Jazz Green : Artist Journal

Posts tagged ‘found paintings’

slow painting

June 5th, 2011

in december 2008 i wrote i had started some incidental abstract paintings on some scavenged pieces of wood, surfaces that have been gradually built-up, partially obscured, then revealed, slowly reworked & edited over the course of about two years. it was never my intention to finish these paintings in a week or a month – painting them has been a slow, drawn-out process, as i added some colour here and there and then left them for quite a while, before attending to them again, effectively lost then found again – a succession of related ‘incidents’ contributed to the visual outcome of these paintings.

here are some surface details of one of the incidental abstract paintings

abstract painting - surface textures, orange, brown, grey

as ever, the colours are muted, faded… and the surface textures a little aged…

abstract painting - rough surface textures - rural industrial environment

drawn from hereabouts perhaps, in the rural/industrial environs…

abstract painting textures - chalky, bluish white, greeny-grey, earthy brown

a chalky, bluish white, a greeny-grey and a dark, earthy brown…

abstract painting - surface textures, brown, grey, stone

elements of stone, dark earth and slate grey-black…

detail of abstract painting on wood - eroded weathered orange, brown, grey

a slab of tawny orange, light grey and a thin brown stripe…

close-up of abstract painting on wood - grey brown texture

dark brown-black and a scrubby, scratched layer of grey-green…

the dilemma of having to give paintings titles, which should either reference the process or the subject matter… square forms, surface elements, hidden layers, interior/exterior, industrial blocks, stacks, containers, structures, doors, windows, walls, a flawed facade..?

this painting ‘incident‘ is called ‘orange slab, dark brown and various greys’, 30cm x 30cm, acrylic on wood…

Orange slab, dark brown and various greys - abstract composition, grid structure painting on wood - by artist Jazz Green
orange slab, dark brown and various greys, 2011

if these incidental paintings represent anything, they are another small record of my enduring fascination with weathered surfaces and the working dialogue that develops as i have created them – the slow emergence of a simple grid structure or rectilinear form, much influenced by the originating ground or surface (wood) – unlike say, the relative smoothness (or ‘not’) of paper or the regular weave of canvas (i like the texture & colour of raw canvas, but i seem to go to great lengths to deny its material existence in my paintings)…

some visual clues scavenged from the journal archive might hint at some of my surface influences…

photograph - weathered wall facade, wood textures - brown black grey

photograph - weathered wall facade, wood textures - brown grey

photograph of old rusty metal shutters - brown rust grey

photograph of rusty metal corrugated iron - brown blue grey

photograph of weathered wood - rust white crackled grey paint

photograph of weathered surface - decay white grey striations

photograph - weathered surface - decay green mould algae

photograph of rusted iron bars intersecting dark space - like a drawing

all images & text © jazz green 2005-2011

Reunion Refresh @ Reunion Gallery, 5 Feb – 22 Oct 2011
(incidentally, there will be two ‘incident paintings’ on wood in the reunion refresh exhibition)

HWAT exhibition 2011 @ Harleston Gallery, 18 June to 11 July 2011

a minor road painting incident

February 7th, 2011

recently spotted in a small norfolk town with an unfortunate name, and i had the camera to document the road works in progress…

double yellow lines - minor found abstract painterly incident on the road

a council roadworker with an keen eye for absolute precision in road painting, even if it doesn’t entirely match… i was left briefly pondering, is this normal for norfolk*..?

more double yellow lines - line paintings seen on the road

but this wasn’t the only painterly road incident. further along this minor road there was another occurence of fresh double yellow line painting… what would this exact colour be in pantone..?

double yellow lines roadworks - abstract paintings

it seems that council yellow comes in many shades, or else it fades very quickly…

double yellow lines - painting abstract art

and sometimes remedial action is taken later on, in trying to match the original colour…

double yellow lines painted on the tarmac - abstract art

but i am saving my favourite photograph for last… here in close-up, a unique road work composition in a medley of mellow (and not so) yellow hues, wonderfully crackled textures and mismatching layers, subtly embossed by the pattern of tyre treads, my found painting (or print) of the day…

this image has some definite kerb appeal and more than enough art historical references, should one wish to analyse it any further…

double yellow lines textures - tarmac -abstract painting

this post is written with much reference to and respect for the artist over at the aesthete’sfoot blog, aka the opposite of tomato, an artist who has brought an intriguing, conceptual dimension to what could be loosely termed ‘creative kerb crawling’  in his two years (or more?) drawing project, to visually document discarded drinks cans in all their myriad convoluted, crumpled and flattened forms – see also the curious incidents of the double black (not yellow) lines.. he now calls himself the darjeeling fop… well, that’s the line painting finished – time for a brew..?

*normal for norfolk; a somewhat derogatory slang term used by medics, often shortened to NFN, as a means to identify in the Doctor’s patient’ notes that the unusual symptoms or behaviour presented maybe the result of the patient being, relatively speaking (so to say), someone wuss abit darf, nut roight in the hed

The longer daylight hours, as we progress towards midsummer, afforded a few moments early one evening to stop and examine this piece of found sculpture or installation (to add to my image collection) – something I have witnessed being constructed over the last few months. It’s a strikingly robust ‘builders’ intervention in the rural landscape; a construction seemingly put together for only practical purposes, but nevertheless it is visually and aesthetically harmonious, a textural mosaic of corrugated metal sheets… I trust that its collaborators will continue to add to it over the next few months; its future reconfigurement or final deconstruction, when viewed over the course of days or weeks, will be quite interesting to observe.

On closer inspection, any number of found paintings could be artfully composed with a camera…

all of which refer back to my ongoing  farmscape paintings…

modularity will be my modus operandi…

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The website of British Fine Artist Jazz Green MA RCA. Abstract landscape paintings, fine art photography. All images and text copyright the artist.