The final version with indistinct cast shadows added (the sun was in clouds at the time). Thanks for the feedback Vivienne.
In this oil painting I worked entirely from preliminary sketches in pencil and inktense water paint. The point was really to collect enough information in the sketch, especially on background and accessory objects that might otherwise be overlooked. Another thought, from the early chapters of Hockney’s “History of Pictures“, is to actively work from the edges in painting, not just the supposed central focus of the image.
I sketched sitting in the garden. The focus is obviously the blue pot and pattern of the paving. However, I tried to bracket the composition with the small concrete garden ornaments of the boy on a fish, and the squirrel. I wanted to include the play items behind the lawn, and the clothes drier.
I passed a significant anniversary in February to March. One year ago I spent 25 days in hospital having a near lethal dose of chemotherapy, rescued by my own, previously harvested, blood stem cells. I became very ill and rehabilitation after was prolonged. I returned to the haematology department recently for my last psychology appointment. This hospital is also my place of work. By chance, on the exact anniversary of my discharge home, I stood again in what had been my room a year before.
During my chemotherapy and immediate follow up, I had driven or been driven to my appointments. Now I go to work or appointments by train, but this is a time of reminiscence, even so. One year on, these journeys have take on a personal meaning. I painted the journey, fellow travellers at the station, the interlude between stations at Waterstones cafe, the memory of the uncanniness and visual distortion from when I was exhausted, facing the prospect of scaling the short shallow incline of the hospital drive to the haematology building at the top. The paintings were drawn from sketches I made on the journey.
In this painting, I had some ideas from the work of Peter Doig in the House of Music show at the Serpentine and other paintings of his I had looked at online (for example the rectangular blocks with figures and regular masonry blocks of House of Flowers (see you there). As in some of Doig’s work, I allowed myself to give expressionistic outlines to the figures. Part of this narrative for me was that as I drew the pencil sketch, I attracted interest from the stranger sitting nearby. She turned out to be a PhD student studying mathematical modelling in health care scenarios and is also a spare time painter.
This painting was done in a couple of hours, then the left side was repainted a week or two later. I painted on a white ground in drawn strokes with round brushes, making blocks of colour but without using a flat brush. I redrew elements on the left after the first layer was dry. The distortions of scale were deliberate, combining observation with the fantastical, reflecting that exhausting climb up the small incline to the small Haematology building at the top.
Station and trains sketchesand first layers in paint
Cafe sketches and first paint layers
Waterstones cafe pencil sketch on site, with written notes on colour.
This is between A2 and A3 size, painted in oils on board primed with gesso and later a ground of oil paint leftovers.
Edgar Calel‘s Ruk’ ox k’ob’el jun ojer etemab’el (The Echo of an Ancient Form of Knowledge) consists of a collection of objects and a ritual. The ritual, performed live by the artist or a member of his Mayan Kaqchikel community in Chi Xot/San Juan Comalapa in the Guatemalan Highlands, is a blessing for the Ancestors. It expresses gratitude to them and to the land for their wisdom, experience and guidance. The artwork is a conduit for Indigenous knowledge, under the custodianship of the Tate Modern gallery for 13 years (gallery notes). It is displayed overlooking the Thames across to St Paul’s Cathedral.
When sketching this, I reimagined these left and placed objects, these offerings, on huge rocks extending into the river, essentially removing the window and extending the satiny exhibition floor out to merge into the Thames.
I have been thinking for a while how to show the St George cross and Union Jack flags that were put up across the borough during one hot weekend last summer, coinciding with far right violence. Though these may be flags of our nation, their hanging a third the way up lampposts everywhere was clearly intended to exclude anyone not conforming to a narrow clique. In other words, these are intended to convey the hideous message of White Supremacy, a gateway to fascism Not removing them was sensible, avoiding firing up people further in a tit for tat battle, and maybe they have become perceived as a general kind of shame. Still, I find them nauseating wherever I go. I’m not sure I have been able to show my emotional response clearly enough in this image.
Preliminary sketch on cartridge paper in pencil.
This quick painting was done with mixed paint left over from a previous exercise, applied roughly with a knife. I was aiming for muted colours using the mixes, and allowed a degree of undirectedness in building the hues in the composition.
This self portrait took its shape from the textured ground. I like it a lot. Interestingly, my son interpreted the distortions as relating to my treatment for lymphoma last year. But this is how I feel, and it’s not a bad thing.
This was oil paper, primed with gesso and painted some time ago with palette dregs diluted I think with solvent free medium and applied with a plastic card to give a textures surface. Oil paint was then applied neat. I’m not sure how well it will adhere once dry. The palette was limited, mainly ultramarine, burnt umber, burnt sienna in mixes or tints with zinc white with some permanent rose and Indian yellow in places. I took the shapes from those formed by the dried ground.
The ground was A4 paper coated with gesso and painted some months ago with surplus oil paint. The sketch as made in oxide of chromium tints, the background made of ultramarine, Indian yellow and zinc white, the face shaped in tints of Indian yellow and permanent rose, using the underlying green sketch to mute these colours.
Peter Doig’s exhibition at the Serpentine, House of Music.
My brief notes read “Chalky paint quality – more like gouache than oil. Strong simple perspectives, figures and shapes imposed upon geometric constructions. Not photorealistic. Stylised. Lots of lions (symbolic). High contrast, light and dark. Dark figures do not denote so-called race … but maybe. One figure like a radiograph.
I also stayed for the fabulous playlist played on giant analogue speakers rescued from derelict cinemas, with the audience sitting on the floor in front of Doig’s painting Rain in the Port of Spain 2015 (third sketch down).
These two studies were made in memory of the two hundred communists machine gunned in the firing range 1st May 1944 as revenge for a partisan attack in Nazi occupied Greece. Last week, it was reported that rare photographs had surfaced and been retained by the state for posterity.
Mass state killing is an intrinsic part of fascism (or authoritarian governments ruling through fear and violence). As in the 1930s. we are now being given choices whether to vote fascists into power, or to resist elected fascists while there are still constitutional mechanisms to do so.
The collage materials were watercolour sketches sliced into thin strips and glued to thin paper, and tissue paper previously used to mop up surplus oil paint and allowed to dry.
kestrelart 