THURS 20 JAN
The last move: the sharp red triangle/crane brings precision, scale, geometry, difference, context and a further upwards movement... love this painting!
A painting is time captured, a history and visual summary of ideas, life, process, doubt, wrong-turnings, moments of bravery, clarity and understanding, beauty...
WED 19 JAN
Denise was right..again. In (4) the colour was 'grubby' and the painting needed some flatter, quieter spaces. I think I had problems grappling with the scale of the painting, my largest for a while, with too much stop/start, it's too raw, the marks too similar.
And so...a monster day in the studio. The painting is now more vibrant and flowing (5) with a greater range of paint...and emotions. Strength and joy! . There is a new elegance with todays simplifications of the tall vertical and the busy marks on the right. Now the central cut line is critical, with its echoes of the crisscrossing wires that cut the space in Porthleven. Telegraph tree...the return to the original idea.
FRI 5 JAN 2023
A good day in the studio - the painting, impossibly, now wilder yet more refined (4). My first thought today was that one of the red 'poles' had to go (1). I chose to keep the one on the right - it glows! - bringing more space to the centre. The harbour-shape was now behind something. The verticality was still intact but less straight, with larger marks and more movement (2). I also felt that the two sides of the harbour in (1) were too similar. A new green and broken ultramarine marks bring difference and interest (2).
detail
In (3) the weight of the green was softened by a delicate sheet of Ultramarine/Alizarin purple and the orange curve. The graphic building, (Ship Inn), was a step too far, with the simplifications in the last session, in the bottom-right corner and through the centre now bringing attention to the successsion of smaller marks slanting across from the startling green, centre-left. Colour and shapes are good: the last move was blending the red and orange curves together, making something purer, faster...
WED 4 JAN
Thoughts on (1): The star is the whippy red curve, hanging from the top-line - lets build around it...
detail
Beginnings...