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| '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'.
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| 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?
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| 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.
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