Where art meets meaning, and your space meets you
About my tour of painting classes in London to develop my practice.
I was thinking back on the course I did at CSM this week. Those thoughts helped my plans to integrate paint skins into more of my pieces.
I tried to review at least three of the big famous artworks that use skin, but I got distracted by the work of Frank Bowling. Tate. Arts seem to think he does it, and I need to investigate further. Perhaps it’s that he uses canvas-like skin. I still need to read more of that very long paper.
Continue reading “Putting Skin in My Art Game”Below is a collection of paintings and initial drawings I did at the City Lit Abstract Painting Weekend Course. It was fun. There were lots of other painters there.
Some of us ate at Itsu Covent Garden on the pavement at lunch and watched as the Free Masons tried to recruit more members from people (men walking by. Our lunchtime vista was a strange mixture of men wearing dark Crombie coats, hell’s Angels, and a couple of Harley-Davidsons on the pavement.
Perhaps that inspired me to create this really feminine piece of work below. Some of the feedback in the crit was that I have a really light hand. I felt light creating it, so that was nice to hear.
Continue reading “Abstract Saturday/ Sunday”What advice would you give to your teenage self?
Sometimes I feel I have put off nurturing my creativity for too long. Other times I think it was seen in other parts of my life, like photography and property development.
My recent efforts with oil paints have highlighted the many choices I still must make around my style and my medium of choice.
I shall post an update on this painting when it is completed.
Urban Rooftop Landscape Oil Painting the Making
Our teacher took us through some portraits this week in my art class. The usual classics were there for us to study composition, tone, paint strokes etc. But I was struck by how much I was drawn into Julian Opie’s work.
I’d never seen his work before, and I noticed how my eyes were pulled into pattern finding.
However, I took on the challenge of seeing what my marks and finish might be like if I painted in the style of Julian Opie. I initially thought it might be easy; perhaps I was being lazy, but when I realised the attention to detail demanded in getting the contrasting tones right. Another hurdle I had to surmount was the light and the dark shapes to make sure those correctly gave the impression of light and shade. I discovered in class that trying to do this using oil colour is another difficulty because Julian Opie probably uses acrylics. But never mind, it’s all practice.
Making my life difficult wit oil on canvas board
Mixing the shades and tones
This week I started a landscape. It was based on one of my popular IG posts where we had a spectacular sunrise in London on Monday. From the images below it is clear to see that I am not a photo realist. There is a touch of impressionism, pop art and fantastical influences in my marks. It reminds me of the comical quality of British painter Beryl Cook.
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