[untitled water painting, acrylic on linen, 20cm x 20cm]dear reader, would you buy this painting? it's never been in a gallery or an exhibition (it has no picture frame) and it's very unlikely to be. i seem to have a lot of paintings (or works) like this - many things started, but never really finished. if i add up the work i haven't really finished to the other work which i think is done, then the work soon mounts up...
so what is it with this imagined water surface? i always tell myself not to use philosophy to express a thought which i would never have entertained myself, so to paraphrase Nietzsche, the higher you fly the smaller you will look to those on the ground, is an idle thought which seems relevant to this feeling of uncertainty, a conflict or contradiction, between what you want and what you get by doing something...
within the perceived depths of water (rather than the sky) perhaps it is the counterpoint to thinking that, being above and yet below, in the ebb and the flow, but what do i know..?..the element of water, the high seas, the oceans, ships and shorelines, rivers and ports, a significant part of family history, and then making a small connection...it is not the river that influenced this small painting; it could be the weather, the rain, the floods, the seashore and the waves. perhaps it is an ocean (in the shade of blue), and where there is an ocean there is also the air and the big blue sky, but sometimes clouds, or storms, forming and dispersing, influencing, mirroring, moving, from one element into another...anyhow, it's just a thought......[see also: on the surface, water paintings]
Smoke and mirrors
Why smoke and mirrors?My particpation in the Art Trail has made me verbalise more on the creation of my work, the ideas and inspiration behind it. I am developing a personal philosophy of painting which embraces its capacity for artifice - the visual trickery of base materials to magically transport a viewer to another place in their own mind - but I am merely holding up a mirror to a world that is already around us. Last weekend, I was thrilled to have sold two large paintings along with some little collages. When I unhooked the paintings from their supports all became clear - from the back a very straightforward construction of timber and board - the illusion revealed.Anyhow, as artists often do, patronage calls for a small celebration. In fact, I had laid on light refreshments but my visitors were perhaps too polite to accept my hospitality. As Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote:for art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.I wonder how many painters analyse their work with a drink in hand at the end of a long painting session, or open a bottle of wine when some important piece of work is selected or sold? For myself, the acknowledgement of a sale or success forms part of the act of closure on the work; an artwork departing for a new home creates the psychological (and physical!) space for new work to come into existence. So too, the private view would not be such a jolly and bustling affair without a glass or two to celebrate the unveiling of a new body of work in an exhibition.However, I have to put on hold any celebrations as I am very near to completing around five new paintings in readiness for the final showdown this weekend.
One of my patrons commented how much they liked seeing my works suspended from curtain style rods rather than directly attached to the wall, which had me thinking back to some previous ideas regarding the physical space around work - ideas that are in perpetual incubation! Also, much of my recent works have coppery orange or deep red hues, the colours we associate with heat, action and possible danger. Today, I bought a lime green covered sketchbook and it made me think again about the psychological effects of colours. Perhaps it is time I ventured into an ecologically calm green period...