'Banjo Pier' 40x30cms
The demonstration painting from two back-to-back Freedom in Painting workshops 'Looking at Lanyon' in Faversham, Kent - started in one, completed in the other. This sticky painting survived both the journey home and the scrutiny afterwards. The instruction to the participating artists was to bring to the workshop evidence and memory of a recent journey. My own journey was a trip to Looe, with its' distinctive banjo-shaped pier....
This painting looks different, with the incredible tension of the Lanyonesque spiralling- line contained - just - by the structured lines along the bottom edge and right corner and the circle (of the 'banjo-pier'). A frenzied demonstration of mark-making designed to encourage the class to a freer second painting. Image and ideas and reactions forced into the painting. Cerulean and Ultramarine mixes in pots, palette and on the canvas.. a failed pure, poured curve...quick thinking, quick reactions..lets find another solution. Only traces of my journey- line remain - the start-point in the top left corner- but it has made it's contribution to how the painting moved forward to its conclusion. Five dots reduced to two - 'The pink-dot a triumph' (Kathleen Alberter). Pourings, smears, brushwork, knifework, lines, curves, image, jostling for prominence and harmony. A sliver of yellow enough to provide an incident of colour and temperature contrast...
Echoing the submerged imagery in Lanyon's work and his alleged discovery of the two figures in 'Porthleven' after the painting was completed, only today did I see the tilted head, shoulder and forearm resting on the bottom edge...or a gestural line encapsulating movement?...or skywriting, vapour trail?. Spacial ambiguities: the view from the ground or the air?..if there is a 'view'...Abstract/figurative - who cares? Peter Lanyon was right to fight against putting art into boxes. It's a painting: both from an outside experience and the thrills and uncertainties of the painting process. What am I looking at? - this is my territory as an artist.