to do with Vincent’s state of mind Sunflowers was painted before he went into the Asylum while he was excited by the pending arrival of Gauguin at the yellow house in Arles, and while the impasto gives the impression of excitement and a swiftly moving brush, it is nowhere as deep and heavy relief as Two Crabs which was painted after he left the asylum. As I have already said he seemed much calmer when he was in the asylum, perhaps I could further explore this by reading his letters to Theo and I can’t think of a better place to do this than Schippol Airport what a lovely excuse for a trip to Amsterdam.

Cezanne

Paul Cezanne of course had 3 paintings in the same room as Vincent, the earliest, a Portrait of his Father had the thickest paint the paint got thinner as he got older in Still life with Water Jug and The Bathers. This seems to be something of a trend amongst artists; the more confident they become in their handling of colour and light the less they seem to rely on the sculptural qualities of the paint itself and the more gestural and visible their brush marks without the thick impasto. It could be that their eyes weakened as they got older and this is all going on in the days before Specsaver’s and two for one spectacles. Many of the famous artists were blind or almost blind at the end, off the top of my head I can think of Degas, Monet and O’Keefe, perhaps years of intense looking takes its toll in much the same way as the knees of footballers. Rembrandt of course is reputed to have been stereo blind his whole life from examination of his self portraits by eye experts, maybe they work for Specsaver’s, but this type of blindness does have the compensation of increased tonal perception, it’s an ill wind that doesn’t blow somebody some luck. I just checked on Google and the only other famous blind artists are Stevie Wonder and a few old blues singers. Many artists have been recorded as being blind drunks but that of course is a whole other line of inquiry or Googling.

Monet, Pissaro and Sisley

Carrying on if we consider the impressionists, the only true impressionists are Monet, Pissaro and Sisley, forever conjoined in the May triptych in the Quai D’Orsay. These three were the dot painters before Seurat was born and there is a distinct dottiness to their painterly marks at this time in their careers. Notice also how each panel of the triptych is typical of each of the artist’s works at the time.

The great day finished with a trip to the National Portrait gallery to look at Sargent’s painting of the First world war generals, there is something rather special about this painting because it mixes the thin paint with the impasto and the day was rounded off with an examination of a seriously non impasto work by Eileen Hogan ( contemporary artist alert) a finalist in the BP Portrait Award the flatness of her mark making was so thin as too be anorexic and reminded me a great deal  of the work of Giacometti and gave me some serious pointers to go forward with in my own process.

Finding pastel paintings proved much more elusive, I have in the past looked at the pastel works of Degas and Renoir, you would be hard pushed to classify these as Twentieth century masters, it seems like I’ll just have to keep looking.