Afternoon light

While walking the dog today, I noticed a few local places that I want to draw.  I intended to pack my plein air easel, a pad and some drawing materials and return to one spot when I passed the newly opened silver birch that is just unfurling its leaves at the front of our house.

I find the Suffolk landscape too open.  I like to look through and to make sense of confusion.  Maine is perfect for that.  It turns out Suffolk can be too.  And today I didn't have to take my easel far. There is nothing better than chasing the afternoon light across the page… When I started the planes in the grass were stark and linear. Later they were more like zebra stripes and the shadow on the house repeated the triangle at the bottom.  Magic!

Repeating a pose

The format of my weekly life drawing group has changed. For one, there is no more tea. Sigh. because of this, the fixed timings are no longer fixed.  After break we used to have two twenty minute poses. Now the break is ten minutes and at no particular time, so it's a little more fluid. Today the consensus was to do a series of the same three poses three times.  Timings were 2, 5 and 15 minutes. Of course the poses weren't exactly the same.  The top drawing is 6 x 6 and was a 15 minute pose.  the two altered book pages (5 x 8) were each 5 minutes.  The bottom drawing 4.5 x 8.5 was another 15 minute pose.   

Sun Trap (painted paper collage) 17 x 24 cm

While getting ready for my first exhibition at The Freudian Sheep https://www.facebook.com/freudiansheep?fref=nf, a gallery in Ipswich that shows work by local 'upcoming' artists I've been making painted paper collages and fused plastic. When I took pieces to Jo Hollis (who frames my work), I wondered about working on thicker paper.  This is my first experiment on a thick watercolour paper I had on hand. It's possible to float the piece and avoid the wrinkled feel of lighter paper. I also tried tearing, rather than cutting here.

After visiting the Diebenkorn exhibit at the RA, I felt I wanted to work bigger in fused plastic.  This has been problematic because pieces don't always want to lie flat and I am not sure about how well they will hang. I experimented with sewing and gluing them onto paper and flattening them under books but the movement was compromised. I was able to make some bigger work eventually.  This piece is glued onto foam board.

Solar Yoga (Fused Plastic Collage) 23 x 26 cm

Freedom and colour studies

Can you explain why these playful pages are so effortlessly, honestly exhuberant and why (and how) I can believe in them?

What do you want to say and how do you say it with paint?

Orange Bouquet

Millstone

Night at Nayland Farm

 Sue

Looking Down on Macabre colour

I find that for some reason when I paint I forget who I am and what I want to say.  As I am painting any one canvas I think I know but when you look at them side by side it's clear I am floundering! I am more sensitive about painting; I care what people think more than I do when I draw, make a print, fuse some plastic or make a book. As a result, when I paint I don't think I create a body of work that is identifiable or consistent.  I know it's there, but I can't access it day in day out. It's curious.

Some of my recent life drawings

Emily 

Marilyn

Emily

Marilyn

Marilyn

Marilyn

Sue

I went to a gallery recently to show my work and although they were really positive about some of my work, the person I spoke with felt that my life drawings were too 'traditional'.  

My wonderful life drawing class is a mix of different kinds of artists, former draughtsman, artists who simply love to draw and abstract painters work alongside each other. When we draw, there are gasps and sighs and we all talk about the shapes.

More light studies

Light from Dairy, monotype: Akua Itaglio on paper 6 x 8"

As I continue to investigate the light around corners in our house, I keep consulting Vuillard.  But I'm finding that I'm starting to listen to the monotype and use colour the way it demands, rather than slavishly laying Vuillard's colour=light onto my view.  The image below, Mother and Sister of the Artist got me started with finding darker darks.  I began fairly faithfully and then felt that the wall needed a magenta and then, of course everything had to accomodate that.  I also found I needed to edit, add and embellish my view. Maybe figures soon?

Mother and Sister of the Artist  by Edouard Vuillard, 1892

Light From Above Piano, monotype: Akua Itaglio on paper 6 x 8"

 This print was actually made before the one above. You can see that I was little more faithful to Vuillard's pallette. I have painted and drawn this view repeatedly in the past. This medium seems to solve it more for me.

Woman in Blue, by Edouard Vuillard, 1893
 

 I include this last drawing to show that as I said in an earlier post there are many prints that I pull back the blanket to in disappointment. 

Light from Upstairs Window, monotype: Akua Itaglio on paper 6 x 8"

There is no denying that the monotype is a process-heavy form of 'painting', the way I make them. When I look at a 'finished' plate I can get really excited - the plate suggests something but a little blemish, something missed, can kill the image. and then there's the fact that it's the mirror image and I might not calculate what that does with your eye. I think I got so interested in the shapes and colour when I was making Light from Upstairs Window that I forgot that I was after light..  It has a stillness that I like, but...

Light from Window upstairs, soft pastel over 1st pull monoprint 

And those disappointments hang around. One way I've found to banish them is to work back into the print  In this case I used my first pull.  I often soak up the ink after I've sketched the structure onto the plate, to check it, that's my first pull.  This was one of those totally unfinished prints.  The problem is the pastel doesn't like the printmaking paper, but in this case I like the scratchy effect. It is not even remotely related to the intention of the monotype but the disappointment is further away.