Jazz Green : Artist Journal

Posts tagged ‘green’

Continuing with my virtual travels… I have been using colour, google maps and other tools to determine cultural or geographical locations to visit. These works are becoming small mementos to those virtual journeys – travelling around the world in one hundred abstracts…

I have selected these five abstracts as part of my wall exhibit for the SOS exhibition next week… From left to right: kokoda, siam, maroc, cretan and suomi… all are hand-coloured intaglio collagraphs on paper on canvas…

Another ‘one hundred’ has been partly inspired or perhaps just consolidated by the first chapter of the series, A history of the World in One Hundred Objects – fascinating, as it is a radio programme, and so naturally conjures up images that may be quite different to the reality.


maroc, 2010

Some images to illustrate – too  travel-weary to articulate much in words…


terraced fields and trees  – Moroccan landscape…


Marrakech market place – Moroccan souk…


wall and door, Marrakech

I would quite like to visit Morocco one day – but musn’t grumble, things could be worse, when one door closes…

it’s a green thing…

April 25th, 2010

I’ve completed my second day at the East Anglian Artists’ group  Artworks spring exhibition (the final day) – this time as the artist demonstrator. The first part of the morning was very quiet (only the very keen visit a gallery at eleven on a sunday), so I took the moment of calm to record my little set-up in the corner of the gallery…


A non-portrait of the artist at work…

I was just doing a little monoprinting (aka monotyping, both terms seemingly interchangeable), a technique which is as much painting as it is printmaking. I decided to downsize my art materials for this event and only took the colours that I have in handy, small tubes, the ones that I find deep within the bargain buckets of art stores – hence a very limited palette – two browns, a green, process cyan, yellow ochre and a greeny-browny-grey…

Below are some of the monoprints, at various stages of printing… the technique is very simple and very adaptable – roll, paint, wipe, smear, scrape, inscribe… and then press the paper onto the surface (in this case, glass); you can also use surface pressure (a pencil for example) on the back of the paper to create interesting marks and textures… repeat the process as necessary… here, I used acrylic paints because of the reduced set-up, but oil-based inks are extensively used…

some monoprints pegged up to dry…

The afternoon was much busier and more engaging. I met and chatted to quite a lot of people, including someone who plans to bid on my work in the Art Auction next week… When I later arrived back, I pinned up twenty beginnings of something new, and perhaps unsurprisingly a green theme emerged… not sure whether to tear these down into smaller works, before progressing further with the variations on green…

Here are some close-ups, showing some surface textures…

Somebody asked me how many layers I might add before they are deemed to be finished – it’s usually more than ten but probably less than twenty – but I am not counting… and inbetween there will be some surface erasures

Should I speculate publicly at this stage what I might do next with these works on paper? I contemplate (or rather procrastinate upon) doing certain things, but then don’t pursue them, then later I will discover that another artist has actually done it… meaning it’s time to think again

This time, it’s a Jazz Green thing…

I finished and framed the painting Fenn earlier this week… it will be exhibited in the HWAT showcase exhibition for the duration of April 2010…


[Edgescape: fenn, mixed media on canvas, 90cm x 90xm, 2008-2010]

I added a few more glazes over the lower section of the canvas to get a more of a dappled, yellowy-green, and the top section is a purplish-reddish dark brown.. I got a bit obssessed with the degree of merging – which explains edgescapes as the series title for these large works…

Fenn as a title (archaic spelling), I hope is quite self-explanatory, alluding to a marshy, often flooded landscape – which, prior to the 17th century when much of the low-lying land was irrigated for agriculture, is what parts of the East Anglian landscape would have been like. This painting (fenn) is more of a sensory response than a depiction; partly landscape in an implied horizon line, but also a surface magnified… I can’t do these large paintings quickly (I started this one in September 2008, about two weeks before it was needed for an exhibition) – it seems vital for them to mature over time…

Note to self: the poet John Clare lived in (or perhaps just wandered through) the deepest part of the fens… a landscape that stirs up the metaphysical mind…

For a morning respite from all things art, I pottered about in the garden and soon spied this little fellow, a blackbird in the willow tree… a composition most pleasingly serendipitous in its contrast of colours (echoing fenn) – and the wriggling worm in the blackbird’s beak is further echoed in the curls of the willow branch… he was waiting to make a safe return to the nest…

The male blackbird was taking it in turns with his female mate to gather worms for their hungry offspring. They had decided to make their nest in a large, tangled pile of recently pruned clematis and so I was unable to get on with clearing the area – so I temporarily sectioned it off with some chicken wire fencing…

I also spent a lovely afternoon out at the coast with an artist friend – both of us are avid beachcombers and find lots of creative inspiration there. I found all of these purple-hued pebbles, which I placed on an algae-covered piece of wood to photograph my hoard, which glowed more pink in the late afternoon sun…

I also liked the contrasting textures in this dense, spikey thicket of red-brown bushes with the soft beige grasses – serving a purpose in reducing the impact of wind erosion on this exposed part of the coast…

and these trees, in a nearby wood, looked almost petrifed

I feel quite lucky to be less than thirty minutes from this stretch of the coast…

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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.