Old Drawings #64

Tree and Rocks, Blawearie
(Charcoal on cartridge paper, 20 x 33 ins)

As those of you in the UK will be only too well aware, we're going through the Bank Holiday season, a time when nothing gets done because we're all too busy Having Fun.

In the absence of anything new to post, therefore, I'm posting what may prove to be the last of the Old Drawings series (I need to check - there may be one or two more). I need to think about how to replace this occasional series. Something called New Drawings would, in an ideal world, be a suitable replacement, but that's a series very long in the gestation it seems. I could start to post from my sporadic sketchbook drawings. What do you think? What would you like to see?

This drawing, by the way, is one of the first in what would come to be the Rock and Tree series, an ongoing project. I did it at University in 2001, I reckon, and it's taken from something seen at Blawearie. I'm rather fond of the way I simplified the forms.

Shark Rock

Shark Rock (Oil on canvas, 12 x 12 ins.)

So here we are, back at the Club and Shark Rock is finished. [Note to self: get a better photograph]

The rock itself is at Blawearie, a place I've talked about painted before, but the name is for it is my own. Sometimes, I get a name in my head which makes sense to me and after a while it sticks, so I append it to the painting.

Contained

Tree in rock, Blawearie (Charcoal and pastel, cartridge paper)

This tree had struggled up through a crack in the rock in the garden at Blawearie, a place I've written about before. It seems to exemplify the qualities of the new Illustration Friday subject, Contained, while suggesting there is always a way out.

Old Drawings #20

Blawearie Garden (Charcoal and pastel on cartridge paper, 20 x 33 ins)

I don't recall when the drawing was made, I'm afraid, and I hadn't intended to post another Old Drawing so soon, but this one seemed apposite. My friend The Architect is off work for a couple of weeks, so he suggested that he and I and Mrs Sums should walk across Bewick Moor to Blawearie today. As I've said before, it's one of my most favourite places and I was looking forward not only to the walk, but to maybe getting a little sketching done. The Architect is an artist too, so I reckon he'd have been amenable to a short delay in the walk to make a drawing or two.

It was not to be. The weather has been quite pleasant so far this week, but for one day only it's due to visit us with gale force winds and lashing rain. Not the sort of weather you really want on Bewick Moor, where the only shelter is at Blawearie.

Painting in Series

Shelter (Oil on canvas, 24 x 24 ins)

In a recent post on his blog devoted to Pastels, Casey Klahn talked about painting in series. Not all artists paint in series, but I'm one of those who do. You'll have seen, if you've been keeping up, that I most recently made a series of paintings concerned with people on the water-buses of Venice. In the past, I've also done a series of pictures looking across the River Tyne from Gateshead to Newcastle, and as this is one I never tire of, I still add to the series.. It's where I live and what I know best.

I like painting in series so much, that once in a while I make efforts to paint pictures which will fill in the gaps, or draw together two disparate series, rather like Edgar Rice Burroughs bringing together Tarzan with John Carter of Mars in the same novel (he never did that, but he would have done if he could have thought of a way).

It's this "adding to the series" that I'm thinking about at the moment. I'm preparing for the next Figure 8 show which will be in the McGuinness Gallery in Bishop Auckland Town Hall in August. I have one or two pictures in progress and have a couple of others which I think will make a harmonious fit, but I haven't quite decided for myself what the theme of my work will be.

When I sent the gallery my somewhat abbreviated statement, it read:

My paintings tend to be formal constructions based on the effects of sunlight and shadow. I favour the play of strong light on buildings and while the majority of my work is derived from the urban environment, even my occasional forays into landscape painting include references to the effect of man on the landscape. Figures may appear in the composition to emphasise the mood which may be mysterious and unsettling, but often their absence speaks just as loudly.

This is vague enough to cover a multitude of sins, I think, and certainly leaves room for me to include almost anything I want to. But at the moment I'm a little stuck.

As part of our exhibiting policy for this show, and because the gallery lends itself to it, we're each painting a picture 100 x 80 cms, to be hung together at the entrance to the show. And it's this that has me foxed, because nothing leaps into my imagination to fit that shape. Or at least, nothing that immediately seems to go with the other pictures I'm likely to be showing.

In addition to Shelter (above), I intend to finish and show these:

Blawearie Steps (work in progress)

Pillbox (work in progress)

And I hope to move this along sufficiently to include it in the show:

Collingwood (work in progress)

You can probably see that the "theme" in this case is more one of composition than anything else, although there is a definite sense of loneliness and it may be that I need to concentrate on that aspect to pull out the threads I need to make the final selection and to produce the problematic painting.

Thinking on those lines, suggests the possibility of including another earlier painting, from the same period as Shelter:

A Yellow Raincoat (Oil on canvas, 36 x 36 ins)

However, there's another piece to this exhibition jigsaw. We may be given the use of a gallery van, which would also allow me to show a painting (yet another not quite finished) which dovetails with Blawearie Steps:

Blawearie (work in progress)

This is quite a big painting (5 feet tall, hence the need for a van) which I've always liked but I've never found an opportunity to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion.

On a point of interest, the tall composition is an impossible view. Standing on top of the rocks at Blawearie, you can't actually see the derelict farmhouse. But then, that's one of the wonders of art - the bringing together of the impossible. I began this at a time when I was particularly fascinated by Northern Renaissance painters like Heironymous Bosch.

Looking again at this picture, I think perhaps a similar approach might produce a subject for the missing picture. What do you think? Have I got a cohesive theme already, or is there something missing?

The Call of Blawearie

When you can't paint, paint something else.

One of the problems of a long layoff, whether enforced or voluntary, is that it can prove difficult to get back into an unfinished painting. My birthday celebrations, my travels to the US and various domestic matters have all interfered with progress on the painting of Grey's Monument. It now sits on the easel, glaring at me, daring me to get back in and spoil it. I don't believe I will spoil it, of course, but there's always that underlying fear when you've lost the plot a little.

So I thought I might be better employed ignoring it's baleful gaze and doing something else to work up some steam as it were. Not another painting, which might bring with it some of the same baggage, but a drawing. I've neglected my drawing woefully over the last couple of years, so turning back to it can only be a Good Thing.

In an attempt to clear my head completely of its most recent preoccupations, I thought I'd opt for different subject matter too. So I dug out this small sketch I made a while ago.

Blawearie sketch (pencil on A4 cartridge)

I did this in a strange place I know of in Northumberland, a few miles off the road on Bewick Moor. It's held a fascination for me since I first came across it and someday I hope to make a series of work about it; not having any transport of my own, however, makes this difficult.

Nevertheless, I spent some time today making this Conte drawing from the sketch.

Blawearie steps (charcoal and coloured Conte on A2 cartridge)

Evidently I'm in a Graham Sutherland mood today, although later experiments in Photoshop suggest the possibility of a different approach