Category: project 1

Everybody needs good neighbours

CSM MFA - Progress Blog, Green, project 1, Project 2, research paper, Week in Review

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.

Birds of a feather

CSM MFA - Progress Blog, Painting, project 1, Week in Review

It was another good week in the studio. For most of it I carried on with the seawater paintings, which was very enjoyable. However, I took a break from them on the weekend and returned to the figurative paintings.

I still feel like I am a long way from figuring out what kind of paintings I want them to be, so I think the best thing I can do in the meantime is to keep experimenting. It’s like the big little-man said:

Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.

Pablo Picasso

To that end, I’ve been noodling around with some small paintings to see what might pop out. It turns out, an owl and a pussy cat!

The most important thing I can do to achieve my goal for these figurative paintings, is draw, which I am still doing every day. This week I drew birds, and I have say, they are my favourite thing to draw so far.

Drawing in general still has the sense of an arduous task about it, but drawing birds brings it close to pure enjoyment. They are such delightful creatures, and have so much character.

By way of demonstration, when I was drawing birds outside on Thursday, one left a little gift on my page, which I took to be a very good sign indeed!

While on the subject of birds, I thought I’d share The Wisdom Daily video I made this week, until I remembered I made it about a fish not a bird. But it’s such an amazing fish, I may as well share it anyway.

Bubble bubble toil and trouble

CSM MFA - Progress Blog, Experiments, Painting, project 1, Week in Review

All and all it has been a good week in the studio. I continued with the sea paintings, and ranged far and wide with my experiments, with various degrees of success. One element that kept cropping up was bubbles. That’s because I have been learning about them and watching them.

Sea foam is made up of bubbles, and they are what helps the sea breathe. The sound a wave makes when it crashes is the sound of the individual bubbles being formed, and the tone of each bubble tells you what size it is. I think this fascinating, mysterious, and beautiful, and I love watching them come in and out of existence.

I have been thinking a lot about the power of the sea, something that is inescapable when you live so close to it. I came across a beautiful photo that demonstrates just how powerful it is. It was taken by renowned Manx photographer, Chris Killip, in the early 1970’s, and shows a house being taken by the sea at Cranstal, Bride (the same stretch of coast I live on). I think it is a sobering and romantic image.

For me, it is a memento mori (Latin: remember you shall die), which was a type of medieval painting that depicted various objects that reminded people they will one day die – such as skulls, hourglasses, rotting fruit, wilting flowers and, of course, bubbles. I think Killip’s photograph is an especially poignant memento mori in this day and age, with global warming and the predicted rise in sea levels etc., making coastal erosion and its attendant destruction a present and coming reality. As with sea related disasters, such as tidal waves, death can come upon a person suddenly with little or no warning, but for most, as with coastal erosion, death creeps upon us slowly, diminishing our life force a little at a time, until there is nothing left. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I think it’s worth bearing that in mind.

In other news, I continued drawing chairs this week. My favourite to draw are white-plastic lawn chairs. They are tricky to get the knack of, but I really love them for some reason. I have certainly sat in my fair share of them.

Week 23 Experiments

CSM MFA - Progress Blog, Experiments, project 1

I thought it might be a good idea to create a weekly post (that I add to daily) of my painting experiments for the confluence project, a kind of visual-log of my progress.

NB: unless otherwise stated, all paintings are acrylic on paper

Monday, 24 April

No.1
No.2
No.3

No.1 – I like the colours and balance.

No.2 – I like the light, and the highlights on the horses legs.

No.3 – Although flatter than the other 2 paintings, I like the smooth finish on this one. I also like the white line drawings.

Tuesday, 25th April

No.4
No.5

No.4 – I like the falling water (it has a mystical quality, which is appropriate for water). I also like the bird’s eye. I want the eyes in my paintings to be soulful and convey emotion.

No.5 – I love the grid, especially the white outlines. I also like the chair (for some strange reason I love chairs in paintings…I wonder if it has to do with the fact that a chair is usually the example given when discussing Plato’s world of forms). Although I do like the white line drawing, I think I prefer a more abstract drawing, like no.3.

Wednesday, 26th April

No.6
No.7

No.6 – This is my favourite so far, everything about it works for me. I think the grid is gorgeous, the inspiration for it was from a photo a friend in NZ posted of Instagram of a building in Wellington. She did her masters thesis on Hecate, the goddess of crossroads. I was just reading about Hecate and crossroads the other day. A river confluence is a type of crossroad, hence why they were seen to be imbued with power. I thought it might be interesting to represent a river confluence in my paintings with this grid, as opposed to an actual depiction of two rivers meeting.

I also like this type of chair, and think it looks good in a painting. Palette good.

No.7 – I love cranes and industrial machinery, especially those involved with water. In general, I find cross-hatching aesthetically pleasing. I think a crane (or in this case an oilrig), will work better as a line-drawing in a painting than flowers (as No.5 above).

Thursday, 27 April

No.8
No.9

No.8 – I absolutely love this painting. It is about death, as symbolised by the following: the grid – confluence (entrance to the underworld); apples = seeds of new life (the Celts buried people with apples – a tradition that is thought to go much further back); material = (the veil between this world and the next). The palette is great.

No.9 – I really like the white colour, which I made using Titan buff and a touch of orange and magenta. It is the salmon-looking colour I have been using in the grid. It goes really well with green and brown.

Friday, 28th April

No.10

No.10 – This is a gear shift from the other paintings this week. It was such a beautiful day, so I decided to take some paper and paint down to the sea. Similar to the rain paintings last term, I then painted into the marks made by the water. There are still elements from the other paintings present, such as the horse, water, and carne motif. I’m not as keen on the palette, although I guess it suits this type of painting. I would be interested to see it with a palette like No.8. It was wonderful to paint with the sea, and I would like to do more of that over the summer.

Sunday, 30th April

No.11 – This is another sea painting from Friday, that I then painted into. I love how the organic shapes made by the sea, leant themselves to the final image. It is also interesting how the sea paintings are akin to the rain paintings from last term. I think I should explore this style further. Ultimately, I’d like to merge the two styles together.

Painting with my soul-friend

CSM MFA - Progress Blog, Painting, project 1, Research Project, Week in Review

It was a beautiful day on Friday, so I decided to spend the afternoon painting with the sea. Similar to the rain paintings from term 1, I put blobs of paint on various pieces of paper and canvas, and then then let the sea swish it about. I then painted and drew into the marks left by the sea. The results so far have been really promising, and I am keen to experiment some more with this method.

The reason I was able to paint with the sea, is I am now the proud owner of the most marvellous art-supply trolley (courtesy of my fella), that I can fill with everything I need and wheel outside nearer the sea, which saves me wandering inside to the studio every 5 minutes.

I attended an excellent workshop (notes below) this week, called “Joy Division into Research into Practice” with Clem Crosby. It explored a creative and organic way to approach research, sort of following a line of thought and being free to see where it takes you. I’m so glad I did the workshop, as I have been struggling to find a topic for my research paper, and it gave me an alternative way to approach my dilemma. I shall apply what I learned and hopefully come up with a good topic.

Also this week, instead of drawing horses, I have been drawing chairs. They are very enjoyable to draw, though some are obviously easier to draw than others. I love the aesthetic of chairs, and think they are very satisfying things to look at. I could go on and on about them, but I think it best I eke out my chair babble over the coming weeks, so as not to bore anyone rigid.

As well as drawing chairs, I have also been painting them (as below).

All in all, it was a very productive week painting-wise. It is amazing how much more time I have now that I have finished the Ann painting. Hopefully, with this extra time, I’ll be able to really develop the paintings for the Confluence project. Oh yes, and it was my birthday this week. It looked set to be one of those middle of the week, non-descript ones, but with a few visits from friends and family, some beautiful, thoughtful gifts, and my friend’s first chick of the year being born on the same day (to be named Rebecca, but it was a boy, so they named it Geoff) it turned out to be one of the loveliest I’ve ever had.

Never enter a river alone!

CSM MFA - Progress Blog, Painting, project 1, Project 2, Research Project

Term 3 began this week, which means it’s only 10 weeks until I have finished the first year of my masters. It is scary to think how fast the time is going, especially as I feel so faraway from achieving the creative goals I have set myself, especially related to my water-paintings project.

I am hoping I will feel a bit better about things once I have finished the Ann painting. I thought I’d finish last week, but alas, that was not the case. The hold-up isn’t for want of spending endless hours painting it each day, it’s just that it’s such an delicate, time-consuming painting, and I keep under-estimating how long it will take. Thankfully, I truly am nearly there.

While I’ve been on the home-stretch the past couple of weeks, my fella has effectively been banished from the studio, as I’m paranoid the painting will be knocked, so it’s just too stressful to have anyone around. I’m sure if he was telling the story, banished would be changed to steering clear of that mad woman and her “delicate painting”!

I continued drawing horses this week, which has been a pleasure as usual. My goal is to include a horse-like figure in my water paintings, a Kelpie to be precise. The problem is, a Kelpie is a malevolent water-horse that preys on people and drowns them, and my horses all look cute and cheerful. When told my fella I was having trouble making them look sinister, he suggested adding eyebrows. I think you’ll agree I nailed it.

I find the idea of a predatory, human-killing horse fascinating, considering that they are a prey animal, and left to their own devices, wouldn’t come anywhere near us. This contradiction is precisely why they are the perfect representation of the dangers of water, particularly rivers.

It cannot be over-stated how dangerous rivers are, especially ones that look calm and benign on the surface. For lurking underneath, you’ll often find a strong current that will easily knock you off your feet, making you vulnerable to shock, jagged stones, tangley weeds, to name but a few perils. Even a shallow river can be dangerous for these reasons, but if its deep, you’ve almost got no chance.

It is no surprise then, that the ancients told the story of a friendly horse by the riverside, that offered a group of children (or a lone adult) a ride. Once they mounted it, they were stuck-fast, and the Kelpie transformed into a malevolent spirit, and leapt into the water and drowned them. The warning being, children should not play unsupervised in rivers, and adults should not enter them alone.

Goodbye London, thanks for the chips and the raging allergy

CSM MFA - Progress Blog, Low Residency, project 1

Written – Friday, 17th March

Currently, I am sat in my hotel room, bag packed, watching breakfast telly, having just eaten my “I’m very poorly, I’ll eat what I want” breakfast, which consisted of a pot of chocolate pudding and a Bakewell tart. I will be heading to the airport soon, for what will either be a short trip home, or should the misfortune that befell my fella, befall me, a 3-day odyssey that will take me back and forth across the Irish Sea and a jaunty trip to Liverpool.

My body seems to be making a sterling effort of fighting whatever ails me, as I feel mildly better today. Unlike yesterday, which saw me getting progressively worse as the day wore on. I made the difficult, but ultimately wise decision not to attend the last day of class activities – i.e. visiting several art galleries together. I was disappointed I couldn’t go, as it was the day I was most looking forward to, but no one wants a moribund mucus-dripper for their art-viewing companion. Instead, I wandered the streets of London looking for the ghost of Mrs Quick.

Mrs Quick was the intended subject of my Interim Show painting that I was unable to finish in time for the show. Now the show is finished, I can resume my work on the painting, the start of which is research into her story. In short (I’ll write at length in another post), Mrs Quick died in the 1928 Thames flood, when her basement flat in Westminster became entirely submerged. Something about her story caught my attention and gave me the idea for my “Confluence” research project as a whole.

Mrs Quick – Acrylic on paper – test detail

Anyway, I decided to walk to Westminster to see what I could find. To be honest, I didn’t find much save the street where she had lived and sadly died (the house long demolished and replaced), and the local pub she may well have frequented, and which I did (alone, in a corner, slathered in anti-bac). Post ghost-hunting, I made the mistake of catching a tube back to my hotel, which re-triggered my allergy, making my symptoms worse than ever, and leaving me utterly miserable for the rest of the day.

The best of days

CSM MFA - Progress Blog, Interim Show, Painting, project 1, Project 2

Some days are really great, and today was one of those days. It began fairly early, as my fella had a 7am conference call. While he was in the shower, I set up his work station, poured him a glass of water, then went down stairs and got him a coffee and a sausage. This was no trifling gesture, because those in the know know, the way to a Court man’s heart is through a sausage.

After the call, we went to the Museum of London Docklands. It was absolutely brilliant. It has permanent displays telling the story on the London docklands including it’s relationship with slavery and the sugar trade. It also had a temporary exhibition about the history of execution in London, the majority of which took place on or near the banks of the river Thames. The displays were excellent and informative, and the museum as a whole is definitely worth a visit.

After the museum, we found a really cool place for lunch, called Electric Shuffle. It had an amazing aesthetic and the food and drinks were delcious.

This evening was the opening of the exhibition. We got there early, which gave us a chance to wander around and look at everyone else’s work. There were so many great artworks, and I felt very proud to be part of such an excellent show. I meant to take lots of photos, but got distracted. I’ll try and remember to take some more tomorrow. In the meantime, here are the ones I did take.

My lovely friend Carmel came to the opening. Her and I met on a course at the Slade School of Art in 2018. We have kept in touch since, and always try a meet up when I am in London. My fella had to attend a work function after the exhibition, so he went off to that, and Carmel and I had a drink the bar of our hotel. We had a lovely time catching up, and have made a plan to meet up again next week.

All in all it was a wonderful day, and I feel very fortunate to be here, to be doing my MFA at a school like Central Saint Martins, and to have the fella and friends that I do.

Dotty is as dotty does

CSM MFA - Progress Blog, Experiments, Painting, project 1, Research Project

I love dots. I love seeing them and I love putting them in my paintings. Nearly all my paintings have at least a little bunch or line of dots. In fact, most have lots of dots, and there are some that are completely covered in them. Dots are a pleasure to paint and are like sugar for my eyes. Basically, I can’t get enough of them.

Another thing I love are patterns. Whether in nature or by human hand, seeing a pattern makes my heart happy. If coupled with symmetry, as any self-respecting pattern is, then I am compelled to stop and stare, and invariably take a photo. For this reason, I have more photos of the spectacular wrought-iron work I saw on our recent holiday to Tuscany, than of the stunning scenery. Just ask my fella, he had to stop and hold my handbag every time I saw a lattice, and practically every house in the hill-top medieval towns we visited had them.

The beauty of the lattice-work I saw, inspired me to begin including it my paintings, which I did for a series I painted while at the Royal College of Art Summer School. I think it’s probably best not to over do it, but I little here and there looks lovely.

For the green paintings I’m doing for my first research project, I’d like to include more complex pattern work. So this past week, I have been experimenting with patterns from Victorian wallpaper. I like the results so far. When I am in London next week, I will try and visit the Victoria and Albert Museum to find some more inspirational patterns.

I miss my dead-lady-bed

CSM MFA - Progress Blog, Experiments, Green, Interim Show, Painting, project 1, Research Project

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!