mid-lothian

Revisited an old composition this afternoon and started the underpainting in oils. The materials have that lovely 'library smell' and are nice because they dry slowly (the drawback also being that they dry slowly).

I listen to fluff books while painting and picked the audio of Alexander McCall Smith's 'The Uncommon Appeal of Clouds' because it's a mystery that doesn't involve a murder and was surprised by coincidences with my recent activities. In the book are musings on Georgian architecture, which I was recently reading up on, the art expert in McCall Smith's story is a controversial figure in a non-fiction book I'm currently reading (about a set of possible forgeries), the family in the story lives in a country house in the exact area of Scotland that I've been concentrating on in my dad's genealogy, and their ancestors were also Jacobites (I only recently found this out about my family).

façade

Here's what's on the easel right now, a façade from Lille, France. After a while of working on those teensy door and window frames though my eyes feel dazzled and it's time to work on some drawings.

Most of my pieces are small but this one is even smaller than most at about 3"x5". It may get bigger, I haven't decided how to finish it yet.


Occasionally I pick up pieces of old lace when I go with my mom to vide greniers in her area but I haven't been using them lately so they were scattered, bits tucked away here and there along with other flotsam and jetsam. The other day I thought maybe I'd use some precious sunlight house to re-organise the studio but after working away for a couple hours it didn't look terribly different so I abandoned the effort and went back to painting.

blue wip

WIP. A smaller variation on a previous piece. Mixed media, 8"x8" on wooden panel.
In the studio are a few pieces I'm having trouble finishing, the biggest one because I'm not sure which way to go with part of the composition, and a few smaller ones like this that just need some final tweaking.

statue

Work in progress, acrylic on canvas. The actual statue playing the lute stands at the entrance to one of the mazes at Hever Castle (where Anne Boleyn grew up).

ghost

Before I spend endless amounts of time painting (because I am the slowest of all painters) I spend endless amounts of time deciding what I will paint. My paintings are layers of images, and I draw, paint and photograph all the components separately then occasionally sift through the piles looking for pieces to combine.



This is the palest-green butterfly that flew in to the house one evening last summer and was caught under a wineglass before being released back outside. I love the way the insect floats, seemingly unsupported, but I don't know yet how I will use it.



To go with the butterfly I'll need a sample of handwriting, which will be disguised so most words cannot be read.



Some architecture, or maybe part of a map?



Background colour.



Or maybe toss all that and go with flowers and a fragment of handwritten poem or a letter?

While I am combining the visual pieces, their meanings also come together in a narrative which determines subsequent choices and also what part of each image will be obscured. It tells me which words should be legible, and the title. Nothing of this is recorded, because I think each viewer develops their own relationship with a picture, and knowing the artist's ideas is not necessary.

With all the parts chosen I sit down to make sketches until the pieces knit together, then it's finally time to start painting.

sequestered

I love looking at other people's studios and hearing how they work. Blogs like from the desk of..., and Terri Windling's 'On Your Desk' posts are always interesting, also books like 'Artists' Houses' and 'In Artists' Homes: The Living Spaces of Contemporary Artists' and, of course, artists' own blogs, like Rima Staines' Into the Hermitage and this multi-talented artist who experiments with making her own iron gall ink and sculpting from the skeleton out. Harry Ally so impresses me in this video, working quickly among all those other people *and* in front of a camera.

It's amazing how different artists' spaces are, and their ways of creating. Actually, I think part of my fascination with Harry Ally is precisely because he works so opposite from how I do, his paintings and drawings are so free and large.

So, here is where I work (you can click on the photos if you'd like to see more detail, hopefully I dusted well enough!):



Sketches strewn over an old suitcase (because if I put them tidily away I forget about them), a couple paintings-in-progress, a little house my mum built (a simple one, most of the ones she makes are more complicated, she also does lovely water-colour paintings of bits of architecture), and to the left the door to the teeny balcony (it can fit either one chair or a pot of jasmine, I chose the latter).



The work table: more sketches, bits for some boxes and tiny shrines (underneath the bank bag are the littlest micro-bits hiding from the dusty winds that sometimes blow in even when the door is closed), a tiny village a 6-year-old and I are slowly constructing along with mini paper dolls and their even smaller clothing, and a wind-up toy I love that throws off sparks as it rolls around. I found the table itself on the street, it has lovely barley-twist legs but a sheet of plywood on top (with 'danger' still on from its former life) so I don't have to worry about protecting it. Note the lovely view of stucco - nothing to distract me there! (The view from the balcony is more treehouse-like - hibiscus, palms and jacaranda, a fountain down below and over the trees distant skyscrapers.)



Some possibly finished pieces hanging out on the built-in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves (I love these shelves!), another old suitcase barely visible bottom left.

The rest of the tour would include a small easel, an antique Arts & Crafts style table I use as a desk, an ancient cloth-covered trunk (all three found on the street), a chest of drawers with old fruit crates (avec labels) stacked on top as shelves for supplies, and bright silk longyis from Burma and cotton sarongs from the Philippines, gifts from a sister and a friend, covering big cushions on the futon because this is also the guestroom.

Also, numerous postcards and other flotsam and jetsam from vide greniers, gifts, and scavenged and found bits on the desk and shelves and tucked away in the drawers.

I feel very lucky to have this room, and I am completely dependent on it because I can't work around other people. At all.

I don't know whether it's because I am too distractible to create around others or too self-conscious, probably both, but it makes art classes and retreats awkward (I practice the techniques but can't actually make a piece of art) and group paint-outs or sharing a studio impossible.

And I can't work in short bits of time, or with interruptions. Portions of an hour are useless to me, especially when I am doing the initial sketches for a painting. Sometimes I work for hours before I start to get what I want, then when I do I don't want to stop for more hours until I'm finished (which means if I start in the evening it can be early morning when I finally put everything down). When planning the moving parts or secrets of the boxes I build it's like I'm making an invisible path in the air, so as soon as there is an interruption it's completely gone and I have to start at the beginning. And unlike the wonderfully free Harry Ally with his big brush and crowbar my paintings are built slowly, in layer after layer of washes and detail.

So, back to work here...

the cause of my unhappiness as I sit in a garret without a glass of wine

at this stage I still hold out hope

here I'm fatally unhappy with it and call it terrible names

Okay, you probably guessed I'm not really in a garret. But I am sitting in a little upstairs room stewing, without a glass of wine. And can't step out on the miniature balcony (3' x 2') for some fresh air and sprinkling rain because I've not tidied and some panels are blocking the door.

Is it bad to post frustration on an artist's blog? When I read other blogs there are pictures of lovely new works and happy news of openings and sales, which is always nice to read (especially in difficult economic times!).

But tonight I am too irritated to post about the piece I worked on yesterday that I am happy with, because of this blue roof-scape.

It's not even from a sketch that I was really wild about, I just wanted to complete it to work out some things before I start a piece whose sketch I do love. And after a day out and about I was looking forward to an evening of progress and foolishly put off a friend's weekly visit to get to it. So instead of pleasant conversation over warm bread, cheese and a glass of wine in the dining room I am grousing over a painted wooden panel and haven't made so much as a cup of tea.

Part of the frustration, I suppose, is trying to figure out when to give up. I spend a lot of time on colour sketches and usually know for certain when I finish whether I want to go on to paint something or not, so I normally do not find myself spending time on I am not fond of.

And I paint in many layers, so working on something means I am spending a lot of time with it. (I was very happy when I learned that an artist I love (Vija Celmins) works so slowly that museums wait decades to get enough of her work together to put on an exhibition.) By the time the first image above was taken this panel had gone through many incarnations and could still conceivably surpass the original sketch.

But now it's murky, it doesn't look like the sketch but is not an improvement on it, and although I have a bit of Renaissance script that was supposed to be the finish it's currently dark enough that I think I'd have to do too much to make the final layers work.

So, devote more time to this piece? A look at my tiny supply of panels makes me feel less than generous to the uncooperative. But limited time means I don't want those hours to have been unproductive.

I'll look at it tomorrow after working a while on another painting, maybe the mood will change.

Edit: Below is how it looked last week, I have since changed it some more.

waves

What a great weekend - it was all about the water. Yesterday I floated for three hours in a friend's pool while we talked - so unbelievably relaxing. Today I breathed salt air and listened to the sound of the surf, and this evening I'm working on this piece with colours from the waves.

my heart

Often when I go to compose a post I am tempted to just put an image of whatever piece I am working on without any text, I find writing very difficult. I love reading what other people write though, and admire how skilfully some people blog.

During a conversation there are the constant decisions and adjustments regarding how much of one’s life and thoughts to reveal. Bloggers, without knowing who will be reading, need to somehow maintain a balance between not revealing enough to intrigue a reader, and sharing too much, thus becoming instantly uninteresting.

I first started reading Rima’s blog because I love her lively drawings, paintings, and fabulous clocks with their medieval influence (and this game she made is fantastic), but besides being a talented artist (child of two artists) her talent as a storyteller sharing her adventures helps make her blog so entertaining (and popular).

Making the decision to take time away from her work to share the joyful times of her life is generous, but it must be hard to decide to keep writing at times like now when things are not going well. I admire how strong she is to be open at a vulnerable time.

sarah

As usual I find myself astonished at what the clock says. It’s so easy to work all night in the quiet, there is no sign that time is passing.

oops

An experiment gone awry.

I love a bit of decay incorporated into things, which is why I love old buildings, Michael Eastman’s photos, and the furniture I inherited (although a small fund to keep the chairs glued and un-wobbly would have been a good thing to inherit along with). I’ve been working on a way to include that in some of my pieces, but how best to partially destroy my work?

Here is a piece I’ve been wreaking minor destruction on, pre-destruction:

It definitely needs some decay, so I go to work on it, trying to balance giving it some integrity while still leaving it vulnerable:

Then I become Kali, speeding up the destructive force of time, and the result is:

Far too much decay!

Tomorrow, back to the easel, so to speak. I will repair it to wreak (less) havoc on it another day.

At least it won’t need this treatment:

Done to erase the result of another experiment. One not to be repeated.

injured

These are details of one of the paintings in the stash that inspired Barbara Levine (former director of exhibitions, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) to write ‘Finding Frida Kahlo‘. The trunks of materials (diaries, letters, recipes, paintings, stuffed hummingbirds, and so on) have been called forgeries by some interested parties in Mexico (ArtSlant article, NY Times article, Christopher Knight’s take), and I am curious to see how this all plays out.

Detecting forgeries is a difficult art, because the science can be faked (although sometimes people are so sure of their ‘eye’ that they refuse to believe scientific evidence to the contrary, e.g. de Groot insisting that ‘Merry Cavalier‘ was by Frans Hals despite the fact that some of the paints used were not developed until long after Hals had died), and of course mistakes are made both ways (a collector of Rembrandt burned one of his paintings thinking it was a forgery, later it turned out it probably wasn’t).

Both those claiming these were Frida Kahlo’s belongings and those crying fraud have a stake in the outcome, influencing the way they see these pretties.

I do love Frida as a deer, a friend almost bought this version years ago, but didn’t, because it would have been a quite a stretch financially – of course looking back he thinks it would have been worth the sacrifice. So often in life it would be nice to have the benefit of hindsight ahead of time, eh?

Click the link below to see more:

“Finding Frida Kahlo” by Barbara Levine from Princeton Architectural Press on Vimeo.

remix

Finally, an explanation (although incomplete) for the oddness of Jacopo Tintoretto's 'Nativity' - what is now a horizontal painting of the beginning of Jesus Christ's life used to be a vertical painting of the end of his life. Still unexplained is why Tintoretto cut up such a large piece and reworked it, apparently a couple decades after completing the original.

Here is an article about the discovery and film of a moment of restoration (or almost a moment anyway, isn't a moment 40 seconds?).

If you click here you can see the parts of the crucifixion that were remodelled into 'Nativity' by comparing the painting to the x-ray. If you zoom the slider up to the x-ray end and click 'show lines' then push the slider back down to see the paint you can see how he cut and re-arranged the pieces of canvas into the current, very different composition. Now, to find the missing pieces!

ink

I can see why some people specialize in painting, studying, rescuing, or just watching crows, besides their boldness and intelligence that playful trickster nature is hard to resist. This is one of the study photos I took for a series of works on paper - I wish I had video of the aerial acrobatics that were going on. The crows were showing off and showing up each other with somersaults and tumbling falls. Absolutely amazing.

Although West Nile virus has been especially bad for crows these last few years they keep adapting to exploit more of our technology (I first saw this in Joshua Klein’s TEDtalk which also shows a crow making a hook):