today i made the journey to salthouse, firstly to visit the church and measure up my allocated space within the church for salthouse 09.. these exhibition bays measure about a metre wide and are a foot deep..
but really, it was the salt marshes that were beckoning me, all honeyed with the softest of grasses gently swaying on a seemingly bright and breezy day....
a short walk across to the sea, past twine-ravelled wire fences, bristling reeds, grasses, past the looping clay beds and swathes of shallow salty pools..
colours appeared melted, slightly dissolved, dusted by time and history; the dusky greys, blues and browns of mud and sea lavender, shimmering rivers of silt..
then, as the sparse landscape opened outwards to the sea, and i slowly trudged the steep defence embankment of pebbled shingle, what was left of the marsh faded away from view, the grey sky loomed large like a veil, and for a brief moment it seemed as if it was not just the edge of the land but the world that i was moving towards, and then a sliver of slate grey sea appeared, fusing land with sky..
then, as i looked downwards at the pebbles on the beach suddenly the wind whipped up in reponse, nipping at my ears, forehead and nose, pushing me towards the froth and foam.. moments later the rain came down in heavy dark slices, sharp and biting, spitefully prickling my cheeks to numbness..
and so this angry cloudburst forced me back inland, rushing, drenched and very, very cold..
a painter's view?driving back i thought more about my proposed work; the curator hopes it will be very colourful. perhaps i am a bit of a colourist and experiencing this landscape the colours i see on my palette are looking more restrained, faded - sea grey, rust, putty, olive, khaki, heather, moss, mustard, amber, bone, wet clay, brick dust, bark, willow, tarnished copper, dark peat, ash..
a return to the marsh
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.
on failing; to make progress
new paintings in progress, at a plateau it seems, trying to get the right tones of grey, bisque, putty, gravel, steel, copper, holding back on colour, less is more, subtle is in, brazen is out..
meanwhile, down on the farm, it's a riot of colour, if you look closely..
inspiring me to properly finish the 100 small paintings series.
so for the 50 in 2009, it's the vertical, turning a corner; this is most definitely a sign..