'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

'D.C. - (Diamond City)'

'D.C. - (Diamond City)'   168x132cms

I have enjoyed looking at this painting again in the studio, triggered by a recent re-reading of ' Shame the Devil' by George Pelecanos. He has written a brilliant series of crime novels set in Washington DC. I can't remember which particular novel I was reading, but this 2003 painting from the Americascapes series, originally highlighted the locations of all the murders, using the repeated motif of a gun. 

My own personal experience of Washington is non-existent - just a few minutes in the train-station! During my travels around the US, I had an Amtrak Railpass which was about to expire and I had to be back in New York by midnight, so when I got to Washington I had to stay on the train. In a sense, i have got to know the city through the novels of George Pelecanos. 

In my work, I have always been fascinated by the 'shapes of places' and the almost-diamond shape of Washington had to be taken on. In the hands of politicians, planners, cartographers, a few drawn lines on a map become reality- the diamond of Washington, the capital, distinct from all the rest. Even within the diamond, the city is divided into four quadrants, like a kite, NW, NE, SW, SE. shown in the detail below, and centered in the painting.

detail 1

I love the colour and the composition in this piece - the placement of the diamond - and the subversion of scale with the out-sized Washington Monument, whose angled top echoes the diamond. 

To give a true sense of scale- to help judge how big the city is - I've put in the runways of the Ronald Reagan Airport, close to the meeting of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers. 

detail 2

detail 3

'Arizona' and 'DC - (Diamond City)' at the Michael West Gallery

'A m e r i c a s c a p e s - 'California Zephyr' 210x70cms

The second of the Amtrak paintings.Of all the train journeys, this was the most varied and spectacular and my favourite- a 2 day journey from Chicago across the Rockies to San Francisco. Originally a panorama, the painting was transformed by switching of the format and the introduction up of the cactus. Lake Michgan, at the top, is massively scaled-up, it's like an ocean, which is how it seems when you're in Chicago. There are delicious plays between the right-side of the cactus and the meandering trainline and between the cactus and the skyscraper shape formed by the shapes of the states on the right side of the canvas.......

The roots of the 'City of Glass' series are in this painting

 

'Maine', 'Crescent' & 'California Zephyr' at the Michael West Gallery, Quay Arts

 

 

 

'Arizona - (after Don deLillo's 'Underworld)' 168x132cms

One of my  'A m e r i c a s c a p e s'  series and one of the strongest paintings of my career,  Now the children have grown up a bit, might risk putting it on the stairs....

 

In 1997, I was awarded a Boise Travel Scholarship from the Slade School of Art and made a series of train journeys around the US before painting for 2 months in a barn (belonging to sculptor Jon Isherwood) in upstate New York.  On my travels, I took a detour to the Grand Canyon where I had an incredible, sublime moment: alone on the edge of a promontory, in a jaw-dropping landscape, buzzards flying overhead, total silence.....

 

As an artist, how do you deal with that grandeur, that overwhelming visual, physical experience?  Like the 'City of Glass' series where I had problems dealing with the scale and familiarity of New York, I found my way in through a novel, this time with Don deLillo's 'Underworld'. 

 

There is a passage where the main character Nick Shay, visits an artist friend of his from New York who is making an artwork at an air base in the Arizona desert. It's not an active base, it's where the US airforce keep their decommissioned B52 bombers, rows upon rows of them, neatly parked. The artist and her team of assistants are systematically stripping the silver paint from the aircraft and then repainting them in wild, vivid colours. Of course, it's a piece that can only be seen from the air, and as a birthday treat Nick and his wife see the artwork from a hot air balloon, a fantastic passage on p:83, where through Nick's eyes you are seeing a painting, the like of which you can never have imagined.  

 

I was mesmerised by the scale and ambition and beauty of the (fictitious) artwork- in an interview, the artist talks about the desert being the frame - and it resonated with my experience at the Grand Canyon.  

 

''This is a landscape painting in which we use the landscape itself. the desert is central to his piece. It's the surround. It's the framing device. It's the four-part horizon.'' 

Artist Klara Sax, p:70, 'Underworld'

 

In the painting there is so much space and heat, the white, blank canvas of Mexico the hottest part. In the top right corner is the image of the B52's, and in the spirit of the novel, although ordered in rows, each is different, individualised, 'decommissioned' from their military identity.  There are fifty aircraft, one for each state, and if you tilt your head you can see the deliberate link to the American flag. Scratched into the paint, is a very subtle trainline, ending at the powerful dot of Flagstaff where you catch the bus to the canyon.....

 

 

Detail- B52 bombers


 

'Arizona' & 'D.C.(Diamond City)' at the Michael West Gallery