A smattering of inspiration

Although I caught the dreaded Tanzanian cold, I dragged myself to the studio and tried to put something down everyday.  I haven't really got much else done in the past week.  I did go to London to draw at the Pastel Society's event at the Mall, see the Hockney and the Nash and have people over for dinner and then visit two local exhibitions http://www.northhousegallery.co.uk/art-exhibition/artist/martin-fidler-and-melvyn-king/red-crag-project/  and  http://www.thesentinelgallery.co.uk, but in terms of beginning new work, that didn't happen. I'm feeling much better this evening, so am hopeful that tomorrow will be a painting day.

It's interesting to see how I use my two page spreads to respond or at least test something different on each side.  It's similar to the way I work, shifting from drawing to plastic to printmaking and painting. But I can't fail to notice that I've been jumping all over the place getting something down. Still it's a sketchbook and these ideas might come in useful sometime...

SaveSave

Marilyn in ten minutes

pastel on paper 13 x 14cm

altered book page spread  11 x 7cm pastel drawings

pastel on altered book page 21 x 14 cm

charcoal on paper 28 x 13 cm

pastel on paper 14 x 16 cm

For the first half of our drawing session, Sue asked Marilyn for five ten minute poses, although one lasted an extra five minutes.  The final pose was half an hour. I brought some images with me to inspire my palette and then began igonoring them, looking hard to see what the drawing needed that corresponded to what I was looking at.

I didn't put my pastels away at the end of each drawing so there is more consistency of colour than usual between them.  I prepared my ground and taped around the edges before I set off today and tried a few new approaches - watercolour with clear gesso and a little pastel ground, gouache with pastel ground, pastel with clear gesso.

The Colours of Nightlight, altered sketchbook

The Colours of Nightlight, altered sketchbook February, 2017 

I was restless last night. I discovered a new artist on Pinterest and kept waking up thinking about his work.  Do you know Sandy Murphy's work?  I have pinned a lot in the past day... He attended the Glasgow School of Art and is a few years older than me.  His paintings astound me. You can see a few here:  http://www.thompsonsgallery.co.uk/artist.php/Sandy-Murphy-328/  He makes it look so simple and his colours make my heart sing.

Today in my altered sketchbook I thought about our walks with Lyra and the night light that is still hanging around as we walk in the winter. I tried to find the colours of daybreak and to keep things alive. 

Sketching at the Edges of Abstraction

I know logically that shapes are shapes and a cup or a flower is just a shape of colour, but I think differently about things I can name and use my pastels differently as I draw.  I often feel that my best drawing happens when I am truly confused and can't understand the things I can name so they become simply colours next to each other rather than a hand or a foot or a petal. I hate that feeling, and the confusion isn't always good, but I wonder if it is about a different part of my brain being activated.

This altered sketchbook (using soft pastel) is about the edges where figurative and abstract mark making meet. I have said before that making fused plastic is a playful part of my practice where I am freed to respond and which is more like solving a puzzle than drawing.  It is intuitive and does require careful looking, but it isn't as rooted in eye-hand coordination, it is more about discovery. As I progress through the altered sketchbook, will it be possible to combine the two in a different kind of drawing?

Last year I made a series of pastel drawings where I combined still life objects with some of  my painted paper collages, drawing about the two together.  They were surprising. Is this a direction that could be intriguing?

These are the last two of my dining on plastic pieces.  You can see more about them and the other from previous weeks at that blog here:
.http://diningonplastic.blogspot.co.uk

Mozarella and Mangoes at the Pier

Carrots Downriver

Still Life by Colour

Yellow and Pink, 23 x 25cm, pastel on paper

While running my 30 minutes this morning, I decided to put myself under a new kind of pressure. I made no New Years resolutions this year but am chipping away at the things that need changing anyway. 

A few days ago I saw a twitter feed about a sketchbook open submission and I have been debating whether I could finish my altered pastel sketchbooks in time for the deadline.  Finishing them would have meant altering my course with the two that I have on the go. One is life drawings and the other is landscapes in Maine.  This morning I decided to attempt to make a new altered book sketchbook focused on whatever I was working on in the studio, so studies, after studies and related things and experiments. As I was looking at the set up I had made (the one with the orange and green) I considered how even as I was setting the still life up I kept thinking: THESE ARE NOT MY COLOURS. I wondered whether still life set-ups intentionally focusing on colour would teach me anything or lead my anywhere. 

Yellow and Pink was fun to compose.  Who knew I had any yellow. The big yellow motif behind the flowers is a plastic bag I found while walking.  The yellow things are lemons.

altered sketchbook still life by colour and experiments P 1 & 2

I started the altered sketchbook in Glasgow at Christmas but I hadn't had the time I envisaged and it went nowhere, so I began again leaving a little of what was there before.

Back from Mall Galleries

Pauline and I arrived at the Mall Galleries for the private view of the Pastel Societies' annual exhibition before 5 pm on Monday.  That gave us time to look around and try to find people whose work we admired. I was delighted to find my pastel eye height in the first room, above a pastel I had particularly liked from the catalogue. I had a label with my name on it and the words, exhibitor. Everyone was welcoming and the atmosphere was wonderful.  The room filled so that we were all pressed in to hear Jeanette Hayes (Pastel Society President) and Michael Portillo (Chairman of the Federation of British Artists) speak. 

Talking to Keith Bennett, the artist of the pastel below mine.

Michael Portillo

Spicy Vermillion - pastel on paper, 25 x 23cm,  Feb 2017

Yesterday and today I began making pastels again, with the hope that something will satisfy me enough to enter again next year!

The quiet of Emily

13.5 x 14 cm

 Our models are all very different. With one, you might get the feeling that you have caught them in the moment between something else; another tells a story with a shoulder.  With Emily, it's as though she stops time. Today I was using the side of my pastel to approximate areas of colour and light.  I used my eraser very little and just drew over to make adjustments.  I like the loose peaceful feel of some of what I drew. The first four sketches are ten minute poses.  The last was 25 mins.  

13.5 x 14cm

13.5 x 14cm

16 x 16 cm

16 x 15.5 cm

Visiting Parndon Mills

After Parndon Mill series of 9 matted fused plastic collages (A6 )

Pamela Yeend and I went with Jane Lewis to Parndon Mill on Friday.  http://www.parndonmill.co.uk/gallery/current-exhibition-gallery

Jane Lewis and Caroline Fish have a show that is on now and I wasn't able to go to the opening a few weeks ago, so I was delighted to get there.  Making the journey with two artists was perfect. Parndon Mill is in Harlow and it takes 1 1/2 hrs from Boxford, where Jane lives.  It was a long day, but wow was it worth it! Sally Anderson and Roger Lee, brought the place to life in the 60s and 70s and now it is both a gallery and studios for artists.  Caroline and Jane's work looks stunning together and the setting of the mill is beautiful too. If you live anywhere nearby, it is definately worth visiting, but hurry, the exhibition ends on the 19th of February.

Pamela, Jane and I went on to the Gibberd Gallery next.  There was an open on but the permanent collection was the draw.  It has an eclectic mix of some exciting work from the past. You can see some of it here: http://gibberdgallery.co.uk/index.php/collection/watercolours

After that we went to see Simon Carter's opening at the Minories - also inspiring. 

In response, yesterday I began a new project, the results are above.  Now that I have my own mat cutter, the opportunity to use fragments beckons! I think I am sending these out as mail art.  One thing I discovered was a way of creating Diebenkornesque whites using fused plastic, see the top left, after Parndon Mill IX. 

What I see and what I do

Continuing on with my goal of making regular alla prima paintings, I wanted to think about colour and tone in the window setting and evoke spring in what I looked at. Today has been dreary and I think that's what made me reach for the pink and orange. I'll have to come back to this.  I applied some of the paint with a palette knife and some of the hottest colours in the brightest places need a little care and zing that will only be possible once things have dried a bit.

Strawberry and Orange Feast, oil on canvas, 20 x 20cm

Marks, Tone and Monoprints

There's an essay in Alice Mumford's book: Colour From Coast to Coast, which talks about colour versus tone and the tension she has felt to deal with both in her work.  She explains that if you look into light you can see more depth of field but that you will not see colour in such intensity and if light is behind you, you will see the colour but the view will appear more flat. Bonnard painted from his drawings and they are effusive with colour even though he looked into the Southern light because he seperated form and colour by drawing tonally and painting the colour. In life drawing I tend to draw tonally. With monotype you can't help but combine line, light and tone. I've always said that I need to work in different media to say things differently.  alice mumford has helped me to name it.

Today I took my 'monotype kit' to life drawing.  We had a new model, had 5, 10, and a 25 minute pose. Last week I drew Erin.

What are the Colours of Spring?

Primose and Planning, pastel on paper, 14.5 x 16 cm

I wasn't tempted to reach for the too many muted colours when composing something that spoke to me of spring. Instead, my underpainting, crushed orange pastel with surgical spirit to fix it, was intense and my first marks, in a bright blue almost convinced me that it couldn't work. Instead I tried to keep the intensity, the free application of colour and shape and to create the belief that these objects belong together and are part of a story that hangs in the air.

Using the same objects to say something else

Flowers and Musk, 26 x 26cm, pastel on paper

Using a slightly bigger piece of paper than I did yesterday, this time I coated some Fabriano with a deeper pale blue acrylic/pastel ground.  One of the things I always have trouble with in a garden is yellow and red flowers together with a backdrop of green grass… so I took out the yellow flowers, changed the background and changed vases. I like to get up close.  I like to find the shapes in the complexity.  I like a richer, deeper palette.  For me, this arrangement works better and there's nothing wimply about it!

The Mall galleries have put what they call 'selected work' up on the website for the the Pastel Society Exhibition.  I am on page six! 
http://www.mallgalleries.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/pastel-society-annual-exhibition-2017

Getting away from the Subject in Pastel

Spring on the Windowsill, pastel on paper 23 x 24 1/2

After the joy of my time looking at the 'blue room',  setting something up in another part of the studio felt impossible.  I had a crammed bouquet of spring flowers that I wanted to include, tulips, blue flags, roses and narcissus which felt impossible too (because although lovely, all those colours together defeat me every time).  I grabbed some clothes from the box under my bed, including the salwar kameez my mother made me with silk which Patrick had bought me before we were married. It is the green I associate with opportunity and love, quite a spring motif on a particularly grey day. I taped some turquoise mylar over the window so the light came through but the landscape behind was obscured and then I challenged myself to invent the window seat. The paper is medium size, for me, but I decided to stand back a little, in the same way I had been working in paint.


Getting the paper ready was troublesome as it pulled at the tape so I had to soak it and gesso it before I could even begin. Nevertheless I drew for a few hours yesterday and then all afternoon today.  There were many times when I wanted to abandon it. I find inventing part of a drawing in pastel, well, nearly impossible. Although I resolved this, as anticipated, it lands just this side of twee. Maybe I'll find a new 'blue room' tomorrow. 

Painting an 'afterthought'

Blue Room Afterthought, oil on canvas, 30 x 30 cm,

Although I intended to take down the blue room today, I just had to get one last long look at it before  I did.  In front of the table I had made (out of piled up boxes, a board and some fabric) is a chair.  On the chair is some more fabric, draped, and I sat on the chair at the start of last week to be photographed.  The artist becomes her still life. The chair, the cloth and the memory of the photography session hanging around the room between the subject and my easel.  What if I took a few steps back?  What if I shamelessly let everyone see that it was something I had set up in my studio, not something I happened upon?

Today after drawing group I intended to do a quick painting on a small canvas.  I have said over and over that I want to paint more and one way I thought that might happen was if I did more quick studies, alla prima painting in my colourist way. The 'blue room' beckoned.  I think, because I'd explored it in detail, over time, I was happy to use shorthand and the shapes and a way of decribing their textures guided me in this afterthought..

I think it's just about finished - Blue Poppies on Table

Blue Poppy on Table 

Fully realising that the paint is wet, I'm about to take down my studio set up and move on to something new to think about in paint. So this is the final day, for now, on this painting. I have loved working in blue. I have loved walking into my studio and seeing blue in its many shades. A cliche, but it really is so difficult to know when to stop. Inventing the blue flowers adds a level of uncertainty that is different from painting entirely from life... Five minutes ago I nearly wiped out the card on the right - a vintage  Christmas card sent home by a soldier named John. That's what I'll think about as I clean the house and walk the fields. Should it stay or should it go?

Below are the earlier versions.  I wouldn't say the reproduction colour is perfect in any of them.

A new blog to document a fused plastic experiment

Bananas, gloves, tortillas and lemons - fused plastic collage 23cm x 23cm

The other day my friend the artist Caroline Fish asked me to exhibit some fused plastic collages alongside her gorgeous ceramics, Jezz Meredith's prints and Jacqueline Dawson's jewellery at Craft Co in Southwold, in May. This invite came as I was thinking about which direction to go next with my fused plastic. I had an idea and this is the first piece that I've made with it in mind.  

I thought it would be interesting to document the idea, so I have created a new blog about the process.You can follow the blog here to keep up to date on how the experiment is progressing!  http://diningonplastic.blogspot.co.uk

Blue Poppies, day two

Blue Poppies - day two, oil on canvas,  40 x 54 cm.

Today before I got back to work I looked and consulted some of my favourite painters: Bonnard, Manet, Matisse and then I looked at Philip Sutton.  Day two is always a tough day for me.  On day two, I have committed an idea and it's either going to get better or go flat. Perhaps it is 'day twos' that make me reach for my pastels or make a monotype instead. Sustaining a way of painting with sleeps in between is plain hard. I think some people are different but I never know what's going to happen.  The brushes, the colours, the ideas seem to exist in a parallel universe and I am certainly not their master. 

Now I need to scrape down the piece of glass.  I will probably paint some paper and then I'll wash my brushes for day three, or not.

Another angle another medium

It's a mistake to use a horizontal piece of paper when your image is vertical.  When I shifted to a larger format, I did not think about the orientation.  It just goes to show how away from things I have been… so, my second drawing, which was intended to be further away from my subject just got wider.  I mostly used the same pieces of pastel, so the first and second drawings are similar (look at the previous post).  I wanted to darken the space behind the opaline vase, so did get a few other blues out.

Christmas Rose in January II, pastel on paper, 26 x 18 cm

Today I got my oils out, chose a vertical canvas and stepped back. My idea was all about the foliage, to begin with but I inadvertently had some lavender shapes in the top third and I wondered about a few blue mecanopsis.  This is only the first day of painting, so I expect it will evolve further. I had shenanigans with my R & F paint sticks getting stuck but otherwise, it felt good to paint.

Blue Poppy and Christmas Rose, oil on canvas, 40 x 54 cm

Ripples of Inspiration

I'm reading Matisse Diebenkorn, published by the Baltimore Museum of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.  There is an exhibition looking at the influence of Matisse on Diebenkorn and this is the book from that exhibition. I wish I could see the paintings in life, but as second best, I bought it for myself for my birthday.  

A few days ago I picked a bouquet of leaves to put in my new Opaline vase that I bought months ago at the Boule-In (Bildeston), and put in the 'Christmas closet'.  (Vases are one of my weaknesses, I can't say no to a beautiful vase…) The bouquet dried out in the kitchen but as it sat there I thought about what you do with just green, Today when everyone went out to Bury, I took the vase, picked some new leaves chose three different pieces of patterned blue fabric, and placed, removed, and moved objects that I found in the studio around on my set up: two boxes stacked on a chair with a board on top. I decided I needed a hellibore for height, for colour and for shape to finish off the composition. I looked at John Mcallister and thought about Matisse and Diebenkorn and waited to see what would happen on my 16 x 16 cm piece of paper that I had painted with some pale blue pastel ground I mixed.

I saw this a a preliminary drawing for something a bit bigger.  The next drawing is going to be rectangular and I will include more of the space, as that is what my three mentors would do.

Processing and experimenting

A visit to the botanics Glasgow 23 x 23 cm
gouache, watercolour and methyl cellulose on paper with fused plastic frame

Over the holdiays I had absolutely no time to work. I did look, mess around on my new iPad and explore mount cutting with my new tool. I also made more re-fused plastic badges. On one of the early mounts, I ripped the paper on the good side of the mount and that led to me to thinking about flipping the approach to framing that I had been exploring with my fused plastic.  In recent fused plastic the inside image was stitched fused plastic while the frame was painted.  I wondered whether the reverse would be equally interesting. 

One of the highlights of our trip to Glasgow was a visit to the Botanic Garden. 

As you might imagine, I am a big fan of the work of John McAllister https://www.artsy.net/artist/john-mcallister.  His colour, the way he uses frames and his use of pattern delight me! 

So all of that together was how I began to get back to work again, a little over the weekend and more today. I can't decide if it works or not.