exploring the figure, a different look at life painting

So, what am I trying to discover? Here I am exploring, the interaction between model and artist, the model not being a 'thing', (I find no need for a naked person.) The model being a human, a person, Not Passive! The figure, not a specific gender, and the model in the space. In these paintings I am removing the colour to see how the paint and form intersects, trying to explore how the air is displaced. Also I am trying to discover, a sort of inner person, an inner energy that embodies the form and arches across the room to create a dialoge between artist and model that encompasses the time we take..... sort of thing.....I am trying to get the feelings I get in my gestural drawings. The paint is quite thick, but not thick enough, - perhaps when I have made more I will revisit these poses and make the paint thicker.

isolation

I was saying to various people how I am enjoying the lockdown... But it just isn't the same experience for everyone, After talking to some people, I realised that isolating is taking an emotional toll on many people, this is my response to that.

Oil on canvas, 100x80 cm 

Black Lives Matter

When Blue and I initially began this a few weeks ago now, we were thinking of the claws of birds struggling. (I had been exploring this since seeing the Elizabeth Frink exhibition at the Sainsbury center in Norwich last year) 

On the way to the studio, Blue had seen a dead baby bird, so when I asked her to pose like this, she was thinking of the juxtaposition of the spring, the life bursting forth and the little, futile, broken claws. 

This is why we like to work together, after all these years, she just gets what I am trying to say. 

So, I re worked it, a few times. 

Then the terrible, distressing, upsetting, infuriating events unfolded. At the weekend we were both at the protest in Ipswich. 

The more I looked at this work in progress, the more I saw how it could represent an aspect of black lives matter.

This week I reworked it again, mainly the hands, and how the backround worked.

When I work from the model I am exploring the figure and my thoughts, and what is going on around me. 

so back to the studio again.

Just finished this...

Fading, 100 x 100cm oil on canvas

Isolation 50 x 50 cm oil on canvas

so you can see the size.

Quick update. So did a couple of the view from the house... the weeks passed, and the forsythia flowers faded and went, but I captured them with golden paint. Actually, the painting was a struggle... too little detail, then too much, (at one time it was like a picture for a jigsaw puzzle, very nice n all that but sooo bland...) anyway I made the paint thicker and thicker till I rediscovered my voice.

This is Forsythia and Sunlight.100 x 80cm
oil on canvas




then I did this...Trancycarpus and Ferns also 100 x 80 cm oil on canvas.

its bloody hard to get the paint really thick!!!!!

Then...enough with the plants... I missed painting people...

So, I took everything back in the studio.

 I had planned to work with Blue before lockdown as I said in my last post. Anyway a few weeks ago, she came and modelled for me in the studio...at a distance of course, and that work is ongoing. We explore what we are thinking, what we see...our response to the situation... And I am trying to move my work on from what I did before lockdown... the figure displaces the world around, it breathes and moves, this is not a look at a specific woman, here the figure is just a person. Also, my work with a model helps my work from photographs.

 

 Here is a taster. Its on going and I work over the pieces, but try to keep the energy and not make them necessarily accurate or recognisable...

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