To say that my mammoth (only in terms of time expended) painting of Sitges is nearing completion does not mean that it is finished.
The damn thing greets me each morning as a mute, yet eloquent expression of my artistic ineptitude. And please, I have heard the oft repeated sigh of artists that what they aim for and what they achieve are far apart. At least their hopes and execution are in the same arena; mine are not even in the same galaxy.
The thinnest brush that I possess does not for me produce a thin line of paint. Whatever expectations I have for the colour mixing in which I indulge the results are always a mystifying surprise. Paint just doesn’t go where I want it to go.
Yesterday at lunch in a local restaurant I ate underneath a painting which depicted a river flowing beneath a rustic bridge. The painting was awful. The subject was clichéd; application of paint amateur; the colour unrealistic and garish; the composition formulaic and the whole conception facile and repulsive. It also showed more technical skill in its atrocious description of water that I can even begin to emulate.
I love the physicality of paint: the actual three dimensional presence on a canvas in the swirls of pigment. The tactile quality of Van Gogh appeals to me strongly in the almost sculpted effect that he achieves not only in his landscapes and flower paintings but also in his portraits. The social comment obvious in a painting like ‘The Potato Eaters’ is made more immediate by the almost child-like application of paint, intensifying the pathos of the scene by a grotesque cartoon-like quality.
I manage to achieve the ‘grotesque’ and ‘cartoon-like’ but miss out on the effect!
Whatever my inability I will soon have to cope with the double edged present of a LARGE canvass for my name day. I have decided to follow the cynical comment of O´Keefe who said that she chose flowers for her subject matter because, “I hate flowers. I paint them because they’re cheaper than models and they don’t move.” There is a wonderful Hockney painting which looks as though it was inspired by a Maplethorpe photograph which I think I might take as my inspiration.
As I recall most of the painting is plainish background which I think I could make a case for being of a ‘Japanese simplicity and starkness.’
So I reckon an orchid from Lidl, numerous photographs and a fair dose of audacity and I’m away!
I still await my Christmas present of Photoshop Elements which I hope will allow me to get away with much more in my photography than I ever hope to in painting.
My stated aim is to produce a reasonable photograph of a breaking wave and, having seen what Ian (the professional photographer upstairs) can do with photographs of the tame ripples that we usually get on the shore I am determined to emulate him.
You will notice that the significant word ‘professional’ in the previous sentence has been completely ignored by my good self and that blindness has left me brimming with the shining self confidence that has learned nothing from painful forays into the world of acrylic art.
This morning was the first Spanish lesson of the new term. It took the form of a two hour conversation about the effects of majority and minority languages. Catalan is an ever present bone of linguistic contention for the Spanish and other foreigners (as Catalans would see their fellow citizens and outsiders) and it is worried at on a daily basis. Spanish is much more widely heard in Castelldefels because of the number of immigrants in the area. Many of them are Spanish speakers, but do not speak Catalan.
Employment in certain jobs in Catalonia is restricted to those who speak both Spanish and Catalan fluently and education for the very young is confined to Catalan. Spanish is sometimes given the same, but no greater status in schools as the teaching of English! Which is odd when only one of those languages is ‘Official.’
I am obviously in favour of as many people as possible speaking the tongue of Shakespeare, Conrad, Dylan Thomas and me.
Since I have talked about Van Gogh, O’Keefe, Hockney and Maplethorpe in connection with my ‘art’ it only seems fair to drop a few other names to match my pretension in the world of the written word!
Where is my camera!
The damn thing greets me each morning as a mute, yet eloquent expression of my artistic ineptitude. And please, I have heard the oft repeated sigh of artists that what they aim for and what they achieve are far apart. At least their hopes and execution are in the same arena; mine are not even in the same galaxy.
The thinnest brush that I possess does not for me produce a thin line of paint. Whatever expectations I have for the colour mixing in which I indulge the results are always a mystifying surprise. Paint just doesn’t go where I want it to go.
Yesterday at lunch in a local restaurant I ate underneath a painting which depicted a river flowing beneath a rustic bridge. The painting was awful. The subject was clichéd; application of paint amateur; the colour unrealistic and garish; the composition formulaic and the whole conception facile and repulsive. It also showed more technical skill in its atrocious description of water that I can even begin to emulate.
I love the physicality of paint: the actual three dimensional presence on a canvas in the swirls of pigment. The tactile quality of Van Gogh appeals to me strongly in the almost sculpted effect that he achieves not only in his landscapes and flower paintings but also in his portraits. The social comment obvious in a painting like ‘The Potato Eaters’ is made more immediate by the almost child-like application of paint, intensifying the pathos of the scene by a grotesque cartoon-like quality.
I manage to achieve the ‘grotesque’ and ‘cartoon-like’ but miss out on the effect!
Whatever my inability I will soon have to cope with the double edged present of a LARGE canvass for my name day. I have decided to follow the cynical comment of O´Keefe who said that she chose flowers for her subject matter because, “I hate flowers. I paint them because they’re cheaper than models and they don’t move.” There is a wonderful Hockney painting which looks as though it was inspired by a Maplethorpe photograph which I think I might take as my inspiration.
As I recall most of the painting is plainish background which I think I could make a case for being of a ‘Japanese simplicity and starkness.’So I reckon an orchid from Lidl, numerous photographs and a fair dose of audacity and I’m away!
I still await my Christmas present of Photoshop Elements which I hope will allow me to get away with much more in my photography than I ever hope to in painting.
My stated aim is to produce a reasonable photograph of a breaking wave and, having seen what Ian (the professional photographer upstairs) can do with photographs of the tame ripples that we usually get on the shore I am determined to emulate him.
You will notice that the significant word ‘professional’ in the previous sentence has been completely ignored by my good self and that blindness has left me brimming with the shining self confidence that has learned nothing from painful forays into the world of acrylic art.
This morning was the first Spanish lesson of the new term. It took the form of a two hour conversation about the effects of majority and minority languages. Catalan is an ever present bone of linguistic contention for the Spanish and other foreigners (as Catalans would see their fellow citizens and outsiders) and it is worried at on a daily basis. Spanish is much more widely heard in Castelldefels because of the number of immigrants in the area. Many of them are Spanish speakers, but do not speak Catalan.
Employment in certain jobs in Catalonia is restricted to those who speak both Spanish and Catalan fluently and education for the very young is confined to Catalan. Spanish is sometimes given the same, but no greater status in schools as the teaching of English! Which is odd when only one of those languages is ‘Official.’
I am obviously in favour of as many people as possible speaking the tongue of Shakespeare, Conrad, Dylan Thomas and me.
Since I have talked about Van Gogh, O’Keefe, Hockney and Maplethorpe in connection with my ‘art’ it only seems fair to drop a few other names to match my pretension in the world of the written word!
Where is my camera!
No comments:
Post a Comment