this quick drawing, although not intentional, owes something to the lyrical style of impressionism… but the blues are much too strong; i didn’t have anything darker to create the inky prussian blues and olive greens…
[river sketch... in caran d'ache pencil]
[river sketch... detail]
ultimately, when you are drawing a fast-moving thing, every mark you make is a ghost-like calligraphic gesture, the perception of movement is naturally exaggerated, as you follow through the rippling pattern on the surface of the water, as much from memory as from direct observation…
see previous river drawings and water sketches…
the digital photograph, although intriguing for its natural abstraction, increased the contrast in the reflections, creating sharper edges and knocking out the subtlety of colours, creating something akin to a patterned glass window… it no longer resembles moving water…
[river surface... photograph]
not sure whether the earth, air and water will lead to or translate into paintings, but exploring it by way of drawing is nevertheless good…
made some virtual visits to the british museum, the hermitage and the rijksmuseum… revisiting some old masters… also checked out the frieze art fair via the guardian newspaper’s extensive coverage of the event.. then perused the many reviews of damien hirst’s new exhibition at the wallace collection… i also read this interview in the RA magazine; hirst is in conversation with fellow british artist john hoyland…
i’ll reserve my final judgment until i see the blue paintings for real, but it seems the general consensus in the media is that the paintings are mediocre, relying too much on derivative life and death motifs and falling short in the art-historical vanitas style references … damien hirst is the most famous (and the most successful) of the original YBAs, an acronym that imparts no philosophical weight to a broadly conceptual group of artists; art that was all about the originality of the idea, individual craftsmanship was not a prerequisite… i sense that the ever-shrewd-minded hirst has sensed a creative zeitgeist, that painting is perhaps the newest sensation, but it takes a lifetime of making paintings to be a really good painter…
