Shadow place at shotley

On Saturday we performed ‘Frailty in Thought’ again. 

It began with a procession across the fields down to the river, then as the the daylight faded the port of Harwich lit up,- this created a dramatic backdrop to the performance which took place on the beach.

Then there was soup and bread then we read  Ians  poem about an ancient queen by a roaring fire. -Magical.

Developing the work

.

oooh its so hard to develop.
Its all a bit contrived at the moment but I feel I must push the work along and I have found this a good process in the past. Its all a bit fake and then it gets assimalated and works.
After the drippy painting last week I prepared a couple of large canvases to work on. - One was a plaster base mixed with earth colors and ground up leaves and another was a light mauve layer of expressive paint strokes. ( I see earth as mauve sometimes.)  I decided to work on the plaster one. But I left the drippy paint one for reference.

I worked on the plaster one.. It wasn't working at all, and the truth for me of the body, the strength, the  texture of the skin etc was a bit  lost in the 'earth ' bit. -

 so now its dry I have gessoed over it to creat a smoother surface to work on and using  the drippy one as  a reference I can work on it in the models absence. I still want the earth feel, but more subtle as underlayers I think. anyway we shall see...

Surface, texture and drips.

I am using my work from the Figure each week to explore and develop my latest ideas.
I want the paintings to be large, expansive, (these are 90cm x 90cm) drippy, groaning, melting, merging, raw. This is the first one. I will prepare some different surfaces and paint some more from the same viewpoint for the next few weeks, layering and developing. - I'm excited by process once more.


I have been looking at the way to prepare the canvas, to texture it.



I am looking at earth.The Figure emerging, pushing through, so the layers of drips meld and merge with the surface, being born of the earth.

For the last few years my work has been about the light.
It comes in to the interior and bounces of the figures and objects within.This light has been all around the world, It has no "time" it links us all to every one before and after.
Before that I was looking at the figures made of air.


before that I was exploring fragility and working with glass paints on perspex

Influences at the moment

The very wonderful Hughie O'Donoghue. Monument in Rouen. His work is magnificent, monumental, Huge pieces. layers and montage and ooohhhh!!!


Ansolm Kiefer.Rods



Bernard Piga who I came across at an exhibition at a little chateau in France a couple of years ago,- large scale and very emotional paintings.



Francis Bacon




as ever the great
F A

next direction

ooohhh Its so hard to get going on the next stage.
I have a feeling for how I want the work to develop but how to get there... and how not to put up barriers before I have even begun.
I want to work on emotion, whats inside.. I have looked at this before of course but I want this work to be bigger than before and more abstract.
I'll show other artists who are my influences as I go on.
the drippy traumatic paintings from my life studies excite me. They are the way I want to go this year.I found that little project from the summer very interesting.
I'm thinking, earth, parched dry, expansive, earth colors, pigments, rocks,
that the figure is part of the earth. drips, melting, merging.
lovers entwined, fusing, old, eternal, whats love? not the surface but in and under, beneath.
woman beaten down, exhausted by shouting, screaming, but never beaing heard, throat parched, dry earth.
loosing, loosing, frustration, empty, full.

back from france

helloooo I'm back from France now..
Well the open studios was a unmitigated flop, I put up little expo signs and a huge banner and the very lovely flags I had had made.
- but there was no new La Route des Ateliers d’Art en Suisse Normande flyer this year.
-Perhaps something was lost in the translation - I thought that there would be a new one and the organizer thought that not enough new people had joined and there were lots of flyers left from last year so...
Anyway it meant we sorted out the room, and the other people in the village seem to be pleased to have their very own artist and some of them came to look. I also had two weekends in the little gallery at Thury Harcourt, oooh how slowly a couple of hours can go, but I got a couple of little bits in the local paper..