« February 2005 | Main | April 2005 »
March 30, 2005
walking
For years I’ve wanted to paint a walking figure. I started by wanting to paint a standing figure, and I’m getting there with that; but a walking figure is harder. To get the sense of movement and power is difficult.
Walking is about being out of balance. Standing is in balance, everything is in equilibrium. To start walking you must move out of that equilibrium and start to fall; then the leg goes out, the fall is stopped and [hey] you’ve moved forward a bit. Walking is falling and stopping, falling and stopping, in balance out of balance.
The figure looks awkward for most of the walking movement. I’m trying to catch just the beginning or end of the out of balance bit.
Eventually I’ll paint a running figure,
but I don’t want to run before I can walk.
Posted by john at 09:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 27, 2005
not all painting
It's not all painting. The frustrations of the visual battle to get down what I feel is often lost and I have to resort to other means to try and express my feelings. I write a lot, and my friend Rachel said I should write three sides of A4 every morning. So I did and this is the result:
A long scribble with a thick pencil.
If you can't read it try this:
Still can't read it? Well, I guess, that's all part of the parcel. But I said it all and felt better and it cleared the way for some more painting.
I recommend Rachel's Remedy: write out three sides of A4 every morning - say all you feel.
Posted by john at 04:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 25, 2005
life in the studio
A busy week painting and drawing; working on exisiting pieces and starting new ones. I work on several pictures at once, so that none get 'flat'. Work too long on a piece and it will lose its energy.
I'm working on about eight pictures at the moment, plus some illustrations for a book on Dick Turpin [which is another story for another time]. More about the pictures I'm working here.
It can be frustrating as the models come and go and I want to paint more and more of each of them. But it's better to have too much work and too many ideas than not enough of either, I guess.
The more I paint the more I want to paint. When I am with oil-struck brushes in hand, looking at the play of light on a figure, I see more and more and feel like I am flying and could paint for ever. The truth is I get exhausted, and when the model's gone I usually collapse in the big chair and sleep for 25 minutes.
No more - just twenty five minutes.
Posted by john at 04:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 22, 2005
cutting the mustard
As I get close to the edge I am letting go. My rational brain tells me to keep well away from the edge. It’s not safe! You may fall! My emotionally inquisitive brain tells me to go further, to get as close as I can to the edge, regardless of the dangers. It’s a balance between skill and passion.
Like when you lean back on a bar stool, balancing on the back legs, and sway slightly back and forth then suddenly missing a beat and dropping and catching yourself before you fall. I don’t want a drawing to look ‘perfect’ or ‘finished’, I want it to look like it might not work, I want it to look messy, I want it to be slightly flawed, I want it to have life.
Apollinaire said
“Come to the edge”
“It is too high”
“Come to the edge”
“We might fall”
“Come to the edge”
And they came
And he pushed them
And they flew
Anonymous
Posted by john at 05:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 20, 2005
cutting the edge
Not enough to look and see, and draw [though that’s a whole good thing in itself] I want more. I want to cut the edge. I want to get as close as I can to the feelings I have and then, surrounded and saturated by them, make marks. And only then, I think, will the marks be sound.
It’s not easy, and often confusing for the model, but it’s about getting close to the edge of physicality. I want to get close to the real thing, a real physicality, a presence. Not just an impression, not just dressing up.
Posted by john at 03:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 18, 2005
Collections of significant stuff
A lot of art these days consists of collections of stuff that the artist considers is somehow significant.
Time was, artists would create pictures of things they thought were significant. Or, long times ago, that the church thought were significant. Things would be collected together and assembled into a composition on a canvas.
Then artists started collecting things together and putting them into boxes. Now they just collect things together and leave them on the gallery floor. Presumably cleaned up after the show.
Posted by john at 01:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The racks
Seldom seen often talked about.
This is where the paintings go to vout for a while. Where they go to rest when I've painted them. Where I leave them, abandoned, for weeks on end, then pull one out and look at it, and see what needs to be done.
Posted by john at 01:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 15, 2005
angry marks
Now sometimes I make angry marks, oh yes, which, at the time, serve to obliterate something I think is utterly bad; but which subsequently serve to give the picture a certain energy and passion. Again I am happy to say: “this is a painting,” in a de-constructuralist way. I don’t want to hide the tricks under a whole heap of subtle subterfuge.
Let the brush strokes act as signifiers, I say!
Posted by john at 12:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
nervous marks
“You can always tell a great painting because when you get close there are all these nervous marks.” Damien Hirst quoted in The Times yesterday.
I certainly feel a sense of trepidation when setting off on the long journey of a painting. But when I’m actually making the marks I can’t say I feel nervous. I am searching for a means to convey what I’m seeing. I am trying to do something, not just pushing paint. When you try you don’t always succeed and the record of my success and failure is in the painting.
A great painting has nervous marks because a great painting is one that is expressing an emotion, and it’s not an easy feat.
Incidentally Damien Hirst went to school with Daphne Franks' brother.
Posted by john at 10:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 12, 2005
Not painting a portrait
Painting a portrait is difficult. It’s an achievement arranging a series of colours and tones on a panel and have it look like a face. To make it look like someone in particular [the sitter, ideally] is even more tricky.
But if you can arrange a series of colours and tones on a panel such that it doesn’t look like the sitter, that’s good going. It’s a positive thing in itself: to definitely not look like someone in particular, the mere fact that the viewer can say it doesn’t look like Holly is a start.
All I need to do then is move the colours and tones around a bit until it does look like Holly. The downside of this argument is that there are considerably more faces that don’t look like Holly. So statistically I’m bound to spend a long time with a painting that doesn’t look like the sitter.
“And I haven’t sent the two Messengers, either. They’re both gone into town. Just look along the road, and tell me if you can see either of them.”
“I see nobody on the road,” said Alice.
“I only wish I had such eyes,” the King remarked in a fretful tone. “To be able to see Nobody! And at that distance too!”
Through the Looking Glass and what Alice found there.
by Lewis Carroll
Posted by john at 08:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 10, 2005
A physical thing
It is a physical thing. It’s about the way I stand, what I wear and, perhaps understandably, how I feel. There is, when the time is right – when everything is pointing in the right direction [when God’s telescope is finally in focus] an incredibly powerful energy about this painting lark.
It’s about being there, it’s about skin and bone, it’s about flesh and blood. It’s the actuality of life, not about make-up or newspapers or photographs of moments when you aren’t really who you are but someone between two points of existence.
It’s not about looking at films about climbing but about tearing the skin on your knuckles. It’s not drawing cats. It’s about brushing an elephant’s toe nails and respecting the enormous weight of physical presence that could snuff you out in a blink or suck the fingers off your hand as you feed her a carrot. It’s about red pants not about baseball bats.
And here, in the studio, it’s a physical thing. The painting is physical, the slapping on of oil paint, the mixing of paint, the standing figure, standing there, for me to paint. How amazingly glorious.
Posted by john at 08:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 08, 2005
passion or skill?
Which is the more important, passion or skill? Undoubtedly skill with no passion is just pushing paint. But passion without the skill to communicate it can be just as pointless. As with everything on-board Spaceship Earth, it’s a balance.
I need skill because my passion for the body needs skill to communicate what I feel. I don’t feel messy and scratchy and woolly about the body. I feel sublimely seduced by its gentle form and powerful presence; and to get that down on a panel in paint or on paper with charcoal demands a degree of skill.
I admit that too much skill can stifle the passion, and I have to let go often. Drawing in particular I can be led down the path of objectivity all too easily. So instead of an HB pencil all pointy-sharp and accurate I go for the charcoal which serves to confound the parts of the brain that would wish to label everything as fixed and generally nail the lid shut.
Choose your medium wisely, let your skill express your passion.
Posted by john at 10:17 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 04, 2005
nearly getting there
But like the ever receding summit of a hard mountain, the nearer I get to feeling I’m getting somewhere the further there seems to go to get there. Though I don’t seem to lose the hope that I will get there in the end. Where there is I don’t know, it’s just a feeling I have in my bones.
To continue the mountaineering metaphor for a moment, you can’t climb a mountain by standing still, nor is the direct route always the easiest - I know I’ve tried. You just have to keep going, along whatever way presents itself. So I’ll just keep on doing what I’m doing and, like the man who’s just bitten his tongue, you can’t say fairer than that then.
Posted by john at 08:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 03, 2005
Sol LeWitt's drawing
Buried somewhere in the juicy heart of Alan Fletcher's fantastic book "The Art Of Looking Sideways" is a story about Sol LeWitt selling, for tens of thousands of dollars, at an auction in New York, the right for the purchaser to draw 11,000 pencil lines on a wall. It would be a Sol LeWitt work, but Sol LeWitt didn't do it, he just had the idea and sold that. Nice work if you can get it. Mind you Bridget Riley didn't paint a lot of her paintings, and as for Titian - well! He had a studio full of assistants doing drapery and grass and clouds and such. Your man often only did hands and faces.
I can talk, as I write, Rosie, my studio assistant is busy painting for me:
Posted by john at 04:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
What Jim Dine does with his own drawings
If Jim Dine does a good drawing he'll rub it out, on the pretext that if he's done it well the first time he'll do it better the second. Jim Dine is clearly a brave man and extremely talented - this helps.
Posted by john at 03:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
what rauschenberg did to a de kooning drawing
Rubbed it out.
In 1953 Robert Rauschenberg bought a Williem De Kooning drawing, rubbed it out and sold it as his own work entitled "Erased De Kooning Drawing" - eat your heart out Tracey and Co.
Posted by john at 03:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
What blake said about constable’s drawing
On seeing a drawing of an avenue of trees by Constable, Blake said:
“Why, this is not drawing, but inspiration!”
Constable replied:
“I never knew it before; I meant it for drawing.”
Posted by john at 03:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 02, 2005
WHAT INGRES SAID ABOUT DRAWING
"Drawing is the true test of art - it is the ultimate mystery. To render an object in pencil is still a wonder to behold"
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Posted by john at 06:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
drawing
There is no substitute, when it comes to training the eye to see, for drawing. Looking, and putting down marks that not only correspond to the collection of features in front of me, but also marks that have a lightness of touch and singularity of purpose.
The marks shouldn’t overpower the image, the marks shouldn’t dominate. The image is the thing. That’s not to say I want to lose the marks altogether, because I don’t. I want the marks of the charcoal to be there just as I want the brush strokes to be there. I don’t want to pretend it isn’t a drawing. It’s the way the marks are made that give the drawing life.
Posted by john at 05:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack