Society of Scottish Artists: 30 x 30 online exhibition

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This is a link to the Society of Scottish Artists online showing of small, 30 x 30 cm or smaller, works. 

I am showing a Moroccan picture.

https://sca-net.org/event/ssa-30-x-30-online-edition/

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Trees near a church, Trindade

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Trees near a church, Trindade, oil on card, 26 x 28 cm

It is getting very hot, and even when painting in the shade one returns sun-dizzy.

 It may be time to start painting still lives again, perhaps flowers...

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Segments of rock

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Segments of rock by Doces Campestrini

These are small sections of sticks of rock. I had already chosen and bagged some sweets, but then I saw these, so beautiful next to the cash desk: I had to get them too. 

The flavors are okay. They really belong to a pre-modern, pre-clinical age of sweet manufacture, and are a little unsophisticated. The orange is acceptably Kia-Ora orangey- slightly fizzy (like Spangles, if you remember them?). The green is convincingly apple-ish. The white one has a buttermilk flavour that does take one a little by surprise. Best is the pink which does a solid sex steamy strawberry kiss: a real behind the bike shed snog to boast about on the bus home.

Like many sweets you want to chew them the instant they arrive in your mouth. Usually I'd counsel against this but with these sweeties I'd suggest that this was the right way to go about extracting the best flavour: to crush them between your molars in a prompt, unprincipled manner. 

The thing that got me, really got under my skin and made me impulse buy was the green. That emerald green really just hit me smack in the eyes and I was smitten,  helpless. I became quite stupid and I had to take these sweeties home. 

You don't, these days see this colour often,. It's a bit out of date, and very fin de sciecle like peacock feathers or hippy communes in bottle green velvet jackets and  floppy fedoras. I love how it combines with the citric yellow and I love the nearly but not exact geometricity of it all, which reminds me of stencils. And, of course, broken gemstones.

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A dog going somewhere

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A dog going somewhere

There is a short story here.

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Docile's Maxmallows

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 Maxmallow

 

Shape and colour

The shape is architectural, a joyful spiralling, very Coney Island. It seems to date from the oh-so-distant days when postmodernism might have promised hope.

The colour, likewise, is purest seaside resort: Brighton, Blackpool and Skegness in four glorious sun-faded pastels. But does it convey the vital ingredients of any seaside day trip: easy pleasure, plastic tat and a kiss-me-quick hat, a snog or more with a stranger, fish and chips, cheap music, cheaper beer, and more than a dash of seediness? All serenaded by a thudding hangover the next day?

The Oral Experience

At first the Maxmallow is very soft, like the faintest brushing of a butterfly's wings on your cheek. It's flowery, floury. A dry kiss. Aloof... or shy? 

Then, stealthily, the Maxmallow melts sweetly. You run your tongue up its twisting grooves, removing the sugary dust. And it gives itself away with gracious pacing, an adagio by Ravel. It is first spongy, then (yes!), more compliant, dissolving, melting but still somehow airy. It mesmerises, it is Redonesque, indeed -the Odilon Redon not of brooding Noirs but the lofty Chariot of Apollo. And thus brings to mind not so much the the carnal pleasure-seeking of the English working classes but the refined escapism of opium scented salons.

 

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Praia Mole, trees near the sea

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Praia Mole, trees near the sea

 oil on card, 26 x 28 cm   SOLD

 

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A road and bushes near the university, Florianopolis

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A road and bushes near the university, Florianopolis- available

 oil on card, 26 x 28 cm

Does the plein air painter go out and respond to the world with paints?

Or is it like this: the artist goes out and finds a motif. This motif is like a key which opens a door in their mind.

Behind the door is a pre-existing image which the artist then reproduces, albeit usually adaptng it so it corresponds wih the scene that they are, ostensible, depicting.

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Three new tubes of paints and three brushes

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Three  new tubes of paints and three brushes

The paints are: 

Brown Madder: I've never used this before but think it might combine with Prussian Blue for depicting  deep shadows.

Light Ultrmarine: this is rather a staple, it's not too forceful and is excellent for skies;

Light Cupric Green (aslo known as Scheele's Green): ths is based on Phthalocyanine, and will be strong, probably  difficult to mix.

There are also three brushes. These tend to lose there sharpness after only a few sessions but, fortunately, aren't too dear.

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Those who repeat the expression, "a good workman never blames his tools" must be people with very limited understanding any craft activity because the choice of tools is so evidently critical to the result, regardless of ones level of experience.

 And so is the choice of material. Indeed, if we say that the artwork is the transformation of matter into meaning then what we choose to use is in itself consequential, before we have even begun to manipulate it. 

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Shadows on a table surface

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Shadows on a table surface

  

This is the sort of thing that if you you can spend hours marveling at if you are in your cups.

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Watch

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Broken Rotary watch

 I bought this watch on a flight to Padua.

 I had often sat in flights and wondered exactly what kind of people were those who bought things from the in-flight catalogues that are tucked into the backs of seats. I had thought, they must be people who cannot go to shops or dislike shopping. Or people whose lives were so haphazard that only when secured by seatbelts in a flight could they resolve to purchase such basic things as pens or wristwatches.

But,  in a gleeful Damascene moment, I caught the attention of the flight attendant and, in minutes, the watch was mine.

Dear reader, had I become one of those people .I had needed a watch but yes, I have often felt a sense of grave oppression in shops, especially indeed jewelers. Because in the jewelers a perfumed manager will present an array of watches on a velvet tray . The stillness in the room will be quite oppressive. And he will be watching you very closely as you inquire about the prices which, though enormous, will be written on the tiniest tags.

You are crippled as the assistant (who isn't an assistant at all but a highly trained psychological bully)  makes you feel ashamed, applying all sorts of ruses so you spend a huge amount on something which you don't need or even want. And if you maintain your good sense and chose to get the cheapo thing you can afford  you wither on hearing the condescension in the sellers voice, "very good sir". 

For a while I didn't use a watch because mobile phone had the time. But then I started to resent the phone, seeing  it more as a tyrant than a liberator. I disliked how I continually felt the need to check it and the inane social networks I belong to. I stopped carrying the phone when I went out.

But I can't do anything without measuring myself against time. It's how I am constructed. I needed the watch.

The thing I like about the watch was how the winder had embedded in its crown a tiny dark blue stone. I also liked how smooth and flat the glass was.  It felt reassuring to stroke it.

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Paper boats, picture; painting, travel and photography

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 Boats, picture

I`m beginning to miss painting a lot. 

I have been taking  daily photos daily. I`ve found the camera and the photo editing tools to be superb for examining objects, their condition, presence and significance. The immediate realism of photos, and the faith we have in the veracity of the photo makes this an excellent medium to do this, to discuss memory and give a concrete base to a text. I mainly use sill life photography to do this, but also medium distance photos of buildings and in nature.

I find the "hunter-and-prey" aspect of photography unpleasant. I dislike the secretiveness of its black box processing. Shooting people is highly unpleasant, a controlling and highly unequal ritual in which the person being photographed (the subject) is  pushed around and ultimately objectified, with very little control over the way they are represented.

  I suspect that, as an art form, photography attracts a certain profile and that profile contains a disproportionately large number of very guarded,  controlling, and possible abusive individuals. There have been a series of cases with fashion photographers being exposed as such. Nice people who become photographers are aware of portrait photography's unsavoury aspects, and attempt to engage their subjects more democratically in the representational process. But I suspect it is intrinsic to photography with it's tiny viewfinders and hidden image recording.

I found the camera very good for photographing trees and medium distance nature. It's responsiveness to light and detail is incredible. At a longer distance, with more general views, I found the camera brought forward cliches, or at best a certain obviousness.

Some things I miss from painting:

1.  The physicality of paint is marvelous. It has three-dimensionality: texture.  Photography is smooth and dreamlike: Apollonian.

2. Mixing colours is marvelous. And somehow always surprising. And I have a big batch of expensive paints waiting for me in Scotland.

3. Painting landscapes is very "out there". It's a declaration. Yes, that is uncomfortable, but it isn't furtive like photography. I like sorting out the equipment and deciding what to take.

4. Lugging stuff- palettes, brushes, tripod around is annoying. But packing and unpacking and the ritualistic processes most painters develop over years makes them very aware of how their work is a self-conscious construction.

5. In painting you can respond physically, with marks and gestures and they are layered so you convey a notion of process in time.. There's an eye-emotion- hand-  chain which allows mark-making itself to be way of conveying meaning. Photography is dreamlike. I like this too, but I miss the former, and how difficult it is.

Fingers crossed: eventually the COVID-19 situation will be resolved and I can do a painting trip: a massive 6 monther from Ecuador down to the tip of Patagonia. Or something like that.

 

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Jelly Berries

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Jelly Berries

Gomets Pudim Creme e frutas

Coloured gum, sugar encrusted,  mounted on a white creme base to, just about, suggest a jelly mould.

 They are more or less conical, a shape very pleasing in both hand and mouth. The encrustation of sugar on the surface is lovely to the tongue. That sugary roughness melts to give way to smoothness, an effect erotically stimulating for reasons which you, dear reader, might perhaps enlighten me?

How about the flavours? The idea is that there is a creamy base with a fruit flavour above.

Well, they are not fantastic, the difference in colour being more decorative than indicative of any flavour associations we might make. I do discern a difference with the lime, but that might just be my imagination.

But when taken simply as decorations the colours are, indeed, jolly: bright yet harmonious. 

They would look very nice on arranged on a silver tray as a vehicle to serve drugs such as ecstasy to a assortment of your more louche acquaintances*, perhaps in an ultra modern but just a teeny bit retro apartment overlooking the Thames. You could accompany them with colourful cocktails in martini glasses and  and music by Goldfrapp.

*Will we ever  be louche again?

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Small transparent button and white thread

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Small transparent button and white thread

I was always impressed how clean the items in my mother`s sewing box were. All the things- the reels of thread, the pins and the needles-  had an extraordinary precision about them. They give off silence, concentration. Tools are often mysterious: how they function and what they might make is often not self-evident.

I love the button tin which is made of dark green metal and shakes most invitingly. The variety of buttons is delightful, perplexing even, a tribute to human creativity.

 There used to be such a button shop on Marylebone Lane. I wonder if it is still there?

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Boy

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Boy

This is a companion to Old Man from a few days ago. 

It reminded me of the tousled haired "Little Prince". 

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Foliage and circular shadow

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Foliage and circular shadow

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Hand

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Hand

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Branch

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Branch

This was taken over a month ago and is one of the photos that I'd describe as "modest photography". 

That's a term I've invented for a photography that draws attention to slight phenomena or humble objects, depicted in an undramatiising way. It's deliberately unimpressive.

Thus, I finds myself in a contradictory position: I have to decide which unimpressive photo is most impressive. 

That's a paradox I can live with because the possibilities of modest photography are endless. It opens one up to a totally different understanding of the art.  Liberated from the obligation to seek evermore transcendental or memorable imagery one is free to find value in the commonplace, the overlooked. 

I shall next explore this further with photos of little grey stones, small piles of sand, scraps of litter or small fallen leaves.

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A flower opening

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A flower opening

 

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My bed

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Where I sleep

Sleep 

This is where I lie down and try to sleep. 

I don't like lying there trying to sleep. I don't like thinking about the day and watching thoughts accumulate. I don't like thinking about the day that was or the day to come and what it might mean. These thoughts so often bring anxieties. I just want to fall rapidly into unconsciousness, plunging into a soft abyss.

Recently, I've been waking up early in the mornings. Then, I  try to go back to sleep. Sometimes I manage. I don't want to get up very early because when I do I feel an emptiness.

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There is another photo of my bed that I'll publish another day. It's less classical.  I may do a series about sleep and going to bed. It's a massively unexplored subject, considering how much of our life is spent doing it.

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Old man

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Old man

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