This is my latest painting of Parys Mountain which, again, was worked up from a plein air sketch produced during the Mike Knowles landscape painting week at the beginning of July.
It continues the series of paintings investigating the use of flat shapes to represent three dimensional space on a two dimensional surface and is another attempt to visually ‘fold’ or ‘buckle’ the painting surface in order to recreate the sensation of standing within the huge space, trying to make sense of the abstract colours and shapes.
It’s painted in impasto oil on stretched canvas using a palette knife to introduce texture.
In it, I am seeking to recreate the memory of the dazzling array of colours on show, as well as the feeling of distance and space in the huge, man-made quarry.
By returning once again to using flat shapes, I’m continuing to investigate and attempting to highlight the contradictions inherent in representing such a vast scene on a flat surface with only the thickness of the paint to differentiate between the ‘figure’ and ‘ground’.
During the workshop, Mike had suggested I look into the work of Nicolas de Stael and so I experimented with laying heavy impasto paint on with a palette knife when reworking this piece.
I’d love to know which you prefer; the finished piece or the original sketch (or neither!), so please drop me a line and tell me which is your preference and why!
These paintings are the result of attending the Island Art Group landscape workshop at Llaneilian in the north of Anglesey. Mike Knowles provided tuition and guidance, as well as useful constructive criticism.
I chose to focus on Mynydd Parys (Parys Mountain), which, according to Wikipedia, “dominated the world’s copper market during the 1780s, when the mine was the largest in Europe.”
I used oils and a palette knife for a change, whilst continuing to investigate the use of flat planes to try and portray the sense of space in the main quarry itself, as well as the staggering array of colours to be seen in the waste materials.
The Sculpture Garden (Acrylic on canvas 41cm x 41cm). It’s developed from a small sketch made during a life drawing class.
It’s part of a continuing series in which I’m exploring the use of abstracted flat coloured shapes to create the sense of form in space, in order to play with the contradictions of representing the 3D world on a 2D surface.
In this particular piece, I was especially focussed on trying to ‘break’ or ‘buckle’ the picture plane using the teachings of Josef Albers in his book ‘Interaction of Color’, as well as by ongoing fascination with Cubism, Picasso, Matisse and Hockney.
I kept thinking of Matisse’s cutouts made during his later years, when he ‘drew with colour’ using nothing but a pair of scissors and coloured paper.
These pictures are from a fantastic landscape workshop at Tim Iliffe’s beautiful farm near Llanfairfechan on Saturday.
Tim encouraged us to ‘respond’ to the landscape rather than just ‘record’ it, starting with charcoal, then monochrome, before moving on to a full palette.
I was inspired by the variety and geometry of the plant leaves as well as by the dazzling colours.
This painting was inspired by a life drawing class in the sculpture garden of the Ucheldre Centre, Holyhead, on a beautifully sunny July day this year. It’s painted on canvas board and is supplied unframed.
Its conception is based on a number of books about colour theory I’m reading which have led me to become obsessed with the ‘interaction of colours’. Furthermore, in recent work, I’ve also been focussing on accentuating the abstract planes ‘of’, as well as the interlocking shapes ‘between’, things, rather than just on the things themselves, so this painting is an attempt to further investigate those two, fundamental, topics of colour and shape.
By painting flat areas of colour that, of themselves, are simply abstract jigsaw pieces, but which together, can be interpreted as recognisable objects, the purpose of this painting is to encourage the viewer to go beyond passively viewing what, at first glance, is a calm and serene subject, in order to actively confront the contradictions between the flatness of the picture surface and the coloured shapes, compared with the three dimensionality of the image being portrayed.
In Douglas Cooper’s (1970 p.33) book, “The Cubist Epoch”, we read that Picasso said of his own pre-Cubist painting entitled ‘Dance of the Veils (Nude with Drapes)’, 1907, that it should be possible to “‘cut up’ his canvas and having reassembled it ‘according to the colour indications… find oneself confronted with a sculpture.'”
‘The Sculpture Garden’, is a first, crude, attempt to pay homage to that ambition.
This is my latest painting, which is entitled ‘Up and Down South Stack Steps’. It’s an imposing triptych painted in acrylics on 3 large cradled panels (see picture below for an idea of scale). It’s painted primarily from memory in an effort to recreate the experience of descending South Stack‘s 400 steps.
The panels represent stopping at various points down the steps, gazing up at the vertigo-inducing cliffs of Holy Island, then soaking up the beauty of the low sun burnishing the quicksilver sea, before clambering down to experience the thrilling sights and sounds of the roiling waves in the narrow channel between Holy Island and Ynys Lawd.
It was inspired (once again) by David Hockney’s theories on alternative approaches to monocular/photographic paintings with a single viewpoint. Each panel is intended to encourage the viewer to feel that they are able to look in multiple directions both within each panel, as well as between the three panels (which, hopefully explains the title being ‘Up and Down…’ rather than ‘Down and Up…’) The ultimate goal is to induce a slight feeling of vertigo, as if one has been tied to a ship’s mast.
I hope to submit it for inclusion in the Art for All competition in the Ucheldre Centre in Holyhead where it will be on sale for £1200 (EDIT: price adjusted after *ahem…* ‘advice’ from my wife…) The exhibition opens at 5pm Thursday 20th July and runs until 5th September so please drop in as there will be a wide range of work on display by a number of artists.
In the meantime, please see the image below for an idea of the scale of the work.
South Stack Lighthouse Abstract (Acrylic on Canvas)
This is an attempt to try the Colour Field painting style of Mark Rothko and others. It’s actually a simplified landscape painting of South Stack Lighthouse, which is probably a contravention of the ‘subject/form free’ approach of the Abstract Expressionists. Incidentally, it’s also the first painting my wife has liked enough to put up in our house. That means I must be getting better, right?
Here’s a print I made of South Stack Lighthouse during an Island Art Group workshop with Howard Coles during which he introduced us to the Collagraph method of printmaking using textured wallpaper.
Yay! Someone kindly bought my painting ‘The Inland Sea Pontrhydybont New Year’s Day 2017’ from the Island Art Group Exhibition in Beaumaris last Saturday (for which ‘Thank you!’) so I hope this post isn’t a bad idea, but I thought it might be interesting to show the development process the painting went through…
Inland Sea Photo
Here’s a photo from one of my visits there just so you can get a feel for it if you haven’t seen it.
I’ve always loved that particular view of the Island Sea when the mill and Holyhead Mountain are picked out against the sky by the sun. If the tide is right, a variety of water birds (e.g. herons, little egrets, various ducks and waders) make the most of the exposed banks in the middle of the Inland Sea, and standing there listening to their calls and painting is like trying to paint a little piece of heaven, so I’ve been returning to this spot on and off for ages.
I painted the following version ‘en plein air’ (which, I believe, is French for painting outdoors whilst getting sunburned and receiving funny looks from passersby). As you can see from the photo above, a fair bit of artistic license has been used to try and fit the key elements into the composition.
Inland Sea Au Plein Air (Acrylic on Paper 40cm x 32cm)
At the time, I was really taken by how the water seemed to be as smooth as glass in certain parts and yet still have a slight sense of movement from the gentle tide in others, providing interest and texture as well as changes in reflections and colours in the water, depending on where and when I was looking.
I then worked on recreating the painting on canvas over a number of weekends in my ‘studio’ (spare bedroom) to try and encapsulate how I felt about it, as evidenced by the following gif (made with gifmaker.me).
Inland Sea Pontrhydybont New Year’s Day 2017 development
On standing in the studio recalling the experience of being ‘on location’ painting it, the main things I remembered were the bright sunlight making the fragmented reflections look like a stained glass window, and the contradictory sense of stillness and movement, so I was very keen to try and replicate those in the finished painting.
This fragmented approach also brought to mind a quote by Maurice Dennis (BrainyQuote.com):
Remember that a painting – before it is a battle horse, a nude model, or some anecdote – is essentially a flat surface covered with colours assembled in a certain order.
Maurice Dennis
As someone who is particularly interested in describing clearly delineated physical forms, volumes and planes in finite spaces, I find it an especially difficult challenge working out how to represent the enormous empty spaces and distances involved in landscapes, so this stained glass window approach using flattened colour shapes provided a way for me to try and address that.
I just hope that one of the previous iterations doesn’t appear to be better than the finished version!
(For info, for those that haven’t been to Pontrhydybont, just out of the picture to the left is ‘Four Mile Bridge’ bridge itself which is responsible for the cast shadow across the water and land, brought further into the picture for compositional reasons…)