'City of Glass 35 - (Village Green)'

'City of Glass 34 - Village Green)'   70x70cms

1 OCTOBER 16

Close!    'Selected Not Hung' at the RWA Open in Bristol. New images below of work in progress, from the 'illustration' of the harbour in Porthleven into a painting


24 JANUARY 16

4.30 p.m.

More clarity by extending pink border/frame to top corner. Is this it?

2 p,m.

I think I'm there. I am enjoying the reworked shapes and the warmer colours that were introduced- the earlier version below felt too crude, the palette cold, cold, cold. There is an in-and-outness about the grid that I like- sometimes linear and forward, other times 'shape' and locked, with colour creating the space. The rectangle of Washington Square is now strong, tucked amongst the pinks in the bottom right corner. The green is based a Michael Harding paint, Bright Green Lake- beware! The top section is indulgence - I enjoyed making this mark. The gestural paint and blue slash continues the movement of the fast pink marks on the right around the canvas, helping isolate the painting within a painting, the large shape of the grid. 

Denise wasn't sure about the painting, thinking it too complicated, and suggested taking out the line of 8th Ave, below 23rdSt. It's made a great difference, opening up the painting and revealing the green semi-circle more. The different thing about this painting? Not a single drip.

Quinn's walk from the novel is there*: initially a strong dotted line, I've gone for subtle. There is a trace if you know where to look (see description below)

'Village Green' is quintessentially English: do New Yorkers use the phrase?

This much worked canvas has had many lives but never gained priority or favour. A sparse, abstract demonstration painting from the Portheven workshop tentatively became a painting about Porthleven itself before becoming an enjoyment of colour, shape and paint, with that first exercise providing the palette. 

To be honest I didn't know what to do with it but seeing it on the wall after a break of a few weeks, with fresh eyes, I immediately  hooked onto the pink triangle, my entry into the latest City of Glass painting. It is the 'Chelsea Triangle', formed by 24th St, and 11th and 12th Aves which I seem to have highlighted in many of the paintings in the series. My first thought was to balance the triangle with the green rectangle of Washington Square in the bottom right corner, hence the title. I'll have to fix the shape and make it a powerful green to take attention away from the pink triangle, still, in my eyes, the dominant element in the painting. 

I like how the quadrilateral sits within the square, with faster marks and movement around. Organic shapes undermine the severity of the grid and the less-disciplined streets below 14thSt gives scope for angles, zigzags, real and fictitious, giving more movement.

Washington Square features in the novel, part of Quinn's meticulously described walk on pages 106-112. ...down 5th Ave to the Flatiron Building, west along 23rdSt, left down 7th Ave to Sheridan Square, then along Waverley place to Washington Square. 

Quinn's walk will be plotted on the painting- it has to be there, it just a question of how strong or subtle it has to be in terms of the painting. 

Here we go. 

*'The New York Trilogy' by Paul Auster

'City of Glass 19 - (Park Avenue)' 200x60cms

 

It's been a good week- I have a new painting and City of Glass 6 & 13 have been shortlisted for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. Fingers crossed.

The third tower-shaped painting in the City of Glass series. The shift in this piece is that the verticals of the avenues extend beyond Manhattan to the edges of the canvas: the grid of the streets connecting to the grid of the building. I am enjoying the verticality and the subtle rhythms of angles and triangles around the painting but most of all I am enjoying the colour, the new blues and greys and reds.  There are intriguing shifts in perception: what am I looking at? The view from the air, the view on the ground, an incredible giant tower, bigger than Manhattan. Is it one image or two? Is the tower solid or transparent, made of glass?  Is the image of the island shape of Manhattan seen through the tower, or is it in front of the tower,  or part of the tower, or outlandishly, painted on the tower like a giant mural? I think it is a new kind of space, slightly disorientating...

In spite of the colour, the tower- the new Babel- is oppressive, which is what I want. It has the feel of the tower of the Salvation Army training camp in Camberwell - maybe it is because there are no windows!

For a long while there was no title, which always worries me: it's an indication that I didn't yet know what the painting is about. Because of the emphasis on the verticals, towards the end the favourite was 'The Vertical City'. This changed when I put in Washington Square with a fantastic pink made from Fanchon Red by Williamsburg Paint - at one point this small rectangle was the strongest thing in the painting, not just the colour but also all the lines firing in.  But even this couldn't compete with the long red stripe against the blue, a colour heaven that grips the eyes.  

 



My daughter Faye said it was her favourite painting in the series. She immediately zoomed in on the saturated colours flanking Park Avenue, confirming the choice of title. (Park Ave is also, of course, significant to the novel*). Denise was missing a particular blue that had been mainly painted out and she wanted it back! I went back in the studio and added some more blues, especially to the bottom canvas, and it's made a big difference.  Thank-you girls!  Ollie likes the vertical lines carved into the paint.

The soundtrack for the painting was 'Five Leaves Left' by Nick Drake. Beautiful.

* 'The New York Trilogy' by Paul Auster.