Shelter

In a week of bruises I take to heart the words of Georg Baselitz

“Be braver,

more carefree,

do it faster.”

Playing With Containment Versus Freedom

Voluminous Weave

“Because painting is motionless in an age where we see everything continuously changing, in a metaphorical sense, it reminds us of permanence.” Laurie Fendrich

The Correlation Between Painting and Persistence

The apprehensive relationship between good and good enough.

Canvas Making in 10 Easy Steps

 

This week on Twitter Salla @xthesedreamsx gave a fabulous guide to canvas making. Before these tweets got lost I wanted to collate them into a blog post. So here they are. Thank you Salla for generously sharing your wisdom!

1. You can cut your own frames to make them cheaper. I tried it, but now I mostly use ready made ones from a Finnish company. (I found a couple of U.K. suppliers by doing an Internet search for stretcher bars)

2. I use the thickest linen I can find from a regular fabric store. It’s a little more expensive, but works amazingly.

3. Measure the canvas so that you have enough room to stretch it over the frame, so it looks more “professional”.

4. When stretching the canvas I usually start from one of the largest sides. Stretch the material to the “back” of the frame, staple it (8mm staples work best), then turn the frame around and stretch, stapling the opposite side. Repeat with the shorter sides until all sides are properly stapled. On each side the first staple should be made in the middle.

5. The corners are the tricky bits, but you basically just need to fold them as neatly as possible.

6. After you’ve done all the stapling the stretched canvas should sound like a little drum when you hit it.

7. To prime use either gesso mixed with water or wood glue mixed with water. You can also add colour if you wish.

8. The gesso/glue should be put on by first using brush strokes that all go one way, then let it dry. The second layer of brushstrokes should be painted across the first, to make across cross pattern.

9. For a super smooth canvas sand with sandpaper in between the gesso layers.

10. Depending on the thickness of the gesso I use between three and five layers. Alternatively, you can buy ready primed canvas for stretching.

The Stillness of Colours

 

The Stillness of Colours Through A Visionary Eye

The sculptor Alison Wilding talks about a psychological hill which she has to get over with each piece of work. This impasse, she says, is closely followed by a feeling of elation and invincibility.

For me, when a piece is going well,  I enter into a very still and effortless zone of contentment and absorption. Alison describes the feeling as one of flying, for me it is more akin to floating. A subtle difference, perhaps, which has something to do with stillness and speed, direction and flow. Flying or floating, water or air, the creative current is buoyant and magical.

Still Think Of You

This morning I saw an exquisite shade of blue and had to keep it in my mind’s eye all day, until I could finally paint it. Of course, I can’t reproduce it in real life, with paint and brushes, to such a degree of perfection as the imagined hue.

It was periwinkle, bluebell and iris all mixed into one.

And then I think of the memories…moments when the kindness and the love were so keen that it smarts.

 

 

Blue Aura

So I’m up at 7 am on a Sunday morning and painting to the sound of little else but the birds singing.

Two and a half hours in I stop for a bowl of porridge.

It has been a busy week of opticians appointments, work committees and arranging new mortgage deals.

The moments painting have been snatched.

Friday lunchtime I crossed Parker’s Piece to see The Crossing  by Shreepali Patel at the Ruskin Gallery. A powerful installation about human trafficking: raw, painful and real.

On my way out I peer through windows at rows of printing presses lying unused. I want to skip work and be let loose with those presses.

Saturday comes around, I am peaceful and relaxed and I see my soft blue aura.

What Must An Artist Do About Dreams

Surrounded by psychology texts every working day I returned, this week, to theories on dreams.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” C. Jung

So I begin to pay just a bit more attention to the wisdom of my dreams and I hear loud and clear what I already knew, just beneath the surface of my cognition.

I didn’t really need permission to act on what I knew but the dream confirmation made me certain of the path I had to take.

And this leads me back to art and working practice. Susan Hiller, in this fascinating talk, ridicules a society that ignores or disregards what goes on in a third of their lives, that altered state of consciousness that is sleep. She points out that people who say they don’t dream are merely choosing not to notice. Abstract expressionist artists are always close to pre-cognition. Drawn to a colour or a mark or a shape we let the painting emerge with little separation between interior and exterior.  Our emotions and expressions are so conjoined that, if we allow, we are in a state of complete automation, of wholeness and flow. We are in the gap between a dream and its interpretation which Lacan recognised as the basis of all art.