I was reading the book ‘The Art of Looking Up’ (blog post on it to follow) and it really makes me want to paint. Mid reading it I got some oil proof paper, stapled it to the walls and got out my oil paint! I am going off the monochrome work I have done thinking about Amy Sillman’s painting ‘Get the Moon’ (2006) and stepping out of my own recorded lived experience.
I am painting with oil paints thinned with turpentine. I want to work in a way I haven’t for so long: layers of oils with gaps of drying time between sessions, not painting with any intentions for the outcome, but painting to play!
This is stage one:
Since the first stage I have been reading about Gerhard Richter and thinking about blurred gradient backgrounds in contrast to gestural and immediate brushstrokes:
So I added a gradient background, using a big dry brush to blend things seamlessly – I have not painted like this in YEARS! I then took this big brush and swept across what I did before. It now looks disconnected to the viewer. Playing with this sweeping semi transparent brushstroke as a way to make distance between the viewer and the scene behind; a way of adding depth to the landscape(?). This works feels like I am branching into surrealist territory, but I don’t really know if that’s true because I don’t know much about Surrealists at all. I could look up some images.
I also like the way the gradient background has covered some of the thicker brushstrokes from the first layer but you can still the ghost of them because of the texture.
I guess I am playing with ideas of transparency in this painting, which I am beginning to see was intended in my practice! All part of me just following my practice as it flows to places I don’t expect.
Now I wait for this layer to dry.
This artist in the inspiration I know realise for having concentrated blue colour in a strip along the centre of my painting. This artist paints woodlands, and a lot of the time has this strip along the centre. Foresty influence identified!
Georgina Harris 