A poem about a painting

I had a lovely day at a workshop at Charleston. This is the outcome:


Vanishing Point (looking at -- Girl Wearing an Orange Shawl, c. 1894-1895, by Edouard Vuillard)

The little girl with her orange shawl
Appeared on my canvas
In response to the vermillion mark
I had placed at the vanishing point.

Diagonal leading there,
A line for the eye,
And the two of them, going
Towards it.

Cobalt blue in her hair
Jaunty and brave.
Will she be brave enough for this?

I mixed some of that cobalt blue
Into the cadmium orange hue
With a touch of Mars black.
Turned them under the palette knife
Colours bleeding into one another.

A greenish brown emerged,
Took her by the hand
And led her
Out of the picture.

greens

All those greens,
and a white duck
in the rain.
A painting offered.

How does it feel?

Working - cross, annoyed, irritable, fed up, another cup of tea, chocolate, cross, pushing, scratching words into text.

Painting - amazing, daring, risky, safe, exciting, breathtaking, no more chocolate needed, tense, relief, amazing
A tree in a stormy cloudscape materialises.

painting and exhibiting

Still trying to paint every day. One day I couldn't get started -- didn't know what to paint, so went across the road and sat under the chestnut tree by the pond. I brought back a twig in bud and drew/painted it as it came into leaf. I also spent a long time on the picture of the pond with chestnut tree in foreground. It's on canvas and I have to get used to how the paint works on this as opposed to how it works on paper.

The art group had an exhibition and I put in six pieces. It was strange to see people looking at them, and even worse when they looked straight past them. There were some compliments about a couple of the tree pictures but my overwhelming reaction to going public was negative - it seemed a rather shameful or embarrassing thing to do, to imagine them good enough to display and to spend all that money on framing pictures that would have been better painted over and reused. (not that much money, thanks to Ikea). Gradually re-finding my equilibrium and start a new class tonight...

Finding the space

Why do my tulips never fit the page or canvas? nearly every time I have drawn or painted tulips in a vase they don't fit. The tulips feel cramped or the vase fills the space and there's no room left. It feels as if I love to paint the flowers but can't allow myself the space they need. After the last experience I thought maybe I needed a smaller brush and a bigger space but, while reading about the body and how Chinese calligraphers write and draw through their bodies, I came to see that the problem lies elsewhere.

First I read about "the body proper" which is a phrase from phenomenology, a kind of old, antique phrase where the adjective proper follows the noun in a kind of French fashion and also means something other than what it appears to. The idea is that we inhabit our bodies and experience the world through our inhabited bodies, in fact we can only know the world from inside our bodies. We then have to imagine how it is to be someone else; from the inside of our bodies we see the outside of their bodies and imagine their internal life. Not only that, but our bodies only exist and understand through our activity in physical space, so that all this is dynamic and spatial. These ideas fit with what I know of contemporary cognitive science -- embodiment as trying to eliminate false boundaries between mind and body and world; proprioception as the feeling of oneself from the inside; theory of mind as the process of understanding about other people.

And in art, the importance of this is that when we paint or draw something we are using our embodied, proprioceptive, spatial, understandings. Perhaps I cannot draw the tulips because I do not understand, from the inside of myself, how the tulips and the vase and the table they stand on occupy their space? It's as if I know the petals and the shape of the flowers, but what I don't know is how they fit into the space around them.

So today I tried to get to know these things better. I walk around the table. I think about the cylinders in space formed by the round table going down to the floor and up to the ceiling. I feel the vase, actually a jug, cold and round in my hands. I walk around the table. I feel the flowers, the stalks thrusting forward and outwards, their heads full and falling slightly. Then I tried to paint all of that, the space and the flowers, not just the flowers.

I added the light as more solid material in space -- oblong slabs of light from the small window.

This feels much better! although the flowers are still too big for the vase..

My arms, and tulips

trying to paint every day -- well not so much trying, as allowing myself the gorgeous treat of painting every day.

The two paintings that I've called My Arms were inspired by a photograph of an Australian ballet dancer. First I did the small painting on a black background, using just cobalt blue and white. I quite liked the x-ray effect, and being delicate, which is not how I see myself but with all these miniatures turns out perhaps to be part of me or part of how I paint. Then I did a large painting on a yellow ochre background which took several days and was very frustrating to work with. I used a blue watercolour pencil over the top of the first, annoying, image, and the frustration produced sweeping strokes that I quite liked. By this point, the paper was buckling. I tried to keep the pleasing strokes by painting more yellow ochre over the top, before stretching the watercolour paper, which should have been done first but wasn't. Then inside the pencil strokes I put glazes of rose and white to get the muscle shapes. Then I wanted a dark background on the left-hand side. Now it sits like this, still taped to my board because I know it's not finished but I'm not sure what happens next. I suppose I have to wait and see..

When I photographed the pictures and saw them on my screen, I realised that my body had painted my body, at least my arms. To avoid tingling and numb fingers in the night, I have to sleep with my arms straight or stretched out; when I'm half asleep, it feels as if my arms are miles long, stretching out into the distance.

The tulips were painted yesterday and seem to be moving in the same way. Again, I don't think this picture is finished but there are bits of it I like so much, but I'm scared to do more in case I lose them. Perhaps somewhere in here is the solution... draw boxes around the bits I like and keep them while painting the rest? if it was on paper I could cut them out and collage.. how to take a risk?

A set of miniature pictures

Last Sunday I went for a walk around the wood to see what was happening spring-wise. The bluebell leaves are pushing up through the dead oak leaves. Honeysuckle has the first new leaves at the top of its climbing stems. On the trees, buds are thickening, colouring, preparing. Birds are busy and pursuing conversations across hedgerows. No primroses yet, although in the city the verges are already full of them.

I had an idea to paint the trees that I've been scrutinising and drawing for the last weeks, determined to capture their winter shapes. Around here the trees stand against the skyline, often growing out of hedges, and when they are bare, the different shapes are very clear. The stag-headed oaks have branches that die off and remain amongst the living tree, sharp and spiky. On the road to town, there is a copper beech whose branches curve around and go back the way they came, creating the most beautiful fluid shape.

To make the miniatures, I take small sheets watercolour paper -- about 8" x 4" -- and draw a rectangle inside them. I use the acrylics very wet on the moistened rectangle to make country skies and rolling fields. When they are dry, I use my pen or paint to whisper a hedge, to grow a tree. Some of the trees grow out of their rectangular screen. The stag-headed oaks spike against their skies. Mostly the trees insist on remaining alone.

I want to add writing but can't yet work out how to do it. Scared of spoiling what I have done.

Contingency

I see it is months since I posted anything. So here are some new paintings. I wonder if the things I learned about colour mixing on my course show through? I am definitely thinking more about warm colours and cool colours, and how colours work with and against each other. I suspect that thinking so consciously about colour may temporarily affect other parts of my painting. I wrote about 'contingency' - how what we do at any moment is affected by what we've just done, what other people are doing at that moment, by the physical context and so on. Contingency is key to understanding the dynamics of speaking, writing or painting. Contingency is not just about the moment but about what happens in the moment as a result of everything else; and I mean everything, physical - social - cultural - political - historical...

Slade course

I started a new course "Painting 1" at the Slade in London. It feels like a brave and exciting thing to do - I love the studios with high ceilings and proper easels - so good to have the right equipment and space.

We made a paper box and cone, stuck them on paper and put them on the wall to draw. Homework is to draw a matchbox. I spent a week in Brazil at a conference, and some time waiting in my room passed happily drawing the box of shortbread I always take travelling to sustain, and the perfume bottle and box I bought on a whim on the plane. Whims are good, and healthy.

I recalled Giacometti - every time I look at what I am painting, it has changed. Even the shadows keep developing with looking. Strips of light appear in the matchbox's shadow, a darker line along the edge of what seemed dark before. Looking changes the seeing.

Getting the shadows 'right'

My artist friend challenged me to do more with the shadows in the Walk to the Woods painting. So I struggled on and eventually it did improve. I also worked on how to show the path in the foreground rising slightly before dropping away.

David Hockney in "Secret Knowledge", the film, said that, while a picture seen through a glass lens goes out of focus in the distance, what we see with our human eyes does not; it stays in focus, and is just far away. At least, I think that is what he said. It feels right too. When I look towards the wood, I feel that I can see the wood in focus and far away. I cannot see the details because they are too small, but I can see clearly what I can see. I talked about this with my artist friend, but I don't think she believed me,

New term, new class

It's September, autumn beginning, and a new class 'mixed media'. More later. Meanwhile another country painting.

More pictures

Another rape field, this time through a gate, took shape over several days after my operation. And a roman statue, that involved just one central colour, dark and watered down, with masking fluid - this too was seen in the Merida museum. And a picture copied from a card of Cotton Grass flowers - using acrylic like watercolour, paynes grey and yellow ochre with a little rose, and masking fluid, with some pen work. A challenge to work out how to do it, but the photographer saw its beauty first.

back to back to art

After carpal tunnel surgery - still sore but healing.

The vermillion picture was finished. I added lines that seemed to be needed and Roman vases found in Spain, now in the museum in Merida. The picture has the archaeological layers I wanted. It feels an odd creation, a strangeness.

Vermillion and a project

When I heard that J was ill, seriously ill, there was a need to paint. And a new sheet of watercolour paper was painted with vermillion hue -- it seemed to say something about her energy and love of life. Nothing happened to the painting; the painted sheet stayed on my drawing board on the easel for several weeks.

In the third art class, we started a "project". We began by mind mapping on a large sheet of paper in the middle of which we were to write or to think "what do I like to draw?". At the time, this question came as a loud and shocking reminder that we don't need permission to enjoy. What do I like, not what do I have to do or what should I do! It's okay to do something because I like doing it -- and actually I ought to do it just because I like doing it, and I'm likely to do it really well because I like doing it. (How to make this happen at work too?) Anyway, my mind map took in: the pleasure of drawing beautiful Greek statues, not as stone but as somehow alive; the lively beauty of the Roman pots and vases in the museum in Spain, placed on a shelf in a way that made them dance; and the beauty of the Latin writing inscribed in stone that could be read after 2000 years. I suppose there's a link with J. somewhere -- about human connections across time and through stone; we none of us survive physically but only through shared aesthetics and meanings. What we do or write or make may stay around and connect us to the future, even to future people not yet born; and this does nothing to take away present pain.

I pursued what was started in class by getting out books about Greek and Roman statues, old drawings. In one book there's a photograph of statues stacked in a museum in Lyon. There's a head at an angle raised to the light that gives a feeling of exultation or agony, a man's head and body that display strength and power, and in the background, other busts watching like an audience. Just as the little vases in the museum became a piece of art by accident, so this photograph is a beautiful picture as if by chance. I did a quick rough drawing to get the feel of where things were. Then I used yellow and green acrylic paint on top of the vermillion, and the pencil I love best -- Indigo watercolour -- to scratch through the paint, draw on the paint and mix with the paint. As usual, I was frustrated by some details, especially in the mouth and nose of the foremost head, and working on it lost some of the spontaneity of other parts of the painting.

Today as I vacuum cleaned underneath the easel, I decided it needed more layers and that I still want to try those dancing vases on the glass shelf in the museum -- and I think in the photograph is also an image of me reflected in the glass case in front of them -- layers across time. So I've added a wash of vermillion hue, very wet, over the painting but of course some of the yellow was so beautiful I didn't want to lose it, so I took out bits of the vermillion wash. I'll add another wash and then leave it until after my holiday.

Accuracy, beauty, truth

We had a brief discussion about accuracy, beauty and truth. In a research workshop the previous week, we had discussed how analysing data requires creativity and inspiration even though most people don't like to admit it. But it's not just that any kind of ideas will help, it's a very skilled kind of creativity that notices what's there in the data that might matter and pulls it out. In the art class, the teacher disagreed with us when we said we wanted to be able to draw "accurately"; she wanted us to make "beautiful" marks and not to lose creativity in trying to accurately represent. My frustration is in not being able to make the kind of mark that I find beautiful -- it happens sometimes but I'd like it to be much more skilled and reliable.

We agreed that what we wanted to see in our pictures was some kind of "truth" about what we were painting, and that's what I was trying to get at in "accuracy".

I think there's a great commonality between achieving this in one's art and achieving it in the kind of research that I do. Both require mastery of technique combined with imagination and being open to possibilities.

The last class of the year

We drew portraits and I tried to make the watercolour pencils create tone. I love the effect of just a little colour in a line drawing, creating shadow and highlights as if by accident. Getting it in the right place, or in a good place, is my current challenge. The blue one worked reasonably well, although the model is at no risk at all of being identified from this picture!

Clouds

Oh, a whole month without blogging -- it was a busy month is my only excuse. People coming and going, work events that made me miss two of the five drawing classes this half term, planting a garden. And quite some effort spent resisting misery.

One goal achieved -- the Rape Field painting, mounted and framed, was hung in a local exhibition.

In one class, we painted and drew clouds. First, just playing with materials and techniques, and then going outside to draw what was there. We've done a lot with various types of soluble pencils -- sometimes these produce nice effects, like rain out of a cloud, and other times they just annoy me because they're too small and fiddly. At home, I sat in the window seat and used watercolour pencils to paint the clouds over the pond. A couple of weeks after, I dashed to the seaside and spent some hours painting clouds over the Solent. They were yachts everywhere and I added some with my thin pen trying to get their jaunty movements. I took a photograph from where I was sitting, and am amused by how different the proportions are -- the little tiny strip of land has come out as quite mountainous in my painting.

Framed

Apparently free, a skylark
sends his fluid soul
earthwards
along silver wires.

Earth-tethered, all of us.

framing - limiting

I am excited! The new series of five classes started today and we drew and painted clouds. That was quite exciting -- more later. More exciting was getting my pictures back mounted and framed. I had three put in mounts and two framed -- the Rape Field and Fading Anemones. For a while I didn't want to unwrap them because I was a bit scared that I might not like them, but once out of the bubble wrap they really pleased me. The framer has done a good job -- it's all neat and tidy, with gold rings and felt pads to stop the frame rubbing the wall. What a nice feeling to hang them on the wall!

There's a kind of conflict going on between my art and my other professional work. In my professional arena I am an expert with a long list of publications and achievements; in the art I still feel like a beginner and only have a small set of paintings and drawings that could be made public, although hundreds of others lie in the backs of cupboards and in old sketch books. My professional expertise provides me with financial security but sometimes I'd rather live in a small house, spend less money, and live with the art. Having built up expertise in one field over 20 or so years, I feel very weary and it's hard to be excited these days. For me now art is fresh and lively. In my art I can be wild and free, and push myself to be wilder and freer. In my other work, I have to be precise and accurate and have to push myself to be more precise and more accurate. In my work, my cv frames me. It is wearing and wearying.

After a few hours, I do start to resist the framing of my paintings. I try to work out why I preferred them loose, with the ragged white edges left by removing masking tape, curling stiffly at odd angles, each in their own way. The framing has turned them into a different kind of object, made them kind of bourgeois, a decoration for the wall of a house,thereby losing something of the creative feel of the un-framed, un-bound, painting on paper. Before it was framed, there was always a possibility of more development; now it's frozen, covered with glass, hard edged, stopped. No more dynamics.

I wonder if there are other ways of preparing these for display that don't lose (oh! instead of lose the software typed the blues..) their immediacy. Perhaps I could just fix a ring on the back of the paper so that it could be hung on the wall? Of course, the painting would decay faster, get dusty or keep falling off the wall, but it would still have a life or be part of a life rather than separated away behind its glass and inside its wooden frame. I'll keep looking to see how others deal with this -- I notice that the gallery advertisements in the art magazine contain pictures but never frames.