Shadows at the End of the Street

Shadows at the End of the Street
(Acrylic on board, 28 x 24 cm)

Started on Friday at Gateshead Art Society, finished last night. This is one of those views you spot abroad when you're walking down a narrow street and at the end of the street, framed by the two sides of the street you're on, is a fascinating composition. 

An interesting and challenging composition that I feel I’ve made work.

Coffee Shop Laptop

Coffee Shop Laptop

(Acrylic on canvas board, 8x8 in)

One of the great advantages of a mobile phone is that, if you always carry it with you, you always have a digital camera available. No need to lug around a heavy camera on the off-chance that you might need it. As a consequence, when I stopped for coffee and a sticky bun recently, I was able to photograph a couple of people sitting in a branch of Caffè Nero in Newcastle, and to do so in a surreptitious manner. This is one of them.

It's a simple picture but the composition is one of the classics - a triangle or pyramid - and I like the colour palette I've used. So I find I’m inordinately satisfied with it.

 

Bridges of Venice

Bridges of Venice

(Acrylic on canvas board, 12x12 in)

I put this composition together a few years ago, constructing it from several photographs taken slightly different viewpoints. As a consequence, I was left with one or two gaps in the image and in addition there were some figures in the foreground obstructing the view of the buildings. At the time I didn't feel able to make the necessary changes that would make the picture work, so I put it to one side.

Recently, the Programme suggestion at Gateshead Art Society was "Bridges" and the time seemed right to give this image a go. Sometimes I forget that a complex composition takes just as much work at this scale as the same subject at three times the size. The picture took a good deal longer than I thought it might and I found that some of the ideas I had to get over the missing parts and elimination of the foreground figures had to be changed several times.

In the end, I think the effort was worth it and I'm pleased with the end product. I hope you do too.

 

 Backpacker

(Acrylic on board, 10x10 in)

Painting now complete. I’m always surprised at how the addition of a figure changes the nature, the concept even, of a particular painting. From a purely compositional exercise, this has taken on an added element of narrative.

Not yet the Siegfried Line

Washing WIP (acrylic on canvas board)

Back at Gateshead Art Society's Friday meeting, I find myself increasingly frustrated with my acrylics. Having rejigged the composition on this painting, I now find I can't easily cover up the construction lines. I'm guessing that this is simply due to a lack of sufficient pigment in the brands of acrylics I'm using. Perhaps I'll have to bite the bullet and pay for the more expensive Golden brand, but I've recently heard good reports of Jackson's own make. Anyone able to confirm?

I'm happier with this slight change in composition which reduces the problem of the buildings receding in perspective and the umpteen cars parked in the street at ground level. But I'm constantly tempted to resume the picture in oils because I'd have so much more confidence in making it work. That will not happen, however; I'm determined to master this medium.

Courtyard with Watermelon

Courtyard with Watermelon
(Oil on board, dimensions unknown) Private Collection

In this time of painterly inactivity, I've been doing useful things, like sorting through photographs and ephemera. As a result, I've begun to find images of paintings I sold before I could photograph them. It's quite a pleasant surprise to be reminded of long-lost "masterpieces."

I recovered this image from a poster for my solo exhibition, Aphrodite's Island (Gallagher & Turner Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2000). Before I went to Cyprus for the first time, I'd promised to put on a show of paintings based on that trip, but the making of suitable pictures proved a nightmare. I didn't much care for the part of Cyprus I was in (we were staying just outside Paphos): it was dry and dusty, and given over to not very inspiring agriculture, so my source of imagery was very limited.

This picture ran aground when I found I had a painting of two doors in a not-very-interesting empty courtyard and not much else. For a while it sat in a corner of the studio and glared until something suggested itself to me. I had a small drawing (now lost) of a slice of watermelon which I realised made an inverted echo of the rounded arches of the doorways.

When I'd added the watermelon to the painting, it became one of my favourites in the show; it went onto the poster and sold at the preview.

Winter Again

Turnbull Winter (work in progress)

It's been a funny old week, with some tests for an ongoing eye problem which I won't go into here. I used what was left of the week to catch up with the guys at the Club, but did no work there. However, I made a start today on another possible Winter painting.

This is a view across the Tyne from Gateshead to the Newcastle shore, with the Turnbull Building on the crest of the river bank. It's unusual for me in that it's a low viewpoint. Normally I go for something high above the subject because it enables me to flatten things out and emphasise the abstract pattern. Nevertheless, I rather like this current approach as it allows me to work with horizontal banding again.

It's a reasonably large picture (36 x 36 ins) and those big areas of flat colour take some filling. But they should prove interesting as new layers are applied and the colour becomes, I hope, more complex and subtle.

Window of Opportunity

Night Cafe (work in progress)

I'm still lost in a turmoil of preparation for various events, not least the Northumberland Art Fair this weekend. However, I was determined to get something done today, so, finding a couple of hours to spare, I determined to see what I might get done in that time.

This is the result. It's based on an old photograph I took through the window of a Costa Coffee outlet in Newcastle one night. It shares the rectilinear compositional device in the lower half that the Prague Tram series employed and that seems to be developing as an ongoing interest.

There's a little more to be done, but not a lot. One more session should see it done.

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?