maybe it’s just me, but when a painting bugs me then i have to return to it, not write it off and move on. i turned marsh upside down, then slowly obliterated the moss-like green (which i quite liked but there was too much of it), to a more watery, faded, blue-green algae, the same bronze green ground shfted to a dark blue in contrast.. all paintings need to be lived with, and this one (having returned from london) i felt needed more glazes, to lighten and darken, controlled by the nuances of texture, concealing and revealing just enough, until the middle merged quietly as originally planned..
and then a deep frame, as sometimes edges should not be seen, as it is obviously just a canvas, nothing more.. contained within a box, it becomes an object contained for forensic examination, a specimen of life magnified..
i’ve entered this painting into an open exhibition, and this year i feel bold enough to say right here that i am feeling quite hopeful (the power of postive thinking – i can, i will). i have entered twice before: 2006 (lucky), and 2008 (unlucky) so perhaps for me this art event is a biennale..
and now for some details..
i have been thinking about colourfield painting and painters (i am not one, although my work has in the past been described as abstract colour fields in the minimalist tradition) and the northern European tradition of landscape genre painting, and if there is any land between the two that i can align my own artistic beliefs to. i want my work to have a genuine essense of place, a sense of purpose, drawn from observation, not mere accidents of processes or random mark-making.. finding clarity within the process of abstraction, stripped of extraneous data, the pure sensation of seeing, mesmerising through the traversal of surfaces, both lost and found for a brief moment in time.. a view half-remembered, reflected, refracted, as if seen through a frosted window, or painterly swathes of mist, condensation on glass, water-reflected.. eyes see more with a restricted view..
a desire to paint it is only part of the process, it’s about making it believable (this is my aim), a reinvention or interpretation, constructed from memory and experience.. an artist should know at what stage it works, when the abstracted message is sent and received..
and if this painting does not get accepted? then, much like the marshes, it will be a low, transitional place, occasionally submerged by doubt, affected by the shifting tides of taste.. if not this time, then very soon..
see the finished painting with the other paintings in the edgescape series..
