'Surge (Yellow & Blue)'

'Surge (Yellow & Blue)'    30x40cms

We're done. An hour of looking and I added the yellow-line (on the right-edge above). Perversely I put it in to make A work because I felt the heavy yellow was slipping out of the picture.  What it has done, for me, is to make the landscape less literal and strengthens the inner-frame.  The lumps and bumps in the yellow have shifted in the night!

the three paintings made in Open Studios

A

B

I feel very lucky to have had two fantastic conversations about this new piece today, with Janie M McDonald at our shared studio and with Yvonne McCann online, where I posed the question about which way up the painting should be And why. All four ways were shown. Once again their analysis and observations were spot on. Both artists highlighted the neccessity of having the heavy yellow at the bottom but differed on which orientation. 

Yvonne talking about 'B': 'I love how the sweep of blue between the two yellow masses sails down and out. The bottom yellow creates a powerful foreground mass pulling from the flat to the 3D and back again' 

I'm still undecided- the painting may need a mark, a touch to convince. Athough linked to Porthleven, with the oncoming tide pouring through the gaps between piers, this piece is more about the idea of harbour rather than a specific place. Of containment. Of fragility. Of futility even, in the face of stronger forces. In B, the fragility of the inner frame seems more prominent, but is it too obvious a landscape?

I have four more small canvases, 40x30cms, same size as this one. I feel a series coming on.

Another week of Open Studios- bliss.

'Porthleven 27'

'Porthleven 27'  180cms x 60cms

Far, far stronger now - it's done. The verticality of the painting is reinforced by the stacked and levered curves and the long vertical line on the right, cutting through the paint. Much more movement. Poured pinks and purples shake up the colour, setting off the greens. The canvas divide is now integral, linking to the higher horizontal of the green pier. 

In a discussion about the painting, Janie M McDonald, commentated on how the green curve coming in from the left and the reverse curve of the purple made the painting appear 'hinged', 'with the possibility of flipping' where they join, as if the orange strip could flick backwards and forwards 'over and over as an animation..'

detail- 'hinge'

in the studio

4

I've been struggling with the shape and scale of this piece for the past few days, at 180 cms the largest painting yet in the Porthleven series. I feel I'm getting closer with the colour and harbour-shape (4) There is greater clarity but it's looking a bit too controlled. Much has been lost: the sea has gone backwards, the red/orange is too flat and the bottom panel feels a little disconnected.  I have in mind a fat, off vertical line of force- a slightly paler turquoise with streaks of pink- that runs from top to bottom of the canvas, crashing through the gaps between the piers.  It will bring life/light/movement if I get it right. I'll be re-drawing tomorrow and cutting/scraping through the paint to bring out the hidden colours and energise the surface.

3

2

1

'City of Glass 31- (A Study in Violet)'....interesting developments....

Monday 1 June


I have no doubts now- it is one piece, there is a massive design and subversions of reality, space and scale, rhythms of verticals and angles controlled by the horizontals. This morning, I made a few subtle changes to the figure, strengthening the drawing of the figure making a sharper angle of the flare of the coat on the left-side. Then I started to enjoy the painting. I had a great chat with Janie M McDonald  about the painting and it's connections to New York and the novel* The left side is elegant, sophisticated, the language of painting and abstraction, as Janie commented, 'a reflection of New York's glossy capitalist veneer' The right side is gritty, dark, menacing- the street. Just like the New York, the raw and the refined side by side.

This is going to be my entry for the John Moores Painting Prize.


Cleave: to separate, to join together..

A recurring theme throughout the series, the possibilities (and complications) of working with 2 canvases..

I need to redraw the head, arm and especially the hand tomorrow, but some exciting things happening ..it's full of movement. The anti-clockwise movement of centre yellow stripe, flicking upwards though the coat is counteracted by the clockwise movement of the black lines of the figure, linking to the violet-black curves in the top left corner via the black triangle on the bottom edge. Stillman returns - with the figure, the relationship with the title and Sherlock Holmes is more explicit...location and narrative fused together...the angled line along the East River becomes the angle of shadow on Stillman's coat....scale subverted....menacing...'Noir', an almost title..

A difficult choice- both paintings work alone but are they stronger together, a fusion of the figurative and the abstract?



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

'City of Glass 31- (A Study in Violet)'

'City of Glass 31 - (A Study in Violet)'    180x100cms

 

A reference/homage to 'A Study in Scarlet', the first Sherlock Holmes story - after all,  'City of Glass'* is a detective novel. The painting was originally worked as two canvases side by side, and planned as a much larger version of 'Celestial' with a less sweet blue/black sky. I had great problems dealing with the scale, lots of bitty areas, confusion.  After separation,  the colour-scheme was pared down,  the composition strengthened with the introduction of the violet/black stripe, an extended Central Park.  There are obvious connections with 'City of Glass 29- (The Space Between' and intriguing ambiguities. Is the violet stripe a sinister tower? A violet void - the entrance to the alley where 'detective' Quinn obsessively watches the entrance to the Stillman apartment? Love the play with the violet-black curves of Riverside Drive and the horizontal of 42nd St - in my eyes, the painting is exquisitely balanced. Perhaps because of the scale, the paint is less all-over heavy, with staining and transparent layerings bringing  areas of light to the piece.  

 

 

The main idea for my (unsuccessful) applications to the Pollack Krasner Foundation, Triangle Arts Association & the Tate St.Ives Residency, was to make a suite of paintings, each containing one of the letters that spell T.H.E.T.O.W.E.R.O.F.B.A.B.E.L. Maybe this is the first painting in that series within a series....(L).  Might need some funding though - these are substantial canvases! The concept still excites me, it is a piece I have to make, somehow, sometime. Because the 15 paintings will be arranged/hung with the greatest visual coherence, the letters will inevitably be all jumbled up, forcing the viewer, like Quinn, to discover the letters that spell T.H.E.T.O.W.E.R.O.F.B.A.B.E.L.

 

 

 

 

 

I am working in The Shire Hall Gallery at the Bodmin Visitors Centre for Open Studios, once again sharing a fantastic space with Janie M McDonald.  We are also both exhibiting a large selection of our work. Come see - we are there until 12 June.

 

 



 

 

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

 

 

'City of Glass 21 - (Nowhere)'



'City of Glass 21- (Nowhere)'      160x100cms

'By wandering aimlessly, all places became equal and it no longer mattered where he was. On his best walks, he was able to feel that he was nowhere. And this, finally, was all he ever asked of things: to be nowhere. New York was the nowhere he had built around himself, and he realised that he had no intention of ever leaving it again' 

The words of author/detective Daniel Quinn....*

Exploring blacks again- a rectangle of true/tube black in the bottom left corner- how to use colour to make it work...thoughts of Richard Diebenkorn's black/orange 'Ocean Park 133' and a black/orange Mark Surridge painting at his recent show at the Millenium Gallery...Manhattan fragmented, open, anonymous, nowhere, subjugated to the painting....

'Ocean Park 133'

It's Open Studios again at the Shire Hall Gallery in Bodmin, a fabulous space I'm sharing with Janie M McDonald. The dialogue has already begun.. Janie's loathing of the salmon pink led to the red found with an Alizarin glaze...I spent 3 hrs repainting the central green vertical with the difficult aim of getting a line with presence, a line that was straight but not perfect.....Denise saw the outline of a figure in the curves of the eastern shore...Quinn? Stillman?...the pursuer or the pursued?

Black is 'nowhere'

detail- COG 21

* P:4, 'The New York Trilogy' by Paul Auster