map painting

I don’t like doing this map painting anymore. What do I mean? I mean the paintings where I map a place, area of land using colour. I felt, just now, like a controller of the painting when I started doing the maps. Lame.

This is the painting so far.

I think I preferred it when it looked like this:

I don’t know I just don’t like this style of painting anymore it just is too controlling.

What instead? What I’ve been doing, these scene paintings.

I am thinking lots about the edges of the scene. Adding a box around the edge like in this one:

Frames within frames within frames.

Like the Pam Evelyn show I saw a few weeks ago at Pace. The ones of her blocking the scene literally with lines, like RBK by Hodgkins. Distancing the viewer from the scene. Why? I don’t know!

I don’t want to be in it I want to be separated from it.

I would like to try some square paintings because they have this intimacy and immediacy to them that landscape paintings don’t.

I never know what to put over the edge of the scene. I liked in Scilly the way it was just black. The light carried off the scene but you could see nothing else.

Other than the shelves paintings, they had a bit more going on:

Going back to the first painting, maybe I could scrap the light to dark technique which means the sky goes in last. That might retain the feel of the shadows of the tree before I added the ground and sky on top. Grrrr.

It feels good to be making again. it feels hard and gross but good overall. I am really feeling this new layer of trust that I have not felt before, since doing the artist way.

Move on move on move on.

What next? I want to paint those two swans I saw by the river yesterday. I drew them in my sketchbook just now but I love them. Very scenic. What to paint them on though because I haven’t primed anything. HMMM. Could just prime and wait. That might be my only option. OKAY.