Drawing an Important Part of the Process

Drawing is really important in my work.  I find the process of drawing is all absorbing, meditative and  informative, helping me to really focus on the subject and the elements which are going to be important in the painting.  It helps me get right into the subject, delving below the surface.  It also helps to highlight the patterns in nature which are a key element of my work.  I like to take the drawing back to the studio and use it as a reference for the painting. This gives my imagination an opportunity to flourish.  If I paint outside I find the work becomes staid.

Here are some examples of my drawings. I always work in pen and ink on cartridge paper, enjoying the flexibility of the pen as I hatch the shapes. The first drawing below is one that is waiting to be used for a new painting.   I really like the abstract quality of this mountain peak so I am looking forward to working on it. The others have now been used for paintings that can be seen in my previous blogs - work that has been completed in the past two months.

First paintings of 2010

2010 has got off to an energetic start.The snow on the peaks opposite my studio has prompted a series of 5 large canvasses. I prepared each with a background of black acrylic before starting work with the oils and have kept to the very limited palette I promised myself at the end of last year.  I wanted a stark, rugged quality to each piece, concentrating on the summits of the mountains where the snow etches each crag and fissure. I deliberately kept the skies a very dark blue black so that the mountains themselves are the focus of attention.

From here, where I look at the range of the Pyrenees across the valley of the Tet river, the mountains are picture postcard sculptural, stretching away across the horizon for 30 kilometres or more.  Up close they can be dark and brooding at times, with that latent power that echoes their original thrust up through the surface of the earth. I wanted to capture some of that power in the work.

So here are two of the finished pieces - one measuring 100 x 80cms and the other 100 x 100cms. 

And this one below is a work in progress of the peak of the Canigou mountain opposite my home:

After this I may have to go back to an orgy of colour !  In the meantime, one patient dog has spent long hours in that basket under my desk in the studio!

New Year ... Work in Progress

There is a really good quote about feelings that you can read on my friend the photographer Mark Lang's website http://www.marklangscapes.com/  and it was echoed by a comment on this blog site from the abstract artist David Weir http://davidweirart.blogspot.com/

The quote on Mark's site rang loud bells with me in relation to my landscape work. It puts into words what I am looking for in my own work - here is what he has to say:

"I would like to think that in my work there is a sense of the spirit of the land.  That in every rock and tree there is an awareness of a presence just as tangible as that of a human form, and that everything we see in the landscape deserves our love and respect."

The above painting is a work in progress measuring 100 x 100 cms.  The spirit of the mountains here eluded me for the first three years....but I think something may have slotted into place.  It could possibly have come about from the abstract work I started to do before Christmas. I hope it conveys some of the sense of awe that the mountains inspire, their rugged masculinity - their extraordinary contrasting moods.

Abstracting the Landscape

Whenever I visit a gallery it tends to be the abstracts that draw my attention. If you had asked me why that was, or what I thought made a good abstract I am not sure I could have told you and maybe it was for this reason that I had toyed with, but not felt confident enough to produce abstract work of my own.

This year I have met two abstract artists here in the Pyrenees Orientales, each of whom has a very different approach and style and recently we have begun to meet and paint together once a month.  It is through working with these two women that I have begun to really appreciate the difference between painting for the sake of the paint and painting to make pictures. I have taken my first few steps into this new world of paint.  In producing three abstracts of my own I have started to appreciate just how much the abstract relies on the paint and its application. The abstract has to speak for itself, there is no picture telling a story only the paint and its effect on the viewer.

Composition, colour, texture, layering, mark making – each element of the abstract painting is all important if a successful result is to be achieved.  I suppose what I was struggling with was the question of how I would know whether I had achieved a successful abstract and only time will tell whether I can answer that for myself.  In the meantime, just take a look at the styles of my two friends.

First there is Jennifer Lussman who has been working this way for a long time now.  Her strong abstracts resonate and glow, textures are really important and the work very tactile.

http://www.jenniferlussman.com/Works5_2.html

Then there is Mary Jose.  Mary started out as a watercolour artist and has only made the move to abstraction in the last year, using a pouring technique to create her pieces.  She  has a wonderful colour sense and builds up thin layers of paint to create her effects, bringing in brush hand knife work in the finishing stages.

 http://www.maryjose.fr/galerie-des-huiles/light-dividing

Encouraged by these two women I have produced my first two pieces that you can see here and at the top of this blog.  I have thoroughly enjoyed the experience of paint for the sake of itself as well as using a very limited palette on a black background.  I am now proposing to look at ways to simplify my landscapes and my husband has suggested I call the process ‘extraction’ rather than ‘abstraction’ ! I rather like that idea.

Changing and developing a style

Early on in my painting career I attended a marketing seminar which was supposed to give artists good marketing advice and pointers for attracting galleries.  One of the other artists attending that seminar was a  well established professional who warned me not to exhibit too early.  I’m afraid I didn’t take too much notice at the time, but when I look back, I know she was absolutely right.

I had a lucky break then and was offered a one woman show at a venue in central London.  I exhibited around 21 canvasses – it left an impression of my work that I now regret.  So when do you know that you are ready to exhibit ? I have to say that I still find the whole process rather like dancing in public in the nude !  You are exposing your soul when you show your work and laying a very delicate part of the ego open to criticism. There are still paintings that I show that I feel doubtful about, only to find that they sell immediately and others of which I am quite confident take a while before they find a home. This one below I could have sold 4 times over.

My landscapes told stories and had a somewhat naiive quality about them that has gone now.  Work has to evolve – the more you paint the more you find out.  There is always something to learn, some happy accident that can lead you to the next stage .  Part of my recent creative block was to do with a deep seated dissatisfaction with what I was doing, that allowed the niggly little voice of self criticism to take hold.  I have experimented with various different new approaches as a result and think that I am coming back to the conclusion that it is better to continue along the familiar path and allow that to develop rather than starting all over from a completely fresh perspective.  I think there is a certain amount of commercial sense in that if you already have a following and have found a market.  

I’d be interested in hearing from other artists on the subject of their own development and career progression and whether they took a radically different path at some stage.

The Vibration of Colour

I have been debating the issue of colour this year. When I first started painting, the colours I used were very strong and vibrant and they still are.  Take a look at this one for instance.  It was painted in France and is the meditation walk at Plum Village Buddhist centre - I wonder if it could have been more 'meditative' in it's choice of colour.  I got so bound up in that tunnel, that the colours took over even though this painting is a lot quieter than some I have produced.  This one is also quite a large canvas - 102 x 76 cms.

I  start out intending a softly, softly approach, only to feel I need just a touch of a cadmimum here or there and pretty soon, whoops - there I go again!  I can't resist the richness of oil colour  - the sheer physicality of painting with a luscious red next to a vibrating green, an Alizarin crimson next to a Naples yellow - simply delicious!

I love to see paintings where the colour vibrates. Take Rothko for instance.  You will only get the full power and drama of his colours when you really sit and study the canvasses in his special gallery at the Tate Modern in London.  Maybe your  response to them is dismissive - large canvasses which are purely blocks of colour?  But for me those blocks are not only technical wizardry at its best, but they also stir some very strong emotions.  It is the way the colours sing and vibrate. And it is that vibration that comes about as a result of understanding how colours react one with another and layering them to achieve the ultimate glow.

By layering the paint, even whites will take on that extra quality. I have seen this in the work of the French painter  Michel Steiner for example.  Just look at this lovely study.  Hardly any colour at all, a deceptively simple painting.  But I know Michel and I know that his work is built up very gradually with many layers, allowing each to dry in between.

A lot of patience is required and the ability to have several canvasses on the go at the same time.  I currently have 5 in various stages of progress!  All part of my determination to build up colour in layers and perhaps less emphatically!  Take a look at the colourful pieces on my web site and watch this space for changes!

http://www.annie-taylor.com

Facing the next blank canvas

Well, I spent another afternoon on the view of Durdle Door yesterday and now I am going to hang it on the wall of my studio for a while until I decide whether it is finished or not. I have attached it to this blog so that the reader can see the small changes that have now been made since the 'work in progress' was posted in my first blog. I often do that when I have a piece that has been difficult to achieve. Giving a piece this time to 'breathe' allows me to see what needs to be done. One of the problems with this particular canvas is that there are large areas of the land mass which are a very smooth texture - no brush marks, just tone. I used quite a lot of my own prepared medium with the paint to build up layers, allowing each layer to dry before applying the next. Usually I would do that with texture and I am not sure yet whether this new approach has worked. At the end of the day I think it is only the artist who can resolve a piece, regardless of what the viewer may perceive.

Now there is the process of deciding what next? This for me is the dreaded blank canvas that has to be tackled. I usually work from drawings and still have several pinned to the wall that have not yet been turned into paintings, but I looked at them yesterday and did not feel motivated by any of them! Hey ho! There are also two or three unresolved canvasses that are stacked against the studio wall and I have to decide whether to battle on with those or abandon them entirely - I hate admitting defeat, but that may be the only answer. I should try to work on more often on more than one canvas at a time.

I will take the dog for a walk up the mountain. I do get ideas when I am out walking. At home in Dorset, a walk through the woods or up on Cranborne Chase would nearly always un-pick the creative knots, but beautiful though it is, the landscape of the Pyrenees has not been so effective!