'City of Glass 38 - (I know who I am)'

'City of Glass' 41- (I know who I am)'  113x77cms

SEPTEMBER

This painting now has a new City of Glass number- 38

WEDNESDAY 16 MARCH

I have sat in my chair for an hour, looking and enjoying this piece. There is already a soft, subtle curve to the right of the rose line- there is no need to embellish. This paintings' links to the novel may be obscure, but after the (deliberate) claustrophobia of the last two paintings in the series, it represents a state of mind, a renewal..it's a good place to be. It's done.

TUESDAY 12 MARCH

An online dialogue about the painting with the Freedom in Painting Group helped clarify my thoughts on the title.  

A tale of obsession has become my obsession (in a good way)

SUNDAY13 MARCH

This is more like it...much more exciting...it's a space, a place (of escape)....the horizontals now all doing a job for the painting, the canvas-divide critical, the rose vertical - a signature- holding it all together. A grid has emerged not forced, open...the Ying/Yang of the two circles, one colour, one outline, contributing incident, difference, movement... This piece looks different yet looks like one of my paintings. I am not interested in straight image anymore or jack-off gesturing - painting is deeper...there must be an edge,,a question..

I have been watching 'True Detective' again. A line springs to mind from Rust Cohle- (yet another fictional detective) - who has a very dark perspective on 'being' but has no time for posturing, hypocrisy, compromise, bullshit.... 'I know who I am'. 

This line could make a good title. in terms of the novel, it references Quinn's state of mind and freedom(?) when he finally leaves the 'locked-room' of the apartment on E69th St.

'The Locked Room' is the title of the third story in the Trilogy*. It is also the title of Episode 3 in 'True Detective'. It is also how I perceive the studio, where an artist must be alone with his/her thoughts and the piece. 

I may simply call it 'Grid'.

p.m.

SAT 12  MARCH  p.m.

I'm in a painting.

It's gone backwards since this morning  A loss of purity and spaciousness, I've been looking at the idea of messing with scale: a book on end casting a shadow, suggesting architecture, landscape or tabletop? Echoes of Morandi's monumental still-lives.,,just a bad illustration. The figure is going back in on the right side, casting the shadow.....The paint needs scraping back on the left, it's too heavy, fade it out, build up heaviness on the right, take it to the edge of the canvas...The colour, tone, angle, execution, presence, of the yellow on the left side is much more interesting below. I was trying to be too clever- lining up the angle with the angle at the top of the shadow.Mistake. The horizontal plane needs to more subtle, maybe a line....

just like this morning..back and forth....exploring ideas....what is this painting?

a.m.

SAT 12 MARCH a.m.

Starting out with a word, 'Shadow' and it's dual meaning (a cast shadow and the verb-to shadow, to follow...), A familiar motif- the figure of Stillman - and the continuing, elusive objective of having Stillman and a building/tower in the same painting without the figure looking giant.

Just working out colours and composition, the placement and scale of the elements in the painting. A horizontal - introduced to counteract the powerful vertical of the central canvas divide- becomes a table-top and an idea emerges....

The central pillar suggests a book which I am going to move to the right-edge of the painting,
a more exciting,more extreme composition. The figure can go..for now. 

*'The New York Trilogy', a novel by Paul Auster.

'City of Glass 40 - (Coat of Paint)'

'City of Glass 40 - (Coat of Paint))'   60x30cms

SATURDAY

A change of title, a more intriguing title that references the physicality of this piece, the act of painting and Tom Waits' song, 'New Coat of Paint', from 'The Heart of Saturday Night' one of my favourite and most played albums in the studio.

FRIDAY

'City of Glass 40 - (Riverside Park)'

A colour-exercise (1), preparing for the 'RED' workshop in Canterbury, becomes a painting. If there is red there is green, hence the unplanned title. If you are familiar with the novel*, Stillman, (and of course Quinn who is tailing him), spends a lot of time wandering in Riverside Park. 

Following the method of 'City of Glass 39 - (STILLMANBABEL)', Stillman was 'built' over the armature of a wooden tower (of Babel). Once again the intention was to remove the tower during the process but stuff happens - I felt no need. Another bald Stillman- in (2) he has lost his head! Next time I'll give him some hair.

1

2

*'The New York Trilogy' by Paul Auster

'Cape Cod & the Islands', 'Cape Cod', 'Nantucket'

'Cape Cod & the Islands'   60x80cms

At the midway point of my journeys around US on the Boise Travel Scholarship*, Denise came over for a couple of weeks and we drove to New England visiting Cape Cod, Nantucket and up the coast to Maine. After an aborted attempt to get a studio in New York, I took up the offer of working in the barn of sculptor Jon Isherwood in upstate New York. a great friend from Canterbury College of Art. The location was idyllic, with a view of the Catskills through the barn door. Jon and Helen were great hosts and critics too. An intense two months period of working followed, a critical period in my career. I was prolific, twenty odd paintings, including several large canvases. I worked in oils so had to return to the US a year later to build a crate around the paintings, before shipping them back to England.  My experiences in the US continued to inspire my work, becoming the 'A m e r i c a s c a p e s' series which was shown at the Woodlands Gallery, Morley Gallery and the Michael West Gallery.

'Cape Cod & the Islands' was shown at the Royal academy Summer Exhibition in 2011. Fall colours,...  boat-shaped Nantucket sails out of the painting....enjoying the range of paint, the journey from the flat wash in the top left through to the dense mass/weight of paint, colour, marks in the waters of Rhode Island. (below). Powerful in a different way is the second area of focus, the tiny pink tip of Cape Cod pulsating against the blue sea....the Atlantic shoreline is broken, water seeps into the land creating movement...

detail

Zooming in on Cape Cod in the next painting...love the colours of the water and the curved corner, echoing the shape of Cape Cod and the hook of Provincetown. The painting has an ambiguous space, the aerial viewpoint subverted by the receding scale of the boats, which help make Cape Cod almost vertical and sculptural. strangely anchored at the base.

'Cape Cod'   90x70cms

A colour-reversal in 'Nantucket': a mass of red-sea, perhaps influenced by Jon's barn where it was made. Colour and imagery are kept simple to highlight the amazing shape of the island- boat, sea-creature, moving through the water...

'Nantucket'   168x206cms

Two more favourite New England paintings from the 'Indian-Yellow' period! In 'New England', I particularly like the meandering outline of Maine against the lemon-sky (Canada). This painting has disappeared.

We never got to to Two Bush Island, I just liked the name. The painting is playful: location, image and the curious painter's space tucked behind the lighthouse. 

'New England'  60x50cms

'Two Bush Island Light, Maine'   25x35cms

* from the Slade School of Art