'Porthleven 34' 30x25cms
'Porthleven 35' 30x25cms
'Working with familiar motifs can be freeing...' was something I said during the making of the 'City of Glass'series. Working recently in Porthleven, the challenge once again was to find something new in the familiar. Within the discipline of working with a given colour and one of the letters from the word PORTHLEVEN, (in both cases the letter 'E'), I'm very pleased with the these two very different paintings. On a small canvas, with the scaling up of marks, radical changes can be made quickly with liquid paint and loaded brushes. with image both forced and discovered. 'Edible paint...' commented a viewer...
Working with dense pinks and greens, in '34' there is a new red, a Venetian mix, that glues the painting together. I'm very fond of the framing curved vertical band on the left and the thick pink inverted 'L' in the bottom right corner. I wish I'd taken more photos of the paintings in progress but here's a couple from 'Porthleven 35'.
1
With 1, the accidental boats grabbed the attention and with the overwhelming yellow and the spots, the painting an unintended jolly feel. And so the painting was turned and turned...
2
2 was a contender but I felt the linking yellows formed too large a shape and the left-side too complex. I wanted the intriguing spaces in the harbour-shape to dominate. After a late night discussion with a couple of artists (thank-you Elizabeth and Mick) I decided to simplify and the painting was turned for the final time. The heavy green was pushed through the paint, smashing the purple triangle and shifting the colour balance, revealing the beauty of the harbour-shapes and the central negative-space to the right of the curve, The final act was the deep pink mark creating a movement across the green verticals. Both paintings went straight onto our wall.
Paint-pots from 'Porthleven 35'