Monoprints!

I have been working on some watercolour pencil sketches for the new work, Fever Afterimages, but have found it taking too long. I want a sense of immediacy! I did some test monoprints in three different sizes with acrylic paint, but again I felt dissatisfied. So over the past couple of days have been searching, both locally and over the internet for some water-soluble ink to do my monoprints with. Happily I found one jar of Speedball water soluble block printer's ink in the local school supply shop (the local art supply shop was mystified by my description of the product!). Out came my roller, wooden spoon, various papers, and plastic utensils for drawing into the ink once it is rolled on a glass plate. If I am happy with the results I will have a look for my linoblocks, get out the lino tools and do an edition. But first things first!

Classic Abstraction

As I am preparing new abstract work, my thoughts are revisiting classic abstract artists whose work had a great effect on the way I like to paint. I love this picture of Helen Frankenthaler in her studio. I have never had a large work space but have always made good use of the space I have!

A gorgeous, ethereal Frankenthaler painting.

Mark Rothko's paintings have always appealed to me. About 1980 I read Lee Seldes' 1979 book, The Legacy of Mark Rothko, and was convinced that Rothko's suicide was a set-up. Bad dealings of galleries and corporate greed made interesting reading but unfortunately it was a well-researched factual book, not a novel.

I have only gotten to experience the Rothko Room once, when it was still at Tate Britain (it was moved to Tate Modern but must be in storage as the paintings are never on display when I visit London!). I was lucky to have no one else around in the room and was seated on my own. The paintings seemed to hum and open a door into thoughtfulness.

I think it was in 1981 when, with several of art school graduates, I visited the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo. There is a large collection of Clyfford Still paintings there which are huge. I remember being hugely impressed by their colour and size!

Abstraction was also happening in Canada in the same time frame as the New York school of classic abstract expressionism (1950s) and being in art school in Toronto I became familiar with Canadian content! I liked the work of Paul Emile Borduas.

There was a huge show in the Art Gallery of Ontario of Gershon Iskowitz in the early 1980s. Again I could not fail to be impressed by the size and colour of his paintings.

Jack Bush is probably the best known of the Canadian abstract artists.

Another American abstract artist whose work appeals to me is Robert Motherwell.

I love seeing work from Motherwell's Elegy series. I can imagine myself painting the paintings with large brushes, plenty of space, etc. A painting fantasy!

I probably saw the work of Richard Diebenkorn on visits to museums in New York in the early 80s.

It is the application of paint and working out of composition in his work that really appeals to me.

It is Diebenkorn's work which is echoing in my mind when I am thinking of my next paintings Fever Afterimages.

Fever Afterimages

Though I haven't quite finished with my "Moments" series (there is at least one more related painting that I want to do) -- I have had ideas for another group of monoprints and a painting percolating for the past year! With this in mind, I started preparing canvas. The painting will be a free-hanging piece, unstretched. I am making use of end pieces of canvas, I have sewn 5 pieces together and made hanging loops. I wanted to pre-soak the canvas, so here it is hanging outside to dry. I plan to apply texture in the form of newsprint glued on, though it will be completely covered by paint not as per Maritime Alps and Tree Kids where the paint was translucent. 

As is my usual practice, ideas for new work generally show up on my greeting cards first. These were all created in 2013 for various occasions. I haven't yet decided on the composition or colouration for the painting, but I expect to have it worked out with the help of the monoprints and drawings, which I am starting this week.

 I am titling this body of work "Fever Afterimages". For once I am not tentative about the title!

Artist Biography Films

Over the past few days I have been catching up on some of the films I have wanted to see for awhile. I am not sure if it is a coincidence or I just happened to be in the mood for artist biography films, but that is what I watched. Gustav Klimt is one of my favourite artists so I don't know why it has taken me so long to see this bio pic. "Klimt" stars John Malkovich in the title role, which gives a clue as to the type of film it is -- enigmatic, hard to follow, interesting...I love films about artists so I cannot be an objective critic here as I love seeing the necessary bits of painting as the artist is at work and reproductions of paintings like the one below, Two Women Friends, which was destroyed in a fire in the 1940s.

Klimt's drawings are always amazing.

Egon Schiele, Klimt's protegé and friend, was portrayed in the film by Nikolai Kinski. I cannot help being an admirer of Schiele's drawings. Below is a portrait of Klimt by Schiele. There is a fantastic scene in the film where Klimt and Schiele are in a café and take turns working on a drawing, just as something artists might do while having a coffee...

I read an interview with Michael Douglas when "Behind the Candelabra" was at Cannes last year and this film was put on my "to see" list. Douglas really was Liberace and the film co-starred Matt Damon. It is a fabulous film, fabulously and sympathetically presented, and the actors showed a real relationship between the older, eccentric Liberace and the younger, romantic lover. As a child I loved watching Liberace specials on TV because he was so entertaining and this film shows how he was so well loved by his audiences.

The third artist film that I watched recently was "Pollock" with the wonderful Ed Harris playing the artist and Marcia Gay Harden also doing an amazing interpretation of Pollock's wife, fellow painter Lee Krasner. The scenes of both Pollock and Krasner painting really got my heart beating!

Spring in Wicklow - Kilmacurragh

Spring is definitely here, hurray! The last few days have been beautifully sunny and the plants are just loving it. I have been watching the pink blossoms on the tree outside my house get more abundant with each passing day and I am looking forward to "petal pollution" by the end of the month. Saturday required a return visit to the National Botanic Gardens at Kilmacurragh, about a half hour drive south of here (Bray). The snowdrops were in abundance.

Though the trees are slow to bud, the daffodils were happily looking around.

and so were the gorgeous purple - and the odd white - crocii. There were some low ropes along some footpaths, new since last time we were at Kilmacurragh, and I thought they might just be for temporary protection of these growing wildflowers.

I think this is probably not that unusual sight but seeing an artist painting en plein air is idyllic nonetheless. I did not want to disturb the artist at work, so never found out if it was a man or woman; despite the day that was in it, the air was still pretty chilly and the artist was well wrapped up for outdoor painting!

Kilmacurragh has only recently been taken over by the National Botanic Gardens, so it is still a hidden treasure: I think I saw the painter and 3 other people there. There was a poster for rhododendron walks every Sunday in March and there are a lot of trees on the property. I could see that all the rhododendrons were in bud, but this one tearaway section of a budding tree was in full bloom!

London - Victoria & Albert Museum

There was so much to see at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, I am so glad I finally made it there! The V & A was just not on my radar, as I had pre-conceived (and incorrect!) notions about the museum's collection. At the main entrance one is greeted by this lovely hanging sculpture full of lights.

The entrance has a double foyer so this hanging sculpture of blown glass modules is also lovely to see.

The Jameel Prize 3 exhibition was on; for more information click here (link to the V&A which also includes short videos of the artists at work. "The Jameel Prize is an international award for contemporary art and design inspired by Islamic tradition. Its aim is to explore the relationship between Islamic traditions of art, craft and design and contemporary work as part of a wider debate about Islamic culture and its role today."

Although I was not allowed to take photos in this gallery, I found some photos online of the work that I particularly like. These two carpets by Faig Ahmed are based on traditional designs, but in the left one the upper right corner of the design is skewed and in the right one the top quarter of the design is pixellated! The designs were obviously worked out with the aid of a computer bringing the traditions to the digital age. This is both amusing and effective.

Laurent Mareschal created a temporary "carpet" from spices.

Here is a detail of Mareschal's spice carpet. Kneeling on the floor beside it a delicious aroma wafted to my head.

Commanding the gallery was Nada Debs's "Concrete Carpet" with Arabic script carved into it, the font designed by fellow Jameel Prize shortlisted artist Pascal Zoghbi.

The carpet was created with multi blocks of stone. Here is a detail. The Jameel Prize exhibition included more than works based on carpets -- these were just the works that appealed to me.

As well as the huge sections devoted to permanent collections of artifacts in ceramics, furniture design, clothing design, jewellery, sculpture, historical artifacts, etc, there are also curated thematic exhibitions. We saw one about photography as fiction, which included the work of Jeff Wall and Cindy Sherman among others. There was also a gorgeous and eclectic exhibition of British drawing from the last few hundred years. I was pleased to see two elaborate Aubrey Beardsley pen and ink illustrations, a beautiful flower sketch by Frederic Leighton, an early David Hockney portrait, and this fabulous drawing, "Head Study Two, 2009" by Alison Lambert. The drawing is done in charcoal and soft watercolour paper, and has a heavy patchwork texture as she has glued additional paper onto areas and continued drawing over that.

London - Sir Frederic Leighton at the V & A

I was in London last week, and among loads of things that impressed me, I saw some work by Sir Frederic Leighton at the Victoria & Albert Museum. I've always had a soft spot for the pre-Raphaelite painters of the 19th century (my interest in illustration and romantic bent rearing their heads!) so was pleasantly surprised to see an exquisite tiny flower drawing of Leighton's in an exhibition of British drawing. Even more exciting though, I stumbled across rooms 102-107, a large corridor, where mock-ups, a full size "cartoon", and Leighton frescoes were exhibited. The corridor was somewhat dim, I presume to protect the work.

This is "The Industrial Arts as Applied to Peace" -- difficult to photograph because of lighting and size. For a sense of scale, please note that the figures are life size! The arched room is panelled with more Leighton works.

This is a detail of an arch panel.

There is a smaller painting of the fresco which is a full mock-up.

 But the most exciting piece for me was the full size "cartoon"  for this fresco. I also found out why they are called cartoons - but that is another story!

What magnificent drawing!

I love this lion's head handle on the side of a jug.

I was reminded of what had attracted me to Leighton's work back in art school. I was just starting my journey into dreams, psychology, psychoanalysis, etc. and came across an image of Leighton's painting "Flaming June".

I still lived at home with my parents in 1980, and my younger sister was a great model - when she was asleep! Here is one of my sketches of her from that time:

I later turned this into a small painting (I don't remember what happened to it). From the same sketchbook, here is the working out of some colour -- with a strong Matisse influence:

Dee Dee asleep appears in many sketchbooks, and I did a large painting of her in 1980 or 1981. (At the time, many of my friends would jokingly express surprise if they ever saw her awake!)