something's cooking

well... there's usually some thing (or: more accurately: many things) bubbling away in the background.

but this one is taking a more shape (in the pot), bit by bit. it'll need some more time, but my recent obsession of watching wild life programmes (that previously just yielded an intent and intense yawn) is some indication of it.

it is also a direction onwards from my previous 3 observations on landscape. it'll be after the summer for it to be in full shape (leaving the pot on the boil metaphor).

tonight's fix was this one here (it's part 3 of 5 on youtube, so you can watch the whole episode).

it starts proper at 8:00mins

and don't miss 4:00mins onwards on part 4 ;)

i almost forgot some geographical details: it's here: the okavango delta in botswana.

if in doubt

... say nothing. or: take a field and a winter sky.

How come?

In colour. Blue. 40x40cm (WIP, I think)
Soft pastel/acrylics on canvas

... that my abstracts are always ending up seascapes?

Don't have a clue!

This is in fact an abstract interior still life, in case anyone is asking.

And just to add to confusion: it's pastel on a 3D canvas, over pumice, gesso and acrylics. Oh, and its first incarnation, this hosted a rubbish landscape in oil from a few years ago.

I let it mature a bit and see if I can sort out the composition a bit more.

Let's disappear with Turner

JMW Turner, Venice with the Salute, c1844
Oil on Canvas, Tate Britain

How about into this piece of art?


As the lady next to us said: 'You can't possibly see what's in that'.

Or can you?



And in a blink, he, it and I are gone. Nowhere to be found.


.

Landscape, fields and abstraction

Hahaha.... I didn't post the two paintings central to the previous post on de Stael, did I?

Well... here they are. The de Stael that is currently on show at the Tate Modern is this one.

Nicolas de Stael, Composition, 1950
oil on canvas, 79x125cm
Tate Modern

There is another one with similar compositional characteristics in a blue colour scheme with stronger saturation:

Nicolas de Stael, Le parc de Sceaux, 1952

Oil on canvas, 162x114cm
Collection Phillips, Washington DC

Both of the image files are so small in size that there isn't much to see other than hue and overall composition.

Where are the marks and the texture?

Now... the final state of Elqui 1 is as this.

Elqui 1, 70x80cm
Oil on canvas

It is signed and ready to be taken to the framers. And, more importantly: it is sold! As you can see, the orientation of the painting moved back to the original - several layers later, the associations with hilltops are rather distant, yet important.

De Stael's method of working on the two paintings in this post is very different to mine: very thickly applied paint, borders that separate geometric shapes and a palette based on very similar hues.

And: still! Something doesn't leave me alone with his paintings and what I want to do with mine. Haven't figured it out yet other than a persistent gut feeling.... let's find out a bit more...

From Elqui 1 to more fields via de Stael

Nicolas de Stael, Landscape: the road to Uzes, 1954
Oil on Canvas, 80x53.4 cm, private collection

There's someone I haven't been able to get out of my mind for the past few weeks. - Well, the title already gives it away. De Stael's landscapes are on my mind rather persistently. Quite some time back I enthused about Agrigente when I came across him via Chris's admiration for him. I did a few experiments with his compositions to help me work out the final abstractions from the first fields. And then I stopped.

I need to go back. No: First I really need to see some of his paintings in real life. But hunting for them only ever seems to lead to: 'held in a private collection'. If I ever was to have one single painting, it would be one by him - anyone. I happily take one of his tiny compositions, or the footballers, or a nude but really, really, really: I'd love one of the Agrigente paintings. That heat, that tension, that drama in a minimal composition.

The exhibition catalogue I have is in French, so it's a bit tedious but it's nonetheless delicious. It talks about the drama and danger of how de Stael constructs space across the canvas. They have - albeit from a different angle (or plane?) a similar impact on me as Joan Eardley's seascapes. I wholeheartedly and passionately submit to them, let them take over and be all there is. A canvas to loose yourself in. How delicious.

How did I not know before that art can do something so powerful? But now I do and it will remain. How wonderful.

The thing is - de Stael's landscapes are full of ghosts too. I haven't figured them out, maybe I won't try much further. But I suspect that such impact carries so much 'other' with it that there have to be ghosts. Hm, well, I of course know of his depression and anguish. But that is far too simple for ghosts, I've decided.

Nicolas de Stael, Landscape, 1953
Oil on canvas, 80x65.1cm, private collection

Did I intend to be practical today... I actually did. But not much chance of that. So: more posts on de Stael. And some sketching on my part of Chilean fields as mediation between myself and de Stael. How presumptious and how delicious at the same time.

Oh... and my best chance for seeing one of his paintings seems to be this one at the Tate Modern. So: London, very soon.

And I'm also curious: have you seen one of his paintings? Which one and where?

Now: please, please, please - can I have a de Stael retrospective somewhere nearby and very soon...

Layering across space

Elqui 2, oil on canvas, 50x50cm

... from Elqui Valle to the Scottish West Coast?

I had posted a number of work in progress updates of the three oil paintings I've been working on over the past months (e.g., here at: art? anyone?). They are finished now.

In the process a number of intriguing things took place.

(a) I lost the hill tops and managed to continue on Elqui 1 as an abstract piece at the first attempt. This was where I wanted to get to with the oil paintings but, on the basis of previous iterations required to move from representation to abstraction had not thought it would happen so quickly. But, Elqui 1 is for the next post.

Today, I want to talk about the Elqui 2 and Elqui 3. Well, they were meant to be larger - 80x70cm like Elqui 1 but somehow I very successfully have (still) mislaid my framing tools and so while I have stretchers I cannot for the life of me find the stapler nor the canvas I bought ages ago.

So, the two pieces are only 50x50cm - one on a bought deep canvas, the other one on a handstreched rough(ish) cotton canvas. One was too slick in surface, the other one far too rough.

(b) The task? Undo layer 1. The challenge: How? The palette, though very limited, is strong with the two cadmium yellows. I stuck with turpsy paint right throughout, for each layer work first with brush, then a bit with palette knives; often softening the knife marks again afterwards with brushes or rags.

Undoing - initially it was going to disappear under a white layer. But I didn't dare too... as you can see. I kept the original composition for the most part and discovered the fabulous greys in that palette. So, on went a succession of grey layers interspersed with keeping local colours and the main composition.

Elqui 3, Detail, oil on canvas, 50x50cm

Here, the rough and poorly primed canvas of Elqui 3 proved a fascinating ground for experiment. Suddenly, I ended up with a whole new series of edges, lines and half disappearing vistas. Even more bizarrely, the piece - solely designed to explore hue and markmaking was taking on some landscape element. Well, despite the name it wasn't never going to be a landscape. Even more strangely: it wasn't the arid valley of the Chilean Cordillera that was appearing but some West Coast of Scotland seascapes.

I kept working on it - something I am very pleased about. With oil paintings I have in the past closed them off far too quickly. Quickly I would no longer be able to see what to do next. Not so with these ones. Somehow I managed to keep them open for much longer, adding more layers in the process described above.

Elqui 3, oil on canvas, 50x50cm

And, what did I learn?

1. painting with oils is fabulous (well: I knew that before, but now I do with even more resolve)

2. the palette of cobalt blue, cadmium yellows and burnt siena so easily creates landscape associations, regardless what you do

3. layerings with grey build up distance (possibly also sense of time? - need to explore that further); wiping these and reworking at various stages of drying can strengthen that illusion further

4. I now know how to keep open a painting for longer

Towards the end of the painting process I deliberately played with 2. and 3. - to have a little flirt with the landscape elements in the paintings, to bring them out, muddle them up again, displace them and so on. VERY enjoyable. It was also interesting to get people commenting while I was painting. How much they enjoyed being able to see a landscape - something - emerge and how sure they were that that was what they saw. Interesting... let's think more about that...

Art? Anyone?

Elqui 1, WIP
oil on canvas, 80x70cm

Not quite finished but this is what Elqui has transformed into (once the hilltops were lost). The three made yesterday morning very enjoyable. They, and the fact that we are getting rather excited about the exhibition opening on Wednesday - and that pretty much is organised. Oh, yes, and then one of my fellow painters expressed her interested in buying Elqui 1 off me once it's finished. Hm... nice... just as well that there's no space anywhere for me to put it up, otherwise I may have been tempted to keep it.

More about them once they are finished in a couple of weeks.

Elqui 3, WIP
oil on canvas, 50x50cm

Elqui 2, WIP
oil on canvas, 50x50cm

And then I lost the hilltops...

... Find something, lose something.

Today's painting (as started here) had plenty of both. My cadmium on canvas fest was indeed rather strong-willed. So much, so that I ended up with this and was a bit speechless.

Elqui Valle 1, WIP,
Oil on canvas, 70x80cm

Its challenge was rather obvious: c'mon, Gesa - I'm about abstraction, I don't want to be Elqui Valle and the Cordillera. Ok, ok... away they went with one turn.

Elqui Valle 1, WIP 2,
Oil on canvas, 80x70cm

And stage two thus looks like this.

[oops... sorry, empty promises...
didn't take a photo from what it looked like at the end of the morning,
but I can tell you: it's MUCH better... promised!]

I wonder if I'll find Elqui Valle in here again or whether I'll just be left with a marvellous palette, plenty of texture and plenty of layers.

... To be continued....

'Where the wild things live'

- that was Juanita's comment on this drawing. You have seen a small detail of it already and today is the day for all of it*, and some more details.

Where the wild things live, Detail
Pastel on Arches paper, 58x39cm

'Where the wild things live' - I was well chuffed with that title. She got the eeriness and moodiness straight away. I made it a couple of weeks ago when I took more of the handmade Arches paper to draw with pastels. The palette is again similar to the earlier one, but less limited. The marks are drawing marks with some later reworking to calm some areas and to introduce more highlights. It is less sketchy than the previous one, and - at least for me - a fair amount of time working and reworking was spent on it.

I was meaning to write-up more on Wolf Kahn's approach to landscape as subject matter along with this post. But: I left my notes on that in a notebook in Glasgow, while I am - again - in Berlin for a week. So: the WK's landscapisms have to wait a little long.

Do go and visit the wild things in the meantime, though:

Where the wild things live,
Pastel on Arches paper, 58x39cm

* oh, dear, there's a bit of stage fright going on right now:
what if the detail was so much better than the whole piece???

Drawing with pastel and not painting

Trees in lake, study, 29x21cm
Coloured pencils on cartridge paper

The way I tend to use pastels is very much like paint: I tend to treat the support as a surface made up of different shapes, colour fields rather than developing a piece of art out of lines and linear marks. I also tend to work with pastel board - usually Colorfix board in darkish purple, light blue or anything in between. When I tag my pastel pieces in Flickr or Etsy, I have to remind myself to also label them as 'drawing' not simply as 'painting'.

So, although I work in dry medium I tend to say that I paint with pastels.

Just recently, I begun to draw with them. Not only that but I also reverted back to white paper as support - something I had given up as early as I could leave some sort of semi-competent mark with pastels quite a few years back. Admittedly, the paper I am using now is no longer cartridge but handmade, heavy-weight Arches paper.

And: how wonderful the white paper is and what drawing marks the pastels can make!

You may guess that the inspiration for this has been Wolf Kahn's use of pastels as his plein air medium of choice and my delving deeper into his palette, working process and subject matter.

So, while some smaller studies in pastel and coloured pencils preceeded these (like the one on the top of this page), here are two studies of the Pond Reflections. Both use a fairly limited palette, with greens introduced to the second one.

Pond reflections in Colour , no. 1
Soft pastel on Arches, 58x39 cm



Pond reflections in Colour , no. 2
Soft pastel on Arches, 58x39 cm

It's with these ventures outside comfort zones that I surprise myself: oh, are these really your marks? Your choice of hues? Of building up tension between different marks, hues and shapes?

Hm, maybe ownership isn't the way to approach this... let me think about this a little more.

I've been trying to draw with pastels for a while now and it's slowly building up a repertoire of marks and lines that will stay. It is also interesting to see the different hues that are being introduced - my small travel box now includes very different sticks to last summer - they are much more pigment-laden and full of reds, orange and magentas. Interesting...

A bit of learning: Wolf Kahn

Over the past two weeks I've been digging around some work on how to work with water reflections. Most of the digging was done on my sofa with some of the books that had been staring at me for far too long.

Inspired by Lindsay's and Vivien's excellent posts on Kurt Jackson on Watermarks and their respective blogs, I begun with KJ's Thames Project. I still haven't seen any of his paintings in live, but this book already provided a few inspired coffee rounds with M..

But I got stuck: I find his markmaking just utterly fascinating, but it's a wet media markmaking... there is no way I can splash with dry dusty pastels.


So, enter artist #2: Wolf Kahn. I had bought one of his books when Casey's Wolf Kahn project introduced me to his fantastic colourist landscapes which build up so much tension and ambiguity between abstraction and representation that I can look at them forever.

Warm Tones on the River by Wolf Kahn, 1990
Pastel, 11x14 inches
Private Collection, New Mexico

Well, having decided to explore water reflections in dry media (well: mainly pastel) for a little while longer, I've been since reading through WK, had a few email conversations with Casey and begun to find a way of exploring WK's work.

As a start today: his palette. It got me terribly excited. I loved it. And nonetheless it has been a very strange and alien one for me. Hm, I don't quite know if I get the words for it.... let me muddle around for a while on this:

It's colorist - note the omission of the -u-. It's a palette I've come across since in quite a few other Northamerican artists, notably in Tracy Helgeson's oil paintings [I am putting the link to her Sales blog in here as much of her current work involves portraits.]
I am tempted to describe it as a rather cool palette, but that is not right: there's plenty of warm tones sitting next to high chroma cooler hues; so: high chroma is maybe more fitting; it seems rich in phtalos, cobalts and cadmiums. And, other than cobalt blue, these are pigments I haven't used much myself.

Well... I think I can see the difference and particularities but it will probably need a few more iterations to speak of them.

Kahn describes his pastels as immediate responses to - or better still: part of the experiental seeing of - being in landscape (or nature?). They are characterised by marks closely associated with drawing. Rather than using sanded boards, he draws on paper - lightly toned paper.

Diane Townsend's Terrage pastels are said be to be developed with a particulay eye on WK's palette. She carries one set of twelve of WK's favourites, which are these here:


Diane Townsend Terrage Pastels: Wolf Kahn's Favourites

dioxazine purple 188
mars violet 93
red oxide 88
quinacridone magenta 182
blue-violet gray 135
gray 124
ultramarine blue 18
ultramarine blue 20
permanent green 164
cadmium red light 56
cadmium yellow 67
cadmium orange 63

I found this image in the book, it's rather different to many of the others, but it resembled most closely some of the eeriness of my recent pond reflections.

Black Pond i (study) by Wolf Kahn, 1997
Pastel 11x14 inches
Beadleston Gallery, New York

And where is all this getting me to?

A first glimpse is this:

A pastel drawing on white paper with an unfamiliar palette. Hm... Comments to follow once I've made up my mind...

Trees in lake,
Soft pastel on paper, 30x20cm

A few related links:

• See Diane Townsend Pastel website here
• Casey's Wolf Kahn Project at the Colorist here
• Wolf Kahn Pastels by Wolf Kahn. Harry Abrams Publishers, New York, here
  

The distance a photo a day makes

Did you notice my little sidebar slideshow? Yes, after 18 months I finally got to grips with a slideshow widget.

Some of my friends take a lot of photos, ordinary stuff, stuff you just stumbled upon, nothing special. I also saw the archive of someone who had taken a photo every single day for over 20 years until he died. And I must admit I am intrigued by the pretend simplicity and innocence of using a single photo to represent a day. No words (well, maybe a caption, please?!), no drowning in incessant chatter. Just an image.

So, when I was walking down one particular street in Uelzen last Monday, I took a photo. That road is part of an area in that small town that in memory is my favourite place in the world. My grandparents lived there in a housing association flat, and in that flat I spent a large part of my first few years. And most good things seem to have happened there.

Sternstrasse, Uelzen
Monday, 22/12/2008

It already started with the name of that area: At the star - Am Stern. Imagine that: to live at the star. How fabulous. And: their flat was on the second floor. High up from the ground, and with a balcony. Even more fabulous.

After leaving primary school, I would walk that road for two years every day after school to get to the bus station. AND THAT ROAD TOOK FOREVER. IT WAS SOOOO FAR AND SOOOO BORING. Forgotten was the great name. Star Street became Boredom Street. Just this year I ended up walking that road a couple of times into town. The first time for probably 20 odd years. I timed it: eternity lasted precisely 7 minutes when I was 9.

So, eternity, photographic simplicity, and memory lead to something that has come up a few times before: distance, familiarity and abstraction.

I was walking down that road and that difference in time then and now was one of those moments where it became so clear how stuff had changed, the stuff that had happened in those years, that that is somewhere I grew up but I feel utterly foreign nonetheless: I struggle with the customary unpoliteness when talking German, I say far too often please and thank you, hold doors open, try to queue orderly, and forget that words have literal meanings. And then again: I do all know this. It is mine... if not in presence than in past. And: the longer I am away, the more confident my awayness does become.

I think this is the distance I am circling around in some of my seascapes. See these two posts over at Watermarks, if you haven't read them before.

• Summer sketches of the sea
• Introducing Gesa Helms

Well... they also go back to some of the thoughts around landscapism and abstraction, there's some links on the Summer sketches post.

I hadn't quite caught sight of the importance of distance before. But Star Street made it just so much clearer. There is a poem to go with this:

DER EINSAME

Wie einer, der auf fremden Meeren fuhr,
so bin ich bei den ewig Einheimischen;
die vollen Tage stehn auf ihren Tischen,
mir aber ist die Fremde voll Figur.

In mein Gesicht reicht eine Welt herein,
die vielleicht unbewohnt ist wie ein Mond,
sie aber lassen kein Gefühl allein,
und alle ihre Worte sind bewohnt.

Die Dinge, die ich weither mit mir nahm,
sehn selten aus, gehalten an das Ihre - :
in ihrer großen Heimat sind sie Tiere,
hier halten sie den Atem an vor Scham.

I found a translation by Phillip Kellmeyer (sorry, I did change it, felt it could do with improvement):

The lonely one

Like someone who sailed distant seas,
I am with the ever natives;
full days are standing on their tables,
yet for me distance is full of promise.

In my face a world reaches in,
perhaps deserted like a moon,
they leave no feeling alone,
and all their words are inhabited.

The things which I took with me
look rare, compared to theirs -:
in their great home they are animals,
here they hold their breath in shame.

So not to make strange creatures hold their breath, I am taking some photos of the world where no feeling is left alone and all words are inhabited. To make theirs a bit more abstract and distant? Possibly?

I also doubt the title:
is it not much more about being foreign/alien/strange rather than lonely?
Ok, the latter may be a result of the former, but not necessarily so, no?

- Distance? Abstraction? What's new? Oh, and BTW, the poem is Rilke again.

But, do have a look at the photos, one a day while I'm here:

Heh?! That wasn't me!

Sun rise as clichee 2
Pastel in Moleskine, 24x21cm


Sun rise as clichee 1
Pastel in Moleskine, 12x21cm

No... I'm sure it wasn't....

Dunno what happened here... Tried a bit of sunrise and some trees. Ended up with this. In my Moley. Am sure it wasn't me.

I knew... there was a problem with symbolism. It is just not for me. Will keep trying the sunrises, the trees, but not like this.

Trees? I think
Soft pastel and coloured pencil in Moleskine
24x21cm

Window reflection
Pen and ink in Moleskine, 24x21cm

And, hm... I'm sure that that is me. But in this case, my mother is doubtful. 'Oh, that's nice, you sketched K. when you met her in Hanover?' No, I didn't. I'm sure she would have minded all my staring with intent.

But:
ad 1 - coloured pencils work well over pastel.
ad 2 - poster paint does provide a good base in moley.
ad 3 - self portraits are fun, and you can stare as much as you want to.
ad 4 - that new hairspray is fantastic for fixing the pastel mess.

What do YOU do with a (horizon) line?

One of the ways I've begun to use some of my artsy stuff with my social sciencey stuff is to do with research methods... being more creative (!) with them: e.g. some participatory research with young people on labour market experiences; some narrative biographical interview training and some more experimental focus groups methods.

See Horizon #1
Soft pastel on board, 15x10cm

Let's turn this round, and do some 'research' with this blog. I've been circling around the (horizon) line. It's potential to separate, hold together, hold in tension, be (not) there, to enframe or open up. The previous experimentations in pastel have provided some interesting insights.

And, then I wonder: while some of you have commented on the horizon line, I could do a bit of participatory blogging on this. So: here's a few questions:

1. What importance do lines have in your work?
2. A horizon: to be ignored, explored? Thought about? Forgotten?
3. Technique - paint it in, out, around. Not really bother with it?
4. Separation/tension/togetherness: what role does a (horizon) line play in this?
In addition, maybe any comments on media you prefer, thoughts on abstraction and the like...

As you can see, I don't really do survey research: a narrative interview is what I'm most comfortable with; so, please, take the above as pointers rather than a fixed order.

Either reply as comment, but also - my email is in the sidebar; if you fancy, please attach a piece of your work to illustrate. I would like to discuss other people's thoughts/approaches to the above in here.

Cheers!

... the abstraction to be filled (?)

Ok... more to follow from the previous one: That is difficult - not to read Rothko's Black on Grey paintings as horizon line. But I'm trying - and the painting is all the better for it. Brian had commented on abstraction as the barest hint at something, to be filled in. Let me fill that thought a bit further - or take it elsewhere.

Ambiguity.

I played a little game last Saturday. Took Tom to the corridor where my small studies were lined up and asked him what he thought. What he thought about the colours? He walks up and down, forward and backward. Then goes: 'I really like that field of bluebells. How wonderful.'

I grinned. It's water, all water, nothing but water. No bluebells. But suddenly there was a depression, a field of bluebells and a bit of woodlands in the distance on the left hand.

Seascape Study #2 or some bluebells?
Pastel on board, 18x12cm

Irene joins us. Listens to my complications on what I am trying to do, listens to Tom's representations of what he sees. And talks about colour fields.

Now, I've never seen any of her paintings. She doesn't show them. In the four years I've been to her classes I haven't seen her do a single piece of art. And somehow I really value that. It's hers, it's private. It's not for showing. I don't think that Tom or Chris who've been there a lot longer than me have ever seen any of her paintings. I know she paints abstract, large canvasses, with palette knives, several paintings at once, and some bits more. But that's it. That's all I need to know.

But back to the abstraction.

One of my pieces last year was based on the textures and marks on the wall... originally titled Textured Wall marks #1 and #2, both of them sold; one to a friend. And her family suddenly discovered a little girl in a white dress in my wall marks. First I was chuffed, how nice: I can paint people unintentionally. But then it losts its appeal. That little girl was all I could see. EVERY SINGLE TIME. How irritating. That favourite red/white spot of colour in the painting had become something concrete other than a red/white spot of pigment.

Textured Wall #1
Soft pastel on board, 50x70cm

Luckily, she disappeared after a while again. Phew...

The field of bluebells and the little girl in a white dress make me both doubtful that I should be intent on filling those blanks, gaps, voids and hesitations in. And it's those moments that I'm very glad to have Irene there to pull the looking/seeing back to fields of colours.

So, no, Rothko most definitely NOT paints horizon lines. I am pretty certain of that.... I think.

Paintings I like - without a horizon

Mark Rothko, Untitled 1969
Acrylic on canvas, 234x200cm
Collection of Christopher Rothko

Mark Rothko's work has a similar effect on me as Joan Eardley's. It just swallows me up... gulp... I'm gone. The paintings are left.

It's quietly sombre contemplative. The scale and the colour are just all that is there. I had been looking forward to the Tate Exhibition and kept wandering through the rooms, back and forth. The scale of paintings, the different series - 15 or so of the Seagram Murals in one room; the Black form paintings, Brown on Grey and Black on Grey. Fabulous.

There were two comments that stuck.

One was a conversation I overheard in the room with the black on black series: such variety in black (red, brown, green and blue ones; opaque, transclucent, matt, shiney). An elderly couple sat next to me. Her emotional response to the black was straightforward: "He must have been such a sad person." And she was clearly distraught by all the black she saw.

That's it. Enough said. You see, you read, you associate painting=painter.

Have a look at the series in question for yourself. The Tate has the exhibition online... here is the link to the Black Form Paintings

Similar to the Twombly exhibition, I had taken an audio guide - actually much more: a nice touch screen, music, stories, additional images. Very nicely done! And not in this room but in a later room, the curator commented on Rothko's association with the Abstract Expressionists. He, the curator was doubtful, commenting along the lines that while Rothko intended and experimented intensely with the evocation of emotional responses by the viewers of his paintings, the paintings themselves don't tell us all that much about Rothko the person, they are thus not particularly expressive/expressionist.

Interesting thought. I'll keep that.

The other one was the commentary on the last series: Black on Grey. In various sizes, formats, different borders surrounding them.

Instruction #1 for that room: This is not a horizon line. Don't read it as such.

Mark Rothko, Untitled 1969
Acrylic on canvas, 206x236cm
Collection of Kate Rothko Prizel

And here is the Black on Grey room

That is difficult - not to read it as horizon line. But I'm trying - and the painting is all the better for it. Brian had commented on abstraction as the barest hint at something, to be filled in. Let me fill that thought a bit further - or take it elsewhere.

• The whole exhibiton is online with a lot of additional material. See the link here
• Casey over at the Colorist has a lot good things to say about Rothko too

Hilltop or the ocean

I find that the process of photographing pieces is always a useful one. In it's deceptive objectification the photo allows me to step a foot away from the piece - as if time has passed between painting and a new looking at it.

So, with the ACEOs something struck me. And it was again the line that kept me looking at it - the horizon line. And I wondered what the difference was between a hilltop against the sky or the line where the sea meets the horizon. And I remembered how Twombly's Poems to the Sea all have a ruler-drawn horizon line - the only straight line, the same throughout all 24 poems.

Where the sky meets the sea - the line - where it all happens - the Wild.

Then I played some more with the wild line in the distance: masked off the lower part of the board and painted in the sky. Played with the way the pigments come up, close to the line, touch it, or not quite.

Hilltops, oceanlines or fields of colour. Here are three more (seeing that I already sold two... thank you, P.!) for the Etsy shop:

See Study ACEO #6
Soft pastel on board, 8.9x6.4cm


See Study ACEO #7
Soft pastel on board, 8.9x6.4cm


See Study ACEO #8
Soft pastel on board, 8.9x6.4cm

Smaller still

Ok... some more studying. Using smoother paper for the smaller scale, I tried to see how much I can simplify/strengthen the composition on the small ACEO scale - 8.9x6.4cm. A bit of a challenge for the large Townsend Terrage stick that is my cobalt blue. But very good fun. I also played with the titling - rather than sea studies, they are now see studies (as in look/see, but also the German for sea).

Have a look at the see studies:

See Studies #1
ACEO, pastel on board
8.9x6.4cm



See Studies #2
ACEO, pastel on board
8.9x6.4cm


See Studies #3
ACEO, pastel on board
8.9x6.4cm

And seeing that I'm determined (or at least intent) to cross-fund my end of year present-buying habit with some sales in turn, these are now available in my Etsy shop [www.gesah.etsy.com] :)

Seascape in Earth

Some of the pastel studies [from here] have already found their way into large print, eh: scale.

Seascape in earth WIP
Pastel on board, 70x50cm

This one intrigued me for the burnt orange/cobalt blue. The colour field inbetween was struggling to hold the strong hues together. But nonetheless, I liked the lime green/earth pigment in the sea a lot.

The small 15x10cm format is always a tricky one I find. I like its challenge to work something out so small, but for many compositions that simply doesn't work for me: so, while several of the small studies have some beauty in them somewhere, they do so precisely because of their flaws.

Now: a seascape in earth colour/green and orange. In some way it gets me around the earlier posed concerns about landscapisms: the obvious enframing, reading as something specific. The walking, running, stumbling between abstraction and representation, and back and forward again.

Seascape in earth WIP (Detail)
Pastel on board, 70x50cm

The pastels as medium took me one step beyond my struggles over perspectives, marks, lines, textures and palettes. There's something awfully complex about the sea, water, reflection and movement.

I reckon that part of that complexity is also unfamiliarity? I'm not too sure about that - while I also think that being unfamiliar with 'stuff' is usually quite helpful, it seems to be standing in my way. It does so in a manner that the fields from earlier this year didn't do. Well: there is probably nowhere in world I have spent more time, been more often over more than 20 years than those fields. So: they are known, familiar, saturated with stuff: experiences - some better forgotten than others.

Does that make it easier to represent them? Push them onto a canvas, turn them into something else in that process? Something that is outwith my biographical past?

I am in two (or five?) minds about that.
Well: seeing Rothko in London made me think about abstract expressionism - expressive of the artist, or precisely not! - a bit more... to be followed up later.

So... from all that experiental expressive experimental struggling, just going with fields of colours, and doing so in ways that don't read obviously as water was just what was required. And it was good and harmless fun. I made use of Brian's experiment of using water for diluting pastel on the board [thank you!]. Well: the board I used was one I had prepared quite some time back - it was a glorious lemon yellow with plenty of splattered acrylics on top. To mute some of the underpainting (and not to have to use too much pastel rubbed into the uneven surface), I used a wet brush. It flattened the pigment, turned it opaque. And: mysteriously and fortuitiously, took on the resemblance of water (how lucky is that??); I also found that my priming with pumice powder, and the resulting brush marks work rather well for the seascape.

So: a cop out on several levels - not building up by use of lines but again by fields of colours; no limited palette - but that's ok, that's for later. Let's stick with this for a wee while.

Seascape in earth WIP (Detail)
Pastel on board, 70x50cm