Cacupe, trees in a garden; painting success or failure

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Near Cacupe, trees in a garden, oil on card, 30 x 25.5 cm   AVAILABLE

It's funny how some days the painting goes well and on others not, how unpredictable it is.

This one is the result of two visits. The first didn't quite get the ball into the net. This one has a range of textures and a confidence that the other lacked, with a varied textures and a wide range of yellows. I have destroyed the former. 

I destroy about a third of my work.

 For me failure nearly always has psychological roots. Some days I seem to work steadily and easily and everything just slots into place. And others are a struggle from first to last and I might even destroy the picture after. It is frustrating not to know how to guarantee that every session is a success.

 I try to console myself with the notion that even on the bad days I am learning something, storing up some knowledge for another day, but I'm not 100% convinced that if that is really the case. 

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There is a Bonnardish feel about this one. I identify a lot with the intimist idea- art as a revealing of secrets. 

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My Peruvian Adventure- Ayacucho Part Two: outskirts

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Ayacucho, near the university, oil on card, 16 x 19 cm  damaged

Ayacucho, cathedral, oil on card, 21.5 x 16.2 cm - unavailable

Ayacucho, road north, oil on card, 22 x 16.7 cm  AVAILABLE

Ayacucho: a view across a gully, oil on card, 21.7 x 17.7 cm - available

I am fond of this picture (above) which is lively in design yet with soft sad colours..

Ayacucho, view from Mirador de Acuchimay, oil on card, 21.5 x 15.5 cm  - available

Ayacucho, from Barrio la Liberdad, 15.3 x 16.5 cm, oil on card - available

Ayacucho- a view of some lots, oil on card, 18 x 16.5 cm - available 

the painting above was damaged at it edge by the framer

This is a nice, somewhat Bonnard-ish picture, with that flattened perspective and "tapestry effect". 

I found the light in upper Peru delicate and often a little sad. I don`t think the people of Peru are sad though. They seem to get on with life perfectly well.

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New York, conclusions

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Arch, Washington Square, June 2017   AVAILABLE

 oil on card, 17 x 18.8 cm

This is rather a jigsaw puzzle painting isn't it? It`s the third  time I've painted this arch.

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Conclusions

New York- the complete set from 2017

 The set is strong and simple but I will not probably revisit New York for a few years. I need time to forget New York, so that when I do return it`s qualities surprise me again.

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This is my list made before leaving for New York and my reflections-

1. CIMA  (Centre for Italian Modern Art) in Broome Street, Manhattan. De Chirico show and talk. 

     

This talk in the CIMAs elegant setting was excellent, and provided a chance to discuss and make        sense of de Chirico`s late (and very questionable)  paintings. I am still not convinced by them, they seem to serve only to illustrate the confidence of his earlier work, but the talk was informative. 

2. Go to the Metropolitan Museum

This magnificent, sprawling collection, should require no introduction. I was particularly impressed by Dutch 14th century portraits this time, and also enjoyed the following (I have not listed media or sizes- this information can be found on the Met`s excellent website):

 Whistler, Cremorne Gardens No. 2, 1870-80

Whistler, as ever a curious artist, often seems ambivalent about his own presence. He knows, perhaps, that his own egoism is somewhat untasteful.

Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, George Bingham. 1845

The Arrival in Bethlehem

 Attributed to Master LC (Netherlandish, active second quarter 16th century)

I admired the grandeur of the artists vision, the sinuous lines used to lead the eye across and into the landscape and to create three dimensions.

 Pierre Bonnard, Garden, 1935

Georges Braque The Studio (Vase before a Window) - detail, 1939

What I liked here, in the V patterns on the chair seat was the confident spontanaity with which I perceived Braque to be enjoying creating patterns using tonal variations of colour.

Georges Braque, The Studio (Vase before a Window), 1939

 Georges Braque, Boats on the Beach at L'Estaque, 1906

 I similarly enjoyed the sense of paint being cheerfully dabbed to depict the town- the corresponding pleasure and delight in both the scene and  method.

 Henri Matisse, The goldfish Bowl, 1921  22

 The ease in this picture and the metaphor of the goldfish, the art object serving to the viewer as the goldfish serve to the inhabitants of the room.

  Leon Bakst, Design for the Set of the Ballet 'Narcisse', premiered at the Théatre de Monte Carlo, 1911

Leon Bakst Design for a Stage Set for the Ballet 'Le Donne de Buon Umore’ (The Good Humored Ladies), premiered in Rome, April 12, 1917

There was a display of work by the ballet scenographer- scenes with such sensual presence.

I enjoyed the dance between abstraction and depiction in these Chinese ceramics, the use of colour and their pleasure giving objectives

 Jean Dubuffet Woman Grinding Coffee, 1945

His work could be contrived but I don`t think it is, there is too much basic enjoyment of the paint effects.

Stuart Davis, Jefferson Market, New York, 1930

I don`t think this picture (above) works compositionally but it is interesting to speculate why.

Marsden Hartley, Cemetary New Mexico, 1925

I find a lot of Marsden Hartley`s work awkward and unresolved. This painting by contrast make a grand and certain impression on me.

3.The Whitney Museum

The Biennial (mainly junk) was on. In this context the the permanent collection`s set of works by  Calder contrast with wit and grace. I did not note down their titles.

I also enjoyed paintings by James Castle, which have great intensity. The architecture of the museum is very nice, but the place is expensive to visit and mostly not very rewarding. 

The view from the Whitney.

 Calder

Calder

4. Painting in Chinatown

I produced three fine pictures here, (in fact they were from Two Bridges). The grandeur of the bug Deco blocks contrasts so well with the squalour and filth below.

5. American Folk Art Museum

This one I failed to tick off.

6. TJ Maxx- get shoes and maybe clothes?

An exhausting experience,. I managed to get shoes, however.

7. Buy Art Materials from Blick

An excellent shop with a fine range of oil paints. I have materials now for the next year or so.

8. Eat American breakfast

Failed to achieve. There wasn`t a classic American diner near my place and the idea fell off the radar.

9. Eat KFC

This was even better than i imagined it would be. KFC is easily the King of Junk food.

10. Painting in Central Park

I spent two happy days in the sun here. The schools were out and the families with their children were pleasant to chat to.

11. Painting in Brooklyn.

This was my main subject, Somehow I feel that I didn`t feel as awed by the subject as i`d expected- perhaps I was here too recently and this is the downside of familiarity.

12. Bookshopping maybe.

I visited many fine bookshops including Molasses Books, Human Relations, and Spoonbill and Sugertown in Brooklyn, Sterns and X. Very enjoyable.

 My purchases included this excellent work tracing the career of the Italian painter- much less of a recluse than one might have been led to understand, and whose career was more successful than I had understood partly because of the assistance of various Fascist affiliated organisations.

 His level of production was far higher than I`d imagined. For instance, in 1941 he painted twenty four landscapes and thirty-five still lives. 

Giorgio Morandi,The Art of Silence, by Janet Abramowicz

 Yale University Press, 2004

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Portrait of a young philosopher

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Portrait of a young Philosopher, acryllic on board, 90 x 70 cm SOLD

A somewhat deco-styled portrait of a friend. It was painted about twenty years ago in a flat on Maude Road, Camberwell, London.

 I have always found it difficult to paint portraits unless I know the person. The process of painting portraits is rather intimate (at least the sort of more psychological portraiture that I substribe to) and necessitates this psychological proximity. 

A good model is hard to find. It's no surprise that artists find a model and use them for years on end, like Bonnard's Marthe, or Auerbach's JYM. I'd love to find here the sort of person who expresses in postures their mental attitudes, who is thoughtful and has the sort of openness that could me allow to enter their mental set. I'd love to do a series of pictures with them. 

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New York IV: painting in Central Park and Hudson River Greenway

 Central Park Symphony, oil on card, 15 x 12 cm  SOLD

The parks in central New York are magnificent. I was there to catch the first changes of the Fall: fantastically coloured Sycamores. The weather was sunny but not scorching. Central Park is amazingly varied in terms of types of spaces. It isn`t quite as big as people say, if you know the London parks, but it is quite something nonetheless.

Central Park, New York, autumn, oil on card, 10 x 13 cm  NOT FOR SALE

I always love the freedom from precision in drawing that painting nature gives after I have been painting buildings.

Trees, Hudson River Greenway, N.Y., oil on card, 12.5 x 12.5 cm - unavailable

There is a huge Bonnard influence in these pictures,  a direct result of visits to the Metropolitan Museum nearby.

Central Park N.Y., woman in a red dress, oil on card, 12 x 16 cm  NOT FOR SALE

 Five from Manhattan`s parks

Forest, Lagoa

Forest, Lagoa, oil on card, 16 x 8.7 cm

Another wide format piece: there's a bit of Bonnard in here, I guess.

Balcony/ Sacada, Florianopolis; daily painting

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Balcony/ Sacada, Florianopolis, oil on card, 10.6 x 13.4     -   available

Today's picture is a very Bonnard-ish.

They are supposedly constructing or planting a botanical gardens there, where my view depicts though, apart from a large sign, I have seen nothing to indicate any work taking place there over the last year. These things take forever here. This can be most de-spiriting.

Now I think of it, the theme of the garden is really central to Bonnard- the oasis or haven, and this theme finds its domestic internal analogy in his pictures of bathrooms and bathing.

I previously commented ironically on daily painting, as if there were something excessively worthy or laboured about the idea, but I find that I have myself begun to paint daily. Some people might think this takes discipline, but the opposite is true: in daily painting, painting becomes a sort of anchor, and the day feels incomplete or strange if I haven't worked on any pictures. Painting comes to assume some of the ritualistic qualities of church on Sunday- it solves the problem of what to do, thus making one impregnable.

I think now if I were living in the UK, I'd consider attending church on Sundays just for the amusement of it, though it would have to be a church where the sermons were extremely brief, as I find them irritating. Actually, I find most aspects of religion, apart from the songs and the architecture, annoy me so I am not sure whether I'd really manage to sustain the habit of churchgoing (even in the Anglican church which is famously- magnificently- open to all-comers; even those who are quite openly just there for the aesthetics).