I had a good week in the studio, and really enjoyed being back at school without the dreaded covid. I have a dual focus this term, namely, drawing and my research project. Even though my drawing has greatly improved, after focusing on it this summer, I now realise that when it comes to drawing, learning and improvement never ends. For this reason, I have signed up for a series of drawing workshops, joined a drawing club, and booked one on one sessions with a drawing tutor.
I have also kept up my morning drawing discipline, which this week has consisted of filling large pages with a variety of ink and watercolour drawings. I really enjoy this part of my practice, and try and keep it light and fun.
My paintings this week were sea-themed, no doubt influenced by my passionate love of Moby Dick, which I am still listening to on my walks to see the bobbers. I agree with Ray Bradbury’s assessment –
“Shakespeare wrote Moby-Dick, using Melville as a Ouija board.”
I also experimented with colour and detailing, with the hope that when I come to do the paintings for my research project, I’ll know the palette and detailing style I want to use.
On Friday night, my dear friends and I had one of our ladies-nights at our favourite cocktail bar, Fynoderee. We were two-women down from normal, but we still had a wonderful time. As you can see by the photo I took, I was a bit wobbly by the end of the night.
I won’t have to pluck up the courage to ask my fella to extend my Weight Watchers subscription for another 3 months, he’s got eyes! I’d like to blame stress, but my fella’s Victoria sponge making ability and the jelly bean dispensing machine I have learned to break into are the real culprits. As always, sugar is my downfall, and when it comes with cream, light-as-air cake, and a knob-turning contraption, I can’t get enough! But when I bent down the other day and the button on my shorts went flying, I knew it was time to dust off my WW app once again – that time being next week of course.
My outdoor Anam Cara School of Drawing got off to a good start, but then the gazebo blew over and it started to rain, so I had to move operations indoors, which, for some reason, bought it all to a grinding halt. Instead, I painted cats all week.
When cats pop up in my paintings, it is usually a sign I am stressed about something. True to form, I did have an external stressor this week. Not that I mind painting cats, I love those fluffy little menaces, and painting them is a real pleasure, hence why I do it when I’m stressed. Here’s my favourite from this week.
As relaxing as painting cats is, I have a paper to research and write, and an indoor drawing school to attend, so I better start carving out some real time for these two must-dos, or I will have whittled myself to a nub by the end of summer with only stack of cat paintings to show for it – not the worst outcome in the world, but doing my masters is a one time deal and I want to make the most of it.
I have new neighbours, Kylie and Jason and their little baby, Harold. They live in the Point of Ayre foghorn. I realised Kylie and Jason had a chick a couple of evenings back when I heard him squawking inside a hollow in the foghorn. Then last night, my fella and I saw Harold for the first time, it was beyond exciting. I wasn’t able to get a photo of Harold, as we didn’t want to get too close, but here is some footage I managed to get of Kylie and Jason last week.
The painting breakthroughs kept coming this week. A distinct style for the green paintings is emerging, and I love it. I feel like I have been given a small glimpse of what the paintings can be, and although I take nothing for granted, and realise there is still a possibility I can’t pull them off, I have reason to be hopeful.
The main focus again has been painting bigger. With the drawing practice I have been doing, it has proved much easier than I thought it would be. It’s also far more interesting painting bigger, as it allows for more detail.
To help with the bigger drawings, I bought a ginormous sketchbook, and so far I have found drawing big just as easy as drawing small.
I have also started a daily reading discipline, without which I would never get through all the books/papers I have to read for my research paper this summer. Don’t feel too sorry for me though, as this is where my reading discipline takes place.
I had a painting breakthrough this week, which is always a double-edged sword. On the one hand there was a huge sense of excitement and relief, like I am finally getting somewhere and all my previous hard work on this particular project appears not to be in vain. On the other hand, it’s like the bear in the children’s song who reaches the top of the mountain, and what does it see? Another mountain! That’s exactly how it felt, I was momentarily thrilled at the progress I made and the paintings I produced, but I was soon brought back to earth when I realised how far I still have to go to achieve the paintings I want to.
The paintings I did this week are just little snippets of what I hope to be much larger paintings. Scaling up is no easy task, and when it comes to figurative painting, I am yet to manage it, but I will surely to keep trying. One thing is certain after the week I’ve had, the drawing discipline I started at the beginning of the year is definitely paying off.
I’ve also been busy this past week writing the overview of my research paper, so our tutor can see what we intend to write about and give us feedback and guidance. I decided to do mine on the Ars Moriendi, the medieval dying how-to-manual that I mentioned in my last post. It hurt the old brain cells to do, but it was definitely worthwhile, as I now have a clear direction for the paper, which will make it much easier to write over the summer. I actually think I’ll enjoy writing it, as it is a fascinating subject, and has already sparked some interesting conversations with friends and family.
You can read my overview here if you have the time and/or inclination.
In other news, my fella and I have decided to make a documentary about Ann’s story. To begin the process, we had a pre-interview meeting with Hampton Creer, the author of “Never to Return”. It was such a privilege to meet him and his lovely wife Joy.
I absolutely love his book, it is beautifully written, and is a page turner from start to finish. It was also very special, because it was from his book that I first learned about Ann and was inspired to do a painting about her. We had a wonderful time talking all about penal transportation and other aspects of Manx history, such as witches. Once the TT races are over in a couple of weeks, my fella and I will return and interview him on camera.
I had a very productive week in the studio, and am finding my feet with the figurative paintings. I am still very much at the experimental phase, but am slowly discovering the kind of paintings I want to make.
Here are two of the paintings I did this week. I like them both, however, the one on the right has an underpainting that I made with the sea, and I think it adds a greater sense of dynamism. I definitely think a dynamic underpainting is the way forward. I don’t like figurative paintings that look too finished or realistic, except for the eyes.
The main focus of the course at the moment is the research paper we each have to write. I haven’t got much further than a vague notion of a topic, death. So far I have been looking into memento mori (a medieval artistic convention designed to remind people they will die), memorial art (which is right up my alley artistically), or ars moriendi (a medieval instruction book on how to die). Not very cheery, true, but death is a topic I am very interested in, both as a painter and a mortal. I will to have to pick a lane soon, as we have 1,000 word overview due next week.
I actually had a dream last night about doing my research paper on the Ars Moriendi. The book is from the mid-15th century, and instructed a person in how to have a “good death”, which basically consisted of letting a group of angels and demons battle it out for your soul on your deathbed, in the hope that your soul (which was depicted as a mini-you that popped out your mouth when you died) got to go with the good guys. The likelihood of that happening depended on answering a series of questions. Didn’t get the questions answered in time? Sorry, that’s eternal damnation for you! The book was wildly popular throughout Europe, and peasant and king alike were subject to its teaching.
One of the woodcuts from the Ars Moriendi.
My sister was on the Island for a few days, which was lovely. We had a family bbq at Anam Cara on the Sunday, and I showed them the Ann painting. It made my tender-hearted sister cry, which was either a sign that the painting is beautiful, or the Eurovision hoolie at my brother’s the night before was too much for her. My fella did me proud and didn’t burn the sausages, and made the most glorious Victoria sponge, which almost made me cry. Below is the only photo we have of the whole event, but to be honest, I reckon its the thing we’ll all remember the most. It was a damn good cake!
Thankfully, we did manage to get some photos of us all when the gang popped out later in the week. We had a lovely time just sitting there chatting, and marvelled at the fact that we were still sitting there chatting after all these years.
My fella is in Rotterdam for work this week and I miss him terribly, not just for his cake baking abilities. Though, it would be reason enough, as I had a go at a Victoria sponge and I don’t know what kind of WI witchery he used in his, but mine came out flat as a pancake. Still, the jam and icing has made it edible.
I love a good nap. And by far the best napping I have ever done was in my dead-lady-bed. The bed was a fixture in my last apartment, which I rented for 12 years (the longest I’ve lived anywhere). It got its dead-lady moniker because I am convinced an old lady died in it. It was a single, motorised bed that moved up and down, like you find in an old-folks home, and had a mattress so insanely comfortable, that even though I now sleep in a fancy super-king bed with a memory-foam mattress, I still find myself hankering for the warm embrace of my dead-lady-bed.
Coincidently (or perhaps not), the painting I had in mind for the Interim Show featured a dead lady in a bed. Although I wasn’t able bring the whole concept of the painting to fruition in time (of which the dead-lady-in-a-bed was just one element), it certainly wasn’t for want of trying.
Even though the painting doesn’t yet exist in its final form, I love it with a passion, and will do everything within my artistic powers to make it exist. Seeing the little experiments above gives me heart that it will!
After getting myself in a right pickle with my interim show painting, and almost flogging it into oblivion, I decided to take a more simple approach to the green paintings. My main focus at the moment is colour. Using the colour wheel I mentioned in my last post, I set myself the task of mixing my own greens using two colours, and then adding black and white to create different tones. I then added a colour on the opposite side of the wheel, known as a complimentary colour, and painted some little paintings to explore the colours and tones I created.
For my first experiments, I used phthalo green (blue shade) and yellow light, with red violet as the complimentary. It was nice not to have the pressure of creating an actual painting, and because I wasn’t trying so hard, some little paintings did pop out. The lighter tones are too bright and minty for the underwater paintings I have in mind, although they might be good for the odd highlight here and there. I really like the darker tones, and will definitely keep them in my bag of tricks. I also think it works better when the complimentary colour is quite strong, as in the painting below (which is of my fella playing Destiny and losing his hair from the stress of it).
Last week I decided to declutter the studio. Wow, what a difference it makes. I love being in here even more now, and find it much more conducive to arting. Of course, unless you’re a de-clutterer of the ruthless variety, the clutter has to go somewhere. Mine has gone into the room that my fella was going to use as an office. However, the non-fibre broadband we have out here in the woop woops isn’t good enough for his job, so he still works in his flat in Ramsey. With the empty space too tempting not to fill, it is now home to canvases and paints and things. According to my fella, I have now peed in every corner of the house, and if we ever do get fibre out here, he’ll need to water-proof the shed.
The other day I was lamenting to my fella about the agony I was going through trying to paint my green paintings, one of which I was hoping to get finished for the Interim Show. To clarify, he asked if I meant the paintings that if I didn’t do them there would be absolutely no consequences. That made me laugh so much. Because he was right, not just about the green paintings, but about painting in general. Absolutely nothing of consequence would happen if I never painted another thing. Sure, I’d fail my MA, and have a lot of time on hands, but no one would die, and except for a handful of people, no one in the world would even notice. And yet, I put myself under an inordinate amount of pressure, and approach my painting practice like my life, if not the world, depends on it. This has been true of the green paintings, particularly the one I had in mind for the interim show.
I absolutely love the painting I had in mind for the show, but I have come to the painful conclusion that it simply won’t be finished in time. Because it is a new type of painting for me, there is a certain developmental process that it has to go through, and rushing or missing out aspects of that process has so far resulted in a frustrating, dead-horse-flogging mess. So, before I flog the idea into oblivion, I’m going to return to the beginning of the development process, so I can build a firm foundation for the type of paintings I want to do. In which case, for the next couple of months, I will focus on colour and drawing figures.
During my last one to one tutorial, Jonathan put me onto a brilliant colour theorist, Florent Farges. I’ve already watched one of his videos, and it was extremely helpful, as is his self-designed colour-wheel system, that takes into account hue, chroma, and value. It’s all pretty technical, but I think it will be well worth the time and effort it will take to get to grips with it. So, watching his other videos, studying his wheel/s, and experimenting with colour is high on my list of priorities.
I have also signed-up for a couple of online illustration courses. So far, they have been enjoyable and easy to follow. I don’t want to do realistic drawings, and am not interested in portraiture, but I do want to develop my ability to draw expressive characters which convey emotion.
Instead of showing one of the green paintings at the Interim Show, I am going to show a painting I did when I lived in Australia. I have never shown it before, and very few people have ever seen it. That’s because I hid it in my studio due to what I perceived as a mistake in it. I always thought it was a shame, because apart from that, I thought it was a beautiful painting. Then COVID came along, the world went crazy, and I finally plucked up the courage to paint-out the mistake, and I’m pleased to say it worked, and the painting is now fit to be seen.
Acheron 90cm x 120cm acrylic on board
According to Greek mythology, Acheron (lit. river of woe) is the name of one the rivers in the underworld, which, along with the river Styx, Charon ferries the souls of the dead across. It’s an apt title for the painting, as I painted it at a time when I was miserable with unrequited love, an experience that sent my life into a tail-spin of hadesian proportions. Ahh, at least I got this painting out of it. A fair price I think.
Picasso was a horror when it came to women, but his insights into painting were spot on – like this:
Painting isn’t an aesthetic operation; it’s a form of magic designed as a mediator between this strange hostile world and us, a way of seizing the power by giving form to our terrors as well as our desires.
or this:
Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions.
I am particularly interested in this second insight at the moment, due to my recent colour change from blue to green. Blue has always felt like a safe, knowable colour to me, which is why I typically used it when experimenting. But green – it is completely different. I don’t yet know its boundaries, or what its emotional resonance will be on a large scale. On a small scale, it feels mysterious and other-worldly, if not a little bit spooky. When I paint with its darker tones (as above), I am reminded of a time when I was a child, in a boat on the edge of a lake. I remember looking deeply into the water which rippled and swirled with tones of impossibly dark green that merged into unknowable inky darkness. I was completely captivated. Even though I was only a small child, probably no more than 5 or 6, I knew I would never forget what I was seeing, and so I never have.
The above picture, which I found on the internet, is the exact colour/visual I remember. Looking at it, even with its poor resolution, I have the same sensation of wanting to fall into its depths. What a truly mysterious colour. However, the trouble with this shade of green is, it doesn’t really go with anything else (perhaps because it is perfection in and of itself), so it would not really be suitable for the figurative painting/s I have in mind for the Interim Show (although, never say never).
One thing is certain, if I am going to paint with green, I have to get it right, or I will end up with a garish mess that no one will want to look at. To avoid this pitfall, I have set myself the task of creating a suitable palette, so I’ll have a better chance of getting it right when it comes to the final work/s.
Some artists like silence when they paint, others like music. Personally, I like watching documentaries (technically I like listening to them, though I do pop my head up now and then to see what’s going on). My absolute favourite are pre-history ones, especially if they deal with religious practices and/or death-related rituals. I also like documentaries about water, hence why I chose water as the subject for my overall MFA project. As with pre-history, I especially like the religious aspect of water, such as its role in creation stories and its use as a conduit of transformation and spiritual cleansing. These two roles of water are almost universal, which is something I find fascinating. I especially love Celtic beliefs surrounding sacred bodies of water – that they are portals to the underworld, repositories for sacred objects, sources of healing, and, as with rivers, the embodiment of deities.
My idea for the Interim Show is to do a painting about the river Thames (from Celtic “Tamesas” – “the dark one“). Not only is the exhibition space on the bank of the Thames, but it is also an incredible waterway, with a long and fascinating history. I have chosen a small aspect of its history to focus on, and am happy to say that I now have an overall concept for the painting. The above image is a little sketch of one element of the idea. I don’t normally show/explain my workings/preparations for a painting, but we are encouraged to do so on the course, so I thought I’d give it a go. Once I have the concept rendered in a series of small preparatory paintings, it is my intention to produce one big painting for the show. I am not sure if I will have enough time to produce the big painting, in which case, I will submit the small ones.
As well as developing the concept of the painting, I spent the weekend painting more eyes. I think I have done enough for now, so will move on to some of the other elements I want in the painting.
bexODESSA 