If only…

YOUNGHUSBAND PROCLAIMS
Acrylic on paper, 106 x 94 cm. 2019

I had a very deep pocket and access to a very large gallery!  The Landscape & Memory series is now complete, not before time it must be said.  After all the first tranche (the Wood section) began back in Spring 2016 with the first completed works dated that summer.  the second (Water) dallied through 2017 and into last year with the final group (Rock) starting then and bringing us up to the beginning of autumn 2019.  It is 54 works in all that I have always envisaged in three blocks of 18, most likely 2 up and 9 across (as was the case with the first section that I showed at Harrington Mill – though a tall space might suggest a more vertiginous arrangement?

As for the cash…I did show at HMS with the works (all on paper) pinned directly to the wall but the framing up of one piece from Wood courtesy of a purchase by friends and posted here a while back clearly showed up how much better they would look all done.

ALPINE REMARK OF JOHN DENNIS                                 Acrylic on paper, 106 x 94 cm. 2019

This would likely require an outlay of upwards of twelve grand.  Any takers for a bit of sponsorship then?!

 

A rock on which to stand…

or a series of such…Rock of Ages – the third and final part of the Landscape & Memory project.  This one Savoy by Walpole is probably nearer the first part of the whole work, the Waldgeschichten part than most of the other seventeen (each of the three parts comprise 18 individual works).

At least for the moment as this one is only the fourth to be completed in this last group.   Some kind of fundamental underpinning to what one does seems all the more important as the external world gets crazier by the day and appears to be spiralling towards nasty intolerance, authoritarianism and worse.  On top of the rest of it came news today of the passing of Thomas Nozkowski – a painter for whom I have had immense fondness for over twenty five years.  It’s nigh on impossible to figure out how to respond to these things for the best.

RIP, Thomas Nozkowski, 1944 – 2019

Swapping horses…

Contemplation by St. Francis, acrylic & collage on paper, 107 x 94 cms., March 2019

I’m a passed master at swapping horses in mid-stream…after all I’ve got three smallish canvases completed since Xmas with another seven, one a fair bit bigger (a metre square), underway.  All of these are probably, even with my piddling about, quite near to completion so – just the moment to turn away from them and reconnect with something quite different!  But that’s my M. O. as anyone following this blog will know.  So back to the Landscape & Memory project and getting into the final stage – the Rock series.  Here’s the second of the eighteen that will make up this group – Contemplation By St. Francis. Click on the relevant tag for some kind of explanation about this malarkey.

Sound and fuzzy…

Here’s a rarity – a kind of semblance of recognisable imagery with this – the penultimate piece in the L’Histoire De L’Eau section of my Landscape & Memory series – The Vain Water-Poet.  Named in honour of John Taylor whose escapades fit well within the broader history of English eccentrics.  As always there is little that connects the picture with the event beyond the very loose form of the boat and the text but that is not really the intention as I’ve suggested before.

As it happens this image, most likely because it was the one up on the wall in the studio at the time, is featured in the visual advertising for Lucy Cox‘s enterprising series of podcast interviews – Painters Today where I am honoured to be the third artist in this endeavour  – connected to the Contemporary British Painting group and the excellent Priseman-Seabrook collection.  Whether anything I said over the course of a longish interview has any value is for others to judge but it might shed a little light on the activity I get up to and is recorded here.

A Good Morning…

for finishing up another (number thirteen) of the L’Histoire De L’Eau subset of Landscape & Memory.  And alongside this I’m tidying up the four sculptural pieces that I’m taking, alongside my banner pictures to the exchange show we are mounting in the Greniers A Sel in Honfleur, Normandy alongside the artists of the Contre-Courant group.  We being the artists associated with Harrington Mill Studios in Long Eaton Nottingham.  Although I’m no longer a studio holder there Jackie Berridge, the Head of HMS, has very graciously invited a bunch of us ‘alumni’, myself and my wife (the artist Sarah R Key) included, to be part of the fun.

Getting a good morning start…

I watched Picasso’s Last Stand the other evening…he never got up in the mornings they said.  Me I don’t sleep so well nowadays so now the days are longer I rather enjoy the early start.  As it happens too I’m now using a wall that gets the early morning sun.  Add in listening to A Rainbow In Curved Air (on my original vinyl copy) and it doesn’t get much better.  And it helps with the productivity – in the past two days I finished up three more of the L’Histoire De L’Eau gang.  Here’s Ditties For Her Majesty…referencing the first Elizabeth rather than the current one…

Ten down in The Water…

So you like to think you can extract yer digit when required…but then you go somewhere that makes you realise what a hopeless slowcoach you are.  Still here’s Priestly Acoreus, number ten in the water subset of my Landscape & Memory series. What with the first group of eighteen filed away, the eight others of this lot well advanced and fourteen of the eighteen of the final Rock lot underway not so shabby really (after all I only started this particular project a couple years back!).  But of course I had to go and spoil it by visiting the Picasso at Tate Modern…and crossing Millennium Bridge on a fine Spring late afternoon I reflected on how inadequate me and lets face it, most of us are compared to real genius!

Genius Of The Thames

“Till, where thy widening current glides to mingle with the turbid tides, thy spacious breast displays unfurled ensigns of the assembled world”

process

I’m back working with some serious intent after a dose of ill health – and focussed on completing three bodies of work.  The first of these is getting into the third and final part of the Landscape And Memory project, following on from the wood & water sections its onto rock.  And an opportunity to review the working process.  For the first part I pushed  collaged elements about with pva and acrylic paint across the whole selection of papers (some 21 in total) and then began working up each one, selecting text components as I went.  With the water work I’ve treated them piecemeal, with far fewer collaged elements, and it has been a far tougher ask.  So back to the first way of working in this section.

It has me thinking over how much process impacts on the making of non-figurative work, something that maybe has a more profound influence on how paintings work out than might be imagined.  How and why we choose elements, especially using collage, is fascinating to me. I try not to analyse it too much though in case I find myself shifting stuff around to ‘fit’ certain kinds of imagery….though hang on don’t these look mountainous!  Just as I’m re-reading material focussed on the peaks of ranges, in the west and the east…and good grief now Schama is talking dragons…obviously I need to exercise caution now…

Knocked sideways…

I’ve had quite a time of it recently…several bouts of mystery illness culminating in a nasty flu that still has something of a grip after a week…picked up ironically at our local A&E whilst I was waiting on a family member who was ill at the time!  Best to stay away from hospitals if you can it seems.  Today I’m feeling just a little more human, enough to review progress on the various projects I have on the go (regulars will know I keep far too many differing things in play than is sensible).  Here is the second batch of the L’Histoire De L’Eau pictures – part two of the Landscape & Memory trilogy based very loosely on Schama’s book.  Working with these is a curious process…whilst I have already chosen my eighteen texts some of the individual panels immediately suggest which one should accompany it but others much less so, to the point where some have to undergo drastic reworking to make them applicable.  And of course as each text is taken this gets harder so that eventually (at least with part one, Waldgeschitchen ) I am forced to write out each remaining one and shift them around the panels till I can make it work (or in one or two extreme cases replace them altogether).  I guess some might say – quite reasonably – this seems a cock-a-mamey way of going about things but its my way for better or worse.