i have spent the last few days preparing for my little open studio weekend, as a new participating artist in the Suffolk Open Studios.
i probably left things a little late as usual, having got bogged down with other work, and thus i have not promoted it very well at all... the issue being that when i decided i would participate it was back in november when there were no exhibitions on the horizon...
so, a bit of a declutter was required downstairs, and out rolled the large paintings (at which point i realise it would be so very nice to live in a much larger house), paintings which i have talked about in this blog, but they rarely get a public airing together - i am hoping some of these edgescape paintings will go into a show that is coming up soon...
here are four square farmscapes, shown here formally separated and re-modulated, as a sequence - it wasn't them, it was me... i just didn't gel with the long, wide enclosure of a frame.. this was a bit of a grey period in our relationship, but we're all fine about it now - yes really, it's all worked out very much for the best... i envision a continuous line of these, perhaps spanning all fours walls of a room - but yet again, i am just day-dreaming...it's a curious thing the artist's open studio; in the days before the advent of commercial galleries, they were places in which to court with rich patrons and art collectors, large rooms decked out with their finest examples of work, fancy drapes, chairs, screens and so forth, with a nice tipple or two, the social hub of the life of the artist... for some reason, artists moved from the luxury of the downstairs studio parlour to upstairs in the attic, perhaps on the floors up establishing their own art school or academy (eg. Rembrandt). the artist seemed to get a tad existential cooped-up in the attic all day and night - absorbed with the self, still lives, views from the window, the resident model or muse... i guess that one doesn't need the perfect artist studio in which to create; take Francis Bacon for example... and Jeremy Deller's 'studio' looks more like a teenager's bedroom...anyhow, i had a small flurry of very nice visitors this afternoon - if i knew they were all coming i would have baked a cake (i do have a penchant for tea and cake)... had a bit of a 'creed' moment with the blu-tac whilst talking about my work... i also had to remind myself it might be unwise to say etchings and upstairs in the same sentence, even though my etchings were indeed upstairs... here is a sneaky peek into the print room...
some prints and small canvases found new owners, which has done much to lighten my despondent moods of late... i have also, this past week, begun work on two large canvases (although i would prefer to work on panels, if such a choice were financially viable), based on lichens; expect my knowledge of latin plant names to improve considerably...
some interesting textures on canvas...here is another supersize print-out from one of my lichen photographs...
i had a fantasy/idea that i would like to do each square at a metre wide. clearly, Mr. Hockney is exerting great influence on me, as he has done since i was a teenager - the first art book i ever bought with my own money was David Hockney by David Hockney... i'm not elitist in my art reading; i recently bought this 1962 art instruction book from a charity shop (seems to be my favourite haunt these days) for the princely sum of £2...
[some required 'light' summer reading...]this 'basic course in art' aims [to present] a course of studies in creative work which will deal with various aspects of sensory experience. If rightly used it can provide plenty of opportunity for the development of aesthetic sensibility'... i just love the use of language; for example, in the chapter 'experiment with textures', the author stresses: 'It is still true that insensitivity to surface qualities tends to be a defect of those who live in cities and this is an aspect of art education that should not be neglected.' i'm quite safe then, as a naturalised, country bumpkin...i actually think it's rather good, taking its lead from the formalist teachings of the Bauhaus but within a more experiential discovery mode of learning... and it comes highly recommended by Herbert Read, no less: 'What the student learns in a basic course is a new language, a language of forms. It is nobody's business to teach him what to say in this new language. Having learnt the language, he should then use it to communicate his own vision.'
mist opportunities [again]
a straight photograph; morning mist, winter...
with some digital blurs applied...
then with a dark vignette...The original photograph had, by nature's own means, some readymade atmosphere... I could, I suppose, use some mechanical filters to achieve a similar effect, as I am not a fan of post-processing in digital photography - in the deceit of any number of wow and pop effects - aka 'photoshopped'...It seems to me that when using digital technology the artist should have a rough idea of the visual outcome they want to achieve and then experiment with the tools to realise the vision or intention.David Hockney quite likes using computers... as does Julian Opie... so computers can be good tools for artists...This painting, by the British artist Gary Hume, displays the digital effects of Photoshop's pointillize filter, but this was 'painted' in 1998... he must have been one of the first to use Photoshop software as a 'creative' tool...
Gary Hume, Bird point III, 1998 - gloss paint on aluminiumHere's a little Photoshopped 'Humeresque' I made earlier, (in the 'Blue Peter' tradition, of course)...
Created from this original photograph...
...Like many successful international artists, Gary Hume has a painter's assistant... he 'can't bear doing the really fiddly bits' apparently. The painter and the assistant must be a strange relationship to maintain, when the fabrication of the work has to embody the style and technical skill(?) of one artist... I wonder if the 'artist' in such a situation ever feels that the assistant is the more accomplished craftsman (if not the artist), or if the assistant sees the role as a type of apprenticeship, providing the necessary first steps to their own success...Software such as Photoshop can provide new creative tools (or assistance) in making art. As mentioned, Hockney excels in exploiting the finer nuances of the capabilities of the software; looking at Hockney's new digital drawings one doesn't immediately want to recall the brand of software used. Another artist, Paul John Taylor, who came to my attention via Jerwood Painters 2009 (exhibition reviewed here), seems to be using digital filters to design his paintings (referencing media photographs) - they apppear to look as though a selected photograph has been post-processed with filters (as with Gary Hume's painting above) and then are mechanically painted (or reproduced) onto canvas.
Paul John Taylor Bombed Beirut, second from rightI had a little go with some digital filters and visual effects. Below is a news image I found on Reuters that I have digitally manipulated showing similar image manipulation methods.
[click to view larger]I am fascinated by the desire or concept to translate digitally manipulated images back into handcrafted paintings - the painting becomes a reproduction (or facsimile) of its digital counterpart - validated as art by the very materiality of paint as opposed to pixels. They could print them straight onto canvas or panel, but then they wouldn't be original paintings.Whereas Opie and Hockney use the tools of technology in very individual ways (in both artist's work mechanical drawing or mark-making is a part of the process) with very distinct visual outcomes, Taylor and Hume seem to have merely appropriated the built-in filters and effects of the software. The British artist Maggi Hambling (whose recent seascape paintings display the energy of both the artist and the subject matter) once said that 'photography is inevitably a dead thing', so perhaps digital manipulation just continues the flogging...