maybe it's just me, but when a painting bugs me then i have to return to it, not write it off and move on. i turned this painting, marsh, upside down, then slowly obliterated the moss-like green colour (which i quite liked but there was too much of it), into a more watery, faded, softer blue-green. the same bronze-green lower ground shfted in visual perception to a dark bluish hue in contrast.all paintings need to be lived with, and this painting (having returned from an exhibition in london in early january - a solo exhibition of ten of my paintings at centrepoint) needed more glazes of colour, to lighten and darken, controlled by the nuances of texture, concealing and revealing, until the middle merged quietly as originally planned (although now it is much more difficult to photograph).
and then into a deep white wood frame, as sometimes canvas edges should not be seen, as it is obviously just a canvas, nothing more.. but contained within a box it becomes like an object contained for forensic examination, a simple specimen of life magnified, in macro..
[edgescape marsh, 90cm x 90cm]i've entered this painting, marsh, into an open art exhibition, and this year i feel bold enough to say right here that i am feeling quite hopeful (the power of positive thinking - i can, i will). i have entered paintings into this art exhibition twice before: 2006 (lucky), and 2008 (unlucky), so perhaps for me this art event is a biennale.and now for some painting details, zooming in...
i have been thinking about colourfield painting and painters (i am not one, although my work has in the past been described as abstract colour fields in the minimalist tradition) and the northern European tradition of landscape genre painting, and if there is any land between the two genres that i can align my own artistic beliefs to.i want my work to have a genuine essence of place, a sense of purpose, drawn from memory and observation, not mere accidents of processes or random mark-making... finding clarity within the process of abstraction, stripped of extraneous data, the pure sensation of seeing, mesmerising through the slow traversal of surfaces, both lost and found for a brief moment in time, a view half-remembered, recollected, reflected, refracted, as if seen through a frosted window, or painterly swathes of mist, condensation on glass, water-reflected - eyes see more with a restricted view...a desire to paint it is only part of the process, it's about making it truthful and believable (this is my aim), a reinvention or interpretation, reconstructed from memory and experience. an artist should know at what stage a painting works, when the 'abstracted' message is sent and received.and if this painting does not get accepted? then, much like the misty, boggy marshes which inspired it, it will be a low, transitional place, occasionally submerged by doubt, affected by the shifting tides of taste - if not this time, then soon..see the finished painting with the other paintings in the edgescapes series.