London Stuff and Sigmar Polke

The ancient city of London has many charms and treasures and chief among these I name the art galleries at the top of the list. This year London has the most amazing blockbuster art shows to visit and tonight I went to view Sigmar Polke at Tate Modern. It was certainly intriguing and I shall go back a few times to absorb the works. So political, so Germanic! And so very masculine! Hardly the analysis that would win me a prize in Art Theory and Criticism but I will write more about it after my next visits. After viewing this show (and others) I am very inspired to start sketchbooks and small drawings based on my observations of life and culture in London. Lately, I have been made so aware of how crowded this city is becoming. London is rich, deep, majestic but, of late, I've been feeling a different type of tension that isn't entirely comfortable. There is an underlying fragility, tension and confusion that is coming to the surface and I would like to resolve it or to work out what is happening on paper. London was always heavily populated but now commuting on the London Underground is uncomfortable and potentially dangerous for that reason. How could I translate these sentiments into small sketchbook statements as did Polke and Malevich? I don't know but it's worth a shot. Some pictures below show a small section of the exhibition and the always dominant, but slightly weird interior of the Tate Modern gallery. I'm tired right now so I won't write any more and my photography might be as tired as my head.

 My favourite of the show. 

  Entrance to the show. 

 A typical early Sigmar Polke 

Turbine Hall

A separate exhibition in the Turbine Hall of Richart Tuttle's work with Fabric.   Not impressed with this. Even with that amount of fabric there was so much more room for massive expression. Nothing compelling about it at all.

Slashed & Trashed!

The picture below is probably the most beautiful on this blog - ever.

It represents a turning point. I am throwing out all the below-par paintings I've done over the past few years, keeping a few behind for the time being. I am changing track and I'm going to be painting and drawing larger works on themes and concepts closer to me. I haven't posted anything for ages and I haven't been scouring my favourite artists' blogs every day.  Recently, every small work I started was junk and I know now something internal was causing this block.  I had to stop and regroup and this happened without any conscious decision on my part - or at least, it seems that way.   I can no longer paint the way I used to which somehow means that from crawling to walking, I missed the running bit and I am now ready to enjoy a long-distance marathon. Surprisingly, without doing any work to take me to the next level, just thinking about art and creating paintings in my head and exploring subjects of interest, I managed to skip a step.  Small formats cannot contain or reveal what I want to convey and I will only work with them to so as not to waste unused boards and paper and maybe to put in a few practice runs and sketches for bigger works.  My head is back where it was when I finished my art degree.

The slashed work has absolutely no value at all and it will be a supreme pleasure to get rid of all this junk. I might even close this blog and start a new one with the new work. We shall see what tomorrow brings.

"Slashed and Trashed"

Loved Mickey!

In the last post I promised to write a brief overview of my visit to see the Roy Lichtenstein retrospective at Tate Modern, but there is just so much to say and I cannot really add anything new to what has been written about this most influential 20th Century artist. I decided to put on a 'keep it simple' hat while going around the vast exhibition - 13 rooms in all - and just respond personally without any questions as to relevance, meaning or historical context. That worked for me as I expected it to and I had a great time.

I loved and adored his early Pop Art which delved into and magnified the comic culture of the late fifties and early sixties, and 'Look Mickey' I think is my all-time favourite. Also in this genre is the work "Drowning Girl" which the Tate had put in the room titled "War and Romance". Yes, that sickly, overt rendering of drowned sorrows, true confessions and death by love and ecstasy were all magnified, even glorified, in large formats but their allure for me is pure nostalgia. In them I see a vibrant America, a happier America, with children and teenagers lost in familiar comic books like "All-American Men of War" and "Girls' Romances" with comforting, comic strip images and their evocative rendering of fantasies-too-far.  A 'fantasy too far' would be the superb work "We Rose Up Slowly". (Immediately below).  I could go on about this work, but it would take too much space.  My 'true confession' is I didn't know such men existed.

"We Rose Up Slowly" 68" x 92"

"Compositions", although not a comic strip work, does link me to remnants of childhood in awful classrooms writing boring compositions and is another favourite; it's massive, starkly black and white, yet strangely comforting at the same time. Nostalgia in me again.  The associative side of art has always interested me and while I admired his later works (shown below) with their triumphal huge formats, they didn't link me up personally with anything except probably "Blue Nude" which inverts, rather coldly, all presuppositions about the revered classical nude as an art form.

By the way, all these visuals below were photographed by me from the souvenir postcard book except the "Compositions" and "We Rose Up Slowly" which were taken at the exhibition by 'mistake'.  Three visitors in front of me were taking photographs with their iPhones, so I gleefully thought "Yay, we're allowed to photograph!" until a security guard came up and told us not to take any more pictures.  Okay, but it was a really good show and I am pleased I went as it cleared up some cobwebs, but not enough for me to open my paints this dull Easter Weekend.  Here in the UK we are being punished with dark skies which, in my estimation, have been the dominant weather feature for the past 15 months.  We're all depressed.  Oh, before I go, did I say how much I hate the new Blogger?  Posting in the old format was so much easier.  Why fix what isn't broken?

"Look Mickey" 1961. National Gallery, Washington

"Drowning Girl" 1963. Museum of Modern Art, New York

"Compositions" 1964.

"Blue Nude" 1995. 205.7 x 152.4 cm. Private Collection

 "Interior with Water Lilies" 320.9 cm x 455.3 cm.
Douglas S. Cramer Foundation

I Can't Wait!!

I just can't wait to see the Roy Lichtenstein exhibition at the Tate Modern in a few weeks' time. I haven't been to a good 'blockbuster' exhibition for years it seems. I had somehow forgotten the artist as his images have become iconic and overexposed and ,to me, very emblematic of the sixties. Art historical dates aside, my resonance with the artist as part of the sixties is probably very incorrect and I don't want to go into this here, but looking through some images tonight I was taken back in time to the source of these paintings; those kitch, corny love book comic strips coming out of the United States that I wasn't allowed to read or buy as a kid. Oh no! These were not allowed in my home, but I do remember having access to some of them and memories of those times flooded back. Strangely enough, I could always draw these faces (and I drew many as doodles on the side of school notebooks) with waterfall tears falling out of heavy-lashed eyes, but trying tonight with a piece of charcoal (wrong tool - I should have used a simple pencil) I realised that I couldn't draw like this any more. The point I am making is that I should have been able to pull this off and it showed me just how much fluidity I have lost over the years and how badly I need to get back to drawing. My silly effort is posted below the 'real' Lichtenstein works - tinted, in the spirit of 'pop'.  It's not even good enough to be a legitimate 'homage'.  I shall report back in a few weeks a mini review of my experience at this exhibition.

Roy Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein - I presume

Roy Lichtenstein - "Wham!"

My Doodle

I'm back & who cares etc.?

My last post was a lament for my lost or stolen camera.  I never saw it again and I now have another which I claimed on insurance.  It wasn't a good deal, and I won't go into that as it makes me so angry to think what happens to the consumer here in the UK with insurance and financial services' rip-offs, but the camera is the same brand as my old one and has a few extra features plus a wider zoom.  What surprised me was how lost I was without one and I seriously didn't even feel like doing much art because of this which is a weird syndrome I shall have to work on at a later stage.  Why couldn't I just paint and get on with it?  My work doesn't need to be photographed - who the heck is waiting for it?  What am I doing here not feeling my work can progress without being documented?  Anyway, I feel as though my tools of trade are now complete and I look across at the disturbingly bad work in progress in the corner, a watercolour of a church altar, and I also lament the lack of practice I have been getting in lately.  No-one's fault but my own.  Some work will appear in the next few weeks; it will, it will, it will, it will.....will it?

"Watercolour collecting dust - early evening in the Studio"

Thwarted!

Sometime in the last three weeks I lost my trusty digital camera, or horror of all horrors, it was stolen. I think it must have fallen out of my backpack on the train or something like that but nobody has handed it in. I am lost, totally lost without it and I can't photograph any work to post here. It's frightening to realise how dependent an artist is on her tools, and all I have left is an old SLR and a baby digital, which works, but can't meet the challenge of photographing art. I don't know if my insurance covers this sort of thing and I am loathe to fork out hundreds of pounds for another. Woe is me. Really down about this.

"Baby digital camera"

#TwitterArtExhibit - Images from the show

In a recent post, I wrote about the second Twitter Art Exhibition that was put on by top Norwegian artist, David Sandum to raise funds for a women's crisis centre. I just thought I would share some photographs from the exhibition held in the library at Moss, Norway. It is currently still running and apparently paintings are still being sold. This was a superb effort put on by David Sandum and I was delighted to have taken part. Apparently my painting has sold which is good news. Above the photograph of the display stand there is a link to the whole photo album on David's 'Posterous' page which beautifully shows what a well-attended and exciting event it was. So strange to think of my little work hanging up in a library in Norway without my seeing it on show!  My painting is in the middle of the right hand side display in the photograph below.

LINK to complete photo album: Click Here

Display Stand at Twitter Art Exhibition II

Blank Canvas and a "Clue"

After a long think this past weekend about what I have been doing art-wise since I started this blog, I decided that some of the work should be deleted as it was just not up to scratch. Part of my 'agenda' with the blog was to document my progress as it went along, but now I have realised that to a certain extent some of the paintings were done just to keep my hand around a paint brush and I refer specifically, in this instance, to a lot of the art blog challenges I have participated in over three years. These have been good for me in their own way, but as most of the subjects painted haven't been close to my own vision for my work, they have passed their sell-by date and quite frankly, have gone 'dead' on me. The juice has gone from all of them except for the 'History of Art Challenge Blog', which hosts challenges that, if I submit good work, will actually serve as an enabler for my next project. If I am going to be serious about pushing my art to a higher level, (and I am) most of the work on this blog should really be categorised as 'warm ups' and to have said 'exercises' out there in the blogosphere, doesn't seem strategic or grown-up.  I am all for full disclosure when it is practical and I even considered deleting the blog, but felt that might be a step too far and too soon until I had another blog going.

So, I am keeping this blog open to everyone until Sunday evening, 29 January 2012, and after that it will be open only to those who wish to keep up with what I am doing on a regular basis and I know there are at least three friends out there who want that. Once I have sorted things out, which should be by the end of February, I shall open it to everyone again.  Friends, if you wish to continue viewing this blog until I get cracking on my new series, please send me your email address via a comment (which I obviously won't publish) and I will add it to my contacts list. I am not too sure how this will work, but I think if I submit your email address, you can get in automatically.  I hope this new step I am taking doesn't sound too aloof or pompous as I truly appreciate everyone who arrives on my blog whether they comment or not.

I intend to work on a series for a while on a subject that for me is truly the most painterly, most beautiful and yet, most difficult of them all. More later, but I leave a clue in the lower photograph. 2012 is going to be a year of depth for me even though I shall still be without a studio, but who knows what will happen?  My purpose is to generate my own unique work for a change.  I also intend to do more still lifes, slowly executed this time, to keep my technical skills honed.  More later!

"Blank Canvas"

"Le Clue"

Adieu 2011

Well at least I have some work 'on the go' is all I can say tonight. I have been on our annual Christmas Break for nearly a week now and I have only managed to get halfway with a few projects which is frustrating, mainly because I think I could have completed them. I have just been so mentally tired that chilling out became more important than creativity. I have another two weeks of annual leave ahead of me, and if I can get "my act together", some extra work should be on show here. A few weeks back I was seriously contemplating 'sequestering' this blog, until I had made up my mind about whether I even wanted to continue painting and drawing, but in the end, I decided that was just a passing mood and had nothing to do with reality. I am so constrained time-wise that I have to be more accepting of the fact that I cannot 'churn them out'. For weeks I had been genuinely upset that I hadn't painted as many paintings as I had done in 2010. However, I hope to complete this work in a few days and I also have a semi-finished work for Sherry's "Art History Challenge Blog" which is delightfully more challenging than any other 'challenge' blogs out there. If I don't post a work tomorrow, I would like to wish everyone, especially my blogging friends, Sherry and Charlotte, an absolutely magnificent, peaceful, healthy, creative New Year for 2012. That should keep y'all going for a while.

"Studio Table with Work in Progress"

The Virtual Paintout - April 2011 Challenge

I think I'm all "challenged-out" - whatever that means. Lately, well in fact for almost two years now, most of my paintings have been for challenge blogs, fun - yes, but things are changing in my artistic life. I am feeling the need to investigate what has importance for me and this covers many things. Sending work into challenges is fun and I take it seriously in that I try to send in something worthy of the challenge, but I am not pursuing anything personal, conceptual or even technically challenging, and most of the work I am doing is done as quickly as possible to meet deadlines. I love both "The Virtual Paintout" and Sherry Massey's "History of Art Challenge" blogs but I have so little spare time now that I intend to send in work only when I have a free spot in the calendar and after I have done my own personal work. I loved doing this 'Japan' challenge and had two other works to send in as well but just couldn't complete them partly due to time limitations but also my mind was elsewhere painting different pictures and that situation doesn't work for me. I'm not sure what all of this means nor do I have fixed goals right now, but I'm going to take some time out from challenges for a while to see what that extra time gives me to work on other projects. Weird how things morph through time. It's time for me to relax somewhat and see what comes towards me for investigation instead of responding to others' visions, even though I am so grateful for them. Someone as independent as this writer needs to set her own challenges. I'll talk more of this later, I had better post this and send off my challenge for Japan to The Virtual Paintout.

"Wires above Shinjuku, Tokyo" - Gouache on Paper - 9.5" x 9.5"

Click HERE for street scene used.

A Salute to Ai Weiwei

I have been promising myself for months to go and visit the Ai Weiwei "Sunflower Seeds" exhibition at Tate Modern, and even though I work close to the gallery, I found it difficult to get there and back in a lunch time. So after work tonight I went determined to experience this very unusual work for myself. Let me say from the start I found it very beautiful. We are no longer allowed to walk on it because of the dust it generates, but even with that restriction it was very special to look at. Sadder still is the story of Ai Weiwei who was put under house arrest by the Chinese government shortly after the commencement of this exhbition and now I hear that his studio was destroyed on 11 January 2011. His bravery amazes me. His Wikipedia article can be found here if you are interested. How I would love to have been able to roll around in that sea of porcelain seeds, just for the sheer hell of it!

On the way to Tate Modern. The Tate is the large building

on the left with the 'light-box' on its roof.

The dome of the majestic St Paul's Cathedral in the distance.

View from the high balcony looking down at Ai Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds.

Walking under the high balcony towards the exhibition.

My favourite taken with a timed shot. The height of the seeds is about six inches.

A slightly out of focus close-up

View from the far end showing the height of the Turbine Hall.

Video recording room where visitors can video record their

responses to the exhibition which are then relayed to Ai Weiwei.

Near the exit. The view down the ramp towards the exhibition.

If you walk under the balcony you reach the exhibition.

This is such a dramatic vista even though it's dark.

Fighting With San Miguel Etc., Etc.

This has been such a weird week. A week where none of my artistic projects had any success and even a planned visit to a major art exhibit tanked. I have five paintings on the go in various stages; three for The Virtual Paintout challenge and two tiny portraits which I am not confident about. All are at the beginning stages, which is where I usually feel like giving up. Nothing seems to happen at this stage, and it takes me a lot of energy to push on. The art exhibit was something I and a colleague were looking forward to - a visit to Tate Modern to see Ai Weiwei's beautiful work in the Turbine Hall. Unfortunately the 100 million pieces of porcelain are giving off dust and that has been deemed a possible health threat so visitors can only view the exhibit from the second floor gallery which, in my opinion, and I think probably that of the artist, takes all the joy and meaning out of the work. Visitors are supposed to walk over these tiny porcelain seeds and muse upon them. What bliss we thought - a superb interlude to a dreary week in the office!! On hearing the news, I threw a mini strop and lost interest, so I came home tonight hoping to move on with my latest Virtual Paintout fiesta. Not.

I decided to do a quick, small oil sketch of a scene I had rejected as I thought playing with the colours would be a good practice run for the three scenes I have chosen. Not. It reminded me of a painting I had done earlier this year of the lane near my home which I keep forgetting to delete from this blog, but keep just to remind myself that I at least tried. Another obstacle was that I was painting on gessoed card and it was so slippery like the Nocturne experience a few days ago. Another obstacle, another lesson.

I am posting this photograph here as a mini diary of sorts, getting stuff out of the system. Maybe at the end of the year I can go back and delete all the junk posts from this blog, but tonight, hey, it's a-staying here.

"Sketch of Street in San Miguel de Allende"
11" x 11" - Oil on Gessoed Card

Three Primaries Out To Dry.

No, that's not a political statement, but it might sum up how I feel about politics and the systems around them at the moment. Back to art, it's much more trustworthy.

I haven't posted here for over three weeks and that is hugely frustrating for me, but I have been working and very hard indeed on my paintings. No matter how mediocre the work that is put up on this blog, I am happy because that means that I am being productive. Productive in practicing rather than in producing work good enough to sell. I'll get there. However, I have been ultra busy painting three works for the Virtual Paintout blog challenge this month and they have to be sent in this Thursday. One is finished, and two are in their last phases, drying, before the next layer can be done. This is the very tiresome stage of the process for me and, ironically, the place where I learn the most. I have based this project not only around scenes in Manhattan, but on the primary colours themselves. They are paintings of huge windows on Fifth Avenue. I will describe how I approached this in my next blog post. For this post, I have taken out the colours and they look completely weird, and it's interesting to see which one works the best for me compositionally. I am having some sort of fun here, so ignore this if you like. I've never put up such a bleak, colourless post, but it's fun to see the Google car in the reflections even in these greyish visuals.

The Remains of the Day...

Last week, sitting at the office completely bored, I was aching to be at home with my paints and brushes. My drawing and sketching wasn't cutting the ice, so I had pushed that to one side. This morning, I woke up determined to just paint and paint anything that took my fancy. I chose basic still lifes of food; mushrooms, peppers, onions, lemons, mugs and a breadboard. These objects had been languishing in my fridge for over a week and were ready to be thrown out; I am such a bad eater! But at least these precious items didn't go to waste. Or so I tell myself.

I now have three unfinished 8" x 8" canvases drying waiting for the next assault, possibly tomorrow. I was hoping to have at least one finished today but I had decided earlier on in the week to really try and sit back and look critically at my work, no matter how humble the subject. This meant taking breaks and really stepping back and looking at the work at various stages and only going back to it once I had established at least five areas that needed correcting; and then disciplining myself to make those corrections. This works, but it takes a little longer. I took these photos at the end of the day just when the very rare appearance of a Winter sun was slipping down behind the clouds.

Pepper in Progress.

Now You Know Why I Need A Maid.

Determined to Draw

I am determined to draw a little, or a lot, each night this week. So determined was I when I arrived home tonight that I took out most of my charcoal and chalks, erasers, knives, and drawing pads and put them on the table so I would not be able to ignore them. This is a trick I have to play on myself. Although it is untidy and impractical to have all that material lying around, it makes life easier not having to unpack the material each night from my trusty toolbox.

I've decided for my next submission to the current Following the Masters challenge, I am not going to do a painting, I am going to do a charcoal sketch of the artist whose work we are paying homage to - Robert Henri. I have found a good photograph on the internet, so I'll work from that. I just don't know his work at all, and nor do I know the work of the Ashcan School. This makes me realise just how Eurocentric my art knowledge is at present, and even our libraries don't seem to have any decent monographs on his work or of his followers. I love to work from a good reproduction, but this time they are not available, so I'm going to use this challenge to practice my drawing. Not inventive, but totally practical. Some more clarity.

Off we go...

Feeling Behind then Gaining Clarity

At the end of my first week back at work after a long four weeks on leave, all I wanted to do was shut myself away and paint. I had been feeling huge frustration at not being able to complete all the paintings I had started during my leave. I learned a lot from that experience: the work I am doing is too ‘complicated’ in the sense that I need to wait for layers to dry during the process. I have to learn how to paint a la prima, and learn it soon. I think a couple of workshops are on the way. Unfortunately, as far as my research has taken me, the best ones are in the USA. Time will tell.

During my break, I wanted to finish work and good work at that – at least paintings that I was happy with. I usually stick with a work to try and resolve the problems and that strategy has always taught me something. However I realised that some of the work I had done was just not redeemable. So, I wiped out two and re-primed them with Titanium White oil paint, so heaven only knows what will appear on those surfaces. For at least two weeks it was far too dark to paint during the day and I had to paint with my daylight lamp attached to my table easel. Even with this lamp on I felt I wasn’t using colour very well. Also, it was far too dark to take any decent photographs – it still is, here in London. These are not complaints; just facts.

Today, I had planned to see an exhibition at the National Gallery, but when I woke up, the whole event and outing just wasn’t ‘speaking’ to me any more, (which was very strange for me) so I spent a few hours working on an outdoor scene I had photographed two years ago. This was one of the paintings I started during my leave, but couldn’t complete. Yet another work, too complicated to paint in a day; well for me at least. However, I made progress and learned a lot and even with these tiny, and I mean really tiny, movements forward with understanding and getting back to ‘seeing’, told me that I had made a good decision to stay at home. By listening to my own inner voice, I gained clarity. This clarity revolves around staying with my own work and spending more time on it instead of rushing around trying to absorb the whole art world in one weekend. It also revolves around really sticking with paintings that don't go well from the beginning. It also helped confirm what makes me really happy.

I also have to learn how to manage my time. I am awful at it. Not going to the art exhibition, gave me time. The painting I am working on will not end up on anyone’s wall, but it is in the completion of it that I get clear about what it takes to be a painter and the feeling of satisfaction is incomparable.

Until the Summer light comes, I think I shall spend the nights working on charcoal drawings just to try and keep creating each day and practicing, practicing, practicing. The weekends shall be reserved for painting. I have one nearly-finished still life from my weeks off work which I tried to photograph today but for that, again, the light was poor. It is the weirdest still life I have ever attempted, and maybe, if I am in a quirky mood next weekend, I’ll post it here.

a.m. - Feeling Behind & Out of Focus

p.m. - Progress and Clarity

December/January Plans

I have been experiencing serious withdrawal symptoms being away from my easel for a few weeks. This has been ultra-frustrating but soon, very soon, I will have four weeks annual leave and I have promised myself to use this time mostly for painting. I have so many unfinished projects that it has become a joke. The day job took over with a huge relocation project to a new office which took both time and energy. Something had to give; sadly it had to be the painting. During 2009 I have been painting mainly ‘challenges’ for the Different Strokes from Different Folks and Following the Masters blogs. I have loved doing these, but during this end of the year break, I am going to play in my own playground as well as participate in one Challenge.

For years now I have really wanted to go back to basics. I haven’t painted traditional still lifes for decades, and I am going to try to do one small one every day or every second day and ‘loosen up’ a little and experiment with colour and composition. I don’t even know if I can still draw, let alone paint, an ellipse after all these years! I’ll have to scour a few flea markets and bric-a-brac stores to pick up some items to use as basics props. Just writing this is exciting but I also know that I might hit a few obstacles along the way as I am presently so unfamiliar with this type of work. I also hope to get a little bit of drawing done. The only real impediment to all of this could be ultra dark skies during the day here in England, which are typical for this time of year. I hope to paint still lifes of many types of objects; ceramics, fruit, vegetables, ornaments, food of any description, and I might even try my hand at some food packaging. Okay, I have probably gone too far now as I think, for a painterly foray across such a range of objects, I might need eight weeks, not four, to complete what is presently running across my mind’s eye.

Another ambition of mine is to use up all my old tubes of oil colour. I have quite a few tubes of a brand of oil paint that I no longer wish to use as I have moved ‘on and up’ in my choice of oil paint. The ‘old’ brand is traditionally considered a ‘good’ one, but for me it is not good enough, and I am a firm believer in only using the best materials.

Roll on Friday night and let’s hope by this time in 2010, it won’t be a case of “The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley”. Who knows what might happen.

Waiting.

Hope Springs Eternal.