My Art on Walls

It's always good to see how my paintings look when they've been hung on the walls of those nice people who thought enough of them to buy them. Here are two of those walls.

Abstract Thought

I rather like abstract paintings. However, when I get myself in front of a canvas, what comes out is never abstract. It starts with a strong abstract composition, but as the work progresses, the end product is never abstract.

I don't know why this should be, but perhaps I'm too much like Leonardo (he said, modestly):

Don’t underestimate this idea of mine, which calls to mind that it would not be too much of an effort to pause sometimes to look into these stains on walls, the ashes from the fire, the clouds, the mud, or other similar places. If these are well contemplated, you will find fantastic inventions that awaken the genius of the painter to new inventions, such as compositions of battles, animals, and men, as well as diverse composition of landscapes, and monstrous things, as devils and the like. ["Treatise on Painting"]

Give me an abstract and I will find something figurative within it. So it is, whenever I start to paint an abstract, I find the figurative elements surging forward. This isn't a great problem really, except that when I'm in a reflective mood and wondering if my work is going the right way, I look around and all I see in galleries is abstract. I recognise this is a kind of tunnel vision produced by a transitory period of low self-esteem, but it does seem at times that all the general public is interested in buying is abstracts.

My friend Mo, in a recent email said:

"... thinking about it, it could all do with what's fashionable at the moment. In all the magazines I've seen recently about interior design and so forth, they've always shown rooms festooned with abstract art - maybe one large piece of work on a wall to make a statement - and you know how everyone follows like sheep - never mind what the quality is like."

The work of hers that has proven most successful in terms of sales has also been "a bit on the abstract side of figurative as well. "

This thought thread was brought on by the comments my post Corner Gallery, Biscuit Factory. Of the pictures that I posted there, the favourite among Commenters seems to be Wooden Sunset, and to my mind, this is the most abstract looking picture in the set (although it's actually a straight representation of the side of a boat).

So what do you think? Is abstraction the most enduring element of Modernism? Are the general public buying more abstracts than figurative and if so, is it all down to what goes with the curtains?

____________________________

A brief aside, with thanks to Casey Klahn for bringing it to my attention:

I never became an abstract painter because I love to draw, I love to represent. I tried to do abstract paintings, and it always seemed to me that I was throwing out a baby with the bath water. [Wolf Kahn]

Q & A

Over the past few years I've been approached by GCSE A level students asking to use me as the subject for their Art Project. There must have been about 6 or 7 of them so far. At first they asked for a face-to-face interview and I gave in to that. But when my request for a copy of what they eventually wrote was always promised but never supplied, I switched to offering to answer questions put to me by email. At least that way I have a record of what I said, which can be useful to me in considering my work

I answered the most recent questionnaire in December and I thought it might be of interest if I posted an edited version of it here:

1. What was your earliest realisation that you wanted to become an artist?

Although I’ve always spent a lot of time drawing, it wasn’t until I was in my early twenties that I began to think of it seriously. Even then I don’t think I realised it might be possible for me to be a professional artist. It wasn’t until I became involved with people in the publishing industry throughout the 1970s and 1980s that I began to consider and look for ways of becoming an illustrator. This led to a greater involvement with painting and by about 1985 I knew that I needed to paint full time. It took a long time to come to this conclusion, but sometimes it does seem that what you really want to do dawns on you only slowly.

2. Which artists do you admire and why?

In no particular order:

David Bomberg – beautiful drawings and paintings of London and Spain.
Walter Sickert – solidly structured paintings of great tonal strength.
Graham Sutherland - I wrote my Dissertation on his Pembrokeshire landscapes.
Paul Nash –landscapes with a very English Surrealist slant.
Carel Weight – his pictures are very English, with quirky happenings.
John Piper – his mixed media evocations of the British landscape are so Romantic.
Bill Jacklin – another excellent contemporary painter of the urban scene.
Balthus – a painter of strange, unsettling pictures.
Edward Hopper – the quintessential 20thC painter of townscapes.
Richard Diebenkorn – his still lifes and suburban landscapes are masterpieces.
Wolf Kahn – for his daring use of colours which quite simply shouldn’t work together, but do.
Wayne Thiebaud – for his West Coast townscapes, landscapes and paintings of pies, ice cream cones and gumball machines. A great realist painter.

3. What were the most significant influences on your style?

A love of the contrast of light and dark and a somewhat melancholic disposition which sometimes produces pictures imbued with a lonely or even eerie atmosphere.

4. What are the most significant influences on your choice of subject matter?

I was born in Gateshead, where I still live, and growing up there I was surrounded by Tyneside’s urban sprawl. When it came to finding suitable subject matter for paintings, it was inevitable, I suppose, that urban subjects should be what I turned to.

5. What inspires you?

It’s always something seen. Something catches my eye and I know that it has the potential to make a painting. Usually, what I notice first is an arrangement of shapes produced by strong sunlight and the resultant shadows on a group of buildings.

6. How has your work developed and changed throughout your career? What influences caused this?

The first influence on my work was Andrew Gifford. He was studying for his BA at Newcastle when I was attending OCA tutorials there. I used to see Gifford’s work in the studios and I began to find a language in his views of the Tyne that I could use in my own paintings. At the same time, the OCA tutor encouraged me to adopt a broad approach to my picture-making on the principle that “it’s better to suggest than to describe.” Following these two sources, I developed a series of rather sombre paintings of the Tyne gorge.

Eventually my reading brought me to more colourful painters, like the Americans Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebaud. Diebenkorn’s mid-career figurative work was colourful and loosely painted as befits his beginnings as a Bay Area Abstract Expressionist and Wayne Thiebaud’s paintings of the vertiginous streets of San Francisco showed what could be done with the city as subject.

At University I was encouraged to use soft brushes and to eliminate the more obvious effects of a personal handwriting, which produced work in more of a tightly-delineated realist vein. It took me several years after graduation to realise that wasn’t what I wanted and I’m only now divesting myself of much of that approach.

In the last couple of years I’ve been looking at the work of Wolf Kahn, another American painter whose own fascination is with the interaction of pure colour applied to the landscape. Together with increased travelling in the Mediterranean area, this has led me into investigations of much more colour-dominated work.

Running throughout all of this time, of course, has been an interest in the work of Edward Hopper. Hopper remains for me the quintessential urban painter.

7. What ambitions do you have for the future?

Only to go on painting and, as often as possible, getting the pictures on walls where people can see them. I don’t believe the creative process is finished until the pictures have been exhibited.

8. How do you see your work developing in the future?

Difficult to say. My most recent work has seen an increased interest in the use of colour, but I think I’m stepping back a little from that now. As a naturally tonal painter, I find I’m uncomfortable with the inevitable loss of tonal form that the real colourist has to embrace. But my interest in the formal structure of the painting continues. My most recent work displays greater emphasis on the picture plane, with flattened perspective, banding and more gestural mark making. Inevitably, however, the making of pictures suggests ways of development, so that, however much you may intellectualise about the direction you want to take, the work will lead you in unforeseen directions.

9. Which work/s do you consider to be your most successful and/or significant to date?

The most recent one is always the most interesting, but it’s difficult to look at any of them and regard them as successful. Some are more successful than others, but almost all are flawed. At any one time, however, I could single out a different painting and find new inspiration in it. Art comes from art.

In the Meme Time

I've been tagged with a meme!!!!! (I exclaim in my best JonnyB voice)

Lesly Finn has tagged me with a meme from Christy's Coffee Break called In the Spotlight. Here are my answers to the interview questions I've chosen from the list of possibles.

Is this your first meme?
Yes it is.

When did you start blogging?
Three years ago.

What do you hope to accomplish with with your blog?
When I started, I intended it to be something like a fanzine, a field I've had some experience in, with contributions from friends, emails as content and like so. But when I found there was a lack of support for the idea, I gradually morphed it into something more like an artist's journal.

The acquisition of a digital camera has speeded up this process, by allowing me to post much more of my work and show some of the processes in its making. Ultimately, I intend to tie it into a website of my own, so that there can be greater two-way traffic.

However, I still harbour an interest in writing as a skill in itself, so the occasional piece of writing, almost for its own sake, is always likely to appear.

What is your worst quality?
Procrastination.

What is your best quality?
Loyalty.

What is your favourite childhood memory?
Hard to choose. It's either :

• Riding on the footplate of an 0-6-0 shunter in the marshalling yards in Edinburgh

or

• Stealing a pencil stub from the Co-op.

Are you a spiritual person?
I'm spiritual in the sense that I feel a metaphysical connection to the world and I suspect there may be an underlying force in nature, which can be sometimes alluded to in art. I'm not a spiritual person in the sense proclaimed by the organised religions, whom I generally condemn for encouraging ignorance and superstition and on whom I blame many of the endless miseries of the world.

What is the weirdest thing that ever happened to you?
Being born.

**************

In my turn, I hand on the Black Spot to:

Ian Gordon Craig - an artist whose on-line journal always fascinates.

Marja-Leena Rathje - another artist; her prints are quite lovely.

Anna - with funny taste in music but always a good view out of the window.

Winchester Whisperer - interesting political commentary.

Secret Simon - who may get something out of the moral and spiritual questions.

I crave their forgiveness.

Back from Little Langdale

Slaters Bridge (4B pencil, sketchbook)

This is the first drawing I made, in the first flush of enthusiasm for Little Langdale. My enthusiasm for the place never waned (indeed we've already made a provisional booking for next year), but as is often the case, I found it increasingly difficult to find things in the countryside I wanted to deal with.

Nevertheless, Slaters Bridge did get me back to draw one end of it.

Slaters Bridge (end) (Pentel Brushpen & watercolour, sketchbook)

And as always, there were collapsed and rotting trees everywhere.

Tree Form (Pilot disposable fountain pen, sketchbook)

Given that the weather was outstandingly good, with temperatures up to 21C each day and clear blue skies, I found myself wanting to walk more than in previous years. My planta fasciitis seems to have improved, leaving only a little numbness in my big toes, and it was a joy to get out on the fells; unencumbered by heavy weather-proof clothing, the walks reminded me of past holidays walking in Crete and France.

The food was especially good this year. The Three Shires Inn was only 100 yards away and served us well with steak & ale pie, game pie, Cumberland sausage studded with black pudding, and pints of Hawkshead Red and Coniston Old Man. In between, the Mad Doctor made his chilli and his flapjacks, Tall Tony his five spice chicken and I my chicken curry. Plastic Man just ate it all and entertained us with his illiberal remarks. And Raymondo? Well, he's from Sunderland.

Every year these trips seem to involve one or more detours to art suppliers to see what might tempt us to part with money. This year I bought a bottle of Indian ink, because I remembered I had a dip pen with me, but never got round to using it. Last year, I bought a tin of Derwent Inktense Pencils and didn't use them, but as I'd brought them along this time, I thought I'd give them a go.

Finding myself on one of many wrong paths, I stopped for a while to draw these rocks and decided to add some colour with the Inktense Pencils. I think the drawing was probably better before I added the colour, but you have to make mistakes to learn.

Rocks by The Dubs (6B pencil, Inktense Pencils, sketchbook)

The pencils are interesting, despite their limited success this time, because once you've added water to them they become insoluble. You could then work over them with other media, like pastel or oil pastel, which could be worth investigating in the future.

I put this on the Things To Do mental pile.