So I have started the painting of my life! (Hyperbole accepted). This is the first time I have worked on a large canvas (by my standards) and I’m enjoying the elbow room that this gives me. This first phase is just about laying down tonal zones and general draughtsmanship (Please don’t laugh). As I was painting another idea has come into my head and hopefully I will have the skills to make this idea come into fruition.
The fault is not… in our stars but in ourselves
Since completing the recent series of paintings I have been at a loss as to how and where to go forward with my art. One thought that I explored was to try and develop some form of urban sketching practice. (Actually explore is over blowing things somewhat – no wait a over bowing things a lot – I made a few half hearted attempts at making something which never really left me with anything other than perfunctory sense of satisfaction. They really aren’t me.) This doesn’t mean that I won’t continue but rather I’m not motivated to make such images.
Whilst urban landscapes or landscapes in general are fascinating the thing that motivates me to create art is the human form and portraiture , which I guess are really two side of the same coin. For too many years I have been interested in prehistory and more recently the place that art took in the life of the prehistoric people. ( I have to say I do not like the term ‘prehistoric’ because it suggests some form of inferiority on the part of the people who would be considered ‘prehistoric’. This is nonsense. The only difference between the prehistoric people and 21st century people is experience and time. Apart from that we are the same people with the same capacities with one exception – we write things down and the prehistoric people didn’t – hence the name. If you don’t believe me then just look how some people in the USA are reacting to the marginal threat posed by Ebola. For all our learning and experience irrationality and fear rule our lives – now as then.)
So what are was produced in the pre classical world? (still not happy with this but it will do for now) Well the best guess is that fertility was upper most on the minds. A word of warning here as it may well be that the professional artists, and there does seem to be evidence that such people existed who solely created art and, for what ever reason, were supported by the rest of people, may have been men, so male predilections may have come to dominate the surviving art. In short the earth goddess, who’s rounded form, was celebrated above anything else, which is in stark contrast to the stupid pursuit of the perfect female form nowadays which has nothing to do with how real women look like. In fact the pre classical world’s view of women seems to be more mature than ours. I am sure any anthologist who might read that last statement may not agree but I’m discussing how the creative precess works for me.
Another continuing theme has been the ‘Green Man‘. This is an old tradition in Britain who’s antecedence may reach back into pre classical times. The Green Man would appear to be some form of person who is part of or intertwined with the forest. Whether he is some form of deity is unclear but he would appear to be supernatural.
So how do these things intertwine? Well I have an idea for a painting which the more I think about the more excited I get – a mother earth painting which celebrates the positives of life rather than the negative feelings generated by the Grey series. The only problem I have is that I suspect the painting may well be beyond my current skill levels. However, there is only one way to find out and that is to do it.
Wish me luck…I suspect there are many blog entries to come where I will be a gibbering wreak as my great plans fall about my – synch is life.
What is there is say about Peterborough? It is what it is – a new town plonked on top of a small market town on the edge of the Cambridgeshire fens. It has a huge medieval cathedral that during the medieval period hovered up the remains of all the local earlier Anglo Saxon saints relics and used them to create a thriving pilgrimage industry.
The reason for my visit was to sort out my new passport which was simplicity itself and after the trauma I felt when I realised I had lost it and the subsequent misinformation by the British Embassy in Paris it really was an anti climax.
As for the image it is one that I captured a couple of years ago at the local museum and art gallery.
There that is it, there is nothing else I can say about Peterborough – it is what it is…
We all have them I know but it just seems that the older you get the more frequent are the bibbly bobbly days. If you went to your Doctor and said that you were feeling bibbly bobbly he/she would no doubt show you the door. But we all have them when something is not right but nothing at all to worry about. Another way to describe the feeling is that you got out of the wrong side of the bed. The great thing about these days is that the pass and I feel a whole lot better once they do.
I was listening to a radio programme this morning about Albrecht Dürer and how he has not been bettered by engraver since he died. However, his talent was aided by where he was brought up in Nuremberg where there was a tradition of metal working and clock making – all the skills required to make engravings – along with prodigious talent of course. At the same time I have started to read there biography of Steve Jobs and again circumstances aided his rise as he was brought up in the middle of burgeoning electronic industry in California. Which both these ideas floating around in my head I wondered how many other Dürers or Jobs there might have been in history who were not born in the right place at the right time. We will never know.
So there I was sitting in the park whilst the students walked to and from University. I’ve never really under stood that – 10am in the morning and students are walking away from University? Anyway, another pop at this urban sketching idea and boy was it difficult. Firstly, the weather has changed, whereas yesterday a warm stiff breeze was blowing today the wind was no longer warm and has picked up force. The result of this was that the pages of my sketchbook were blowing all over the place and very quickly I started to feel the cold. In the end there was nothing for it but to beat a retreat to a local coffee shop to finish what I had started in the back end of a hurricane that had blown across the Atlantic.
As I sipped my coffee I started to wonder about the thorny problem of truth in an image. In the sketch I made I deliberately moved the buildings closer together for dramatic reasons – does that matter? On one level of course it doesn’t as anyone who has looked at any landscape painting or drawing – the artist always moves things around for effect. Yet if you examine some of the Urban Skechers drawings and paintings it is impossible to think that they deliberately try and make as accurate a drawing as possible. So which is the way forward? Well for me it is the former than the latter – it’s my drawing and I’ll do what the hell I like with the content – I’ve spent too many years trying to conform to anally retentive photographic rules to let these things creep into my art.
Just to demonstrate that there is no real image here are two variations on a theme from yesterdays more clement weather – which is the real image?
For a while now I’ve been following the work of Urban Sketchers on Pinterest. The whole idea of making art on the hoof appealed to me (also the outstanding skill levels demonstrated was exceptional). I have tried to do this in the past and on the whole it has fallen flat but there is only one way to crack anything, especially in art, is to worry it and keep working at it until something starts to fall into place which lead me this morning to the Leicester Museum and Art Gallery.
Whilst there are many things wrong with this it still has a feel for where I was sitting when I drew this and I feel I am starting to make some progress. I wonder where this will take me?
This morning I suddenly had this urge to create a drawing of some description and this was the result. It felt like a dam had been released.
As contrast to the rather portly fellow above I made this drawing yesterday – I really can’t think of a great contrast.
It is over two years since I moved to the iMac and I still can’t get my head around their OS naming system – I much prefer the v10.9 et al than these pointless names. It gets even worse when we come to updates which become 10.9.x etc. Anyway besides this nonsense I have to wonder whether to update to Yosemite? A friend of mine and long time power user of Mac’s says that you should give it a few weeks so that they can iron out the bugs. This always makes me smile as Apple are developing within a closed system when compared to Windows and yet they still have bugs and faults. I think I’ll sleep on it.
Busy busy afternoon – the new frames arrived so out with the varnish and get the paintings framed – really quite satisfying.
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