'Porthleven 24'

'Porthleven 24'  40x30cms

Thurs 19 November

Twist!  I dreamt about the painting, convinced there was something stronger to be found, making changes in my head. No hesitation this morning in the studio, straight in with the green triangle on the pink smear/pier. If you know Porthleven, the triangle is there, a piece of reality, a vertical triangle that creates a delicious dialogue with the horizontal plane of blue triangle. The green triangle is echoed by the green angled line of the slipway in the top left. Together, they imply a corner to corner diagonal movement across the painting. The large angled slab of hotter red cuts through the gap, linking to the procession of red rectangles up the right-side. 

detail

The final act, in the top left corner- a backhand slash with a loaded brush of cobalt/kings blue.

 I have answered some of questions, niggles from yesterday. The painting has moved on, it's a stronger piece, more complex, more context. Denise knew it wasn't finished! No explicit image but a place defined by a unique combination/concentration of angles and curves, structure and movement. Time to move on.

Wednesday

Wed 18 November

A looser painting- is it enough?  Could be a couple of lines away.....

Stick or twist? At any point in a painting there are a million options: choice- the next action- is dictated by knowledge, experience, intuition, emotion, curiosity, the idea, the subject. To 'stick' can be cowardice or exhaustion, the feeling of being painted out or it can be the bravest option. One hopes that to 'twist' is a sincere belief that there is a stronger painting to be found but can also be impatience or boredom, a failure to look, to see, to fully understand the piece.

It's the timeless conflict between freedom and control.

‘If there is too much order, it is dead; if there is too much chaos, it doesn’t cohere. I’m continually negotiating between these two extremes.’    Anselm Keifer

So what's going on with this piece?What are the options if I twist?  I love the duality/ambiguity of the blue triangle, its' purity and clarity as a colour and its description of form, the horizontal plane of the pier. You may not see that or care, you may enjoy the painting as sensation, as colour and marks interacting, but for me this mark is special, an ideal I am looking for, the tipping point where a mark, a piece of paint has a context, a possibility of being something concrete and experienced, without illustration. 

Do I need to introduce line here and there, a bit of drawing, to further hint or transform the paint into 'something'? 

Should I bring in 'image?- perhaps the vertical element of the iconic clocktower up the right hand side to subvert scale and mess up the space (though a familiar space in my work)

Should I have a slash of blue in the top left to imply sky or accentuate/repeat the motif of triangles? 

Or will all the above weaken the power and purity of the blue triangle? 

Stick or twist.