Small again...painting pochades

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Primed card

SMALL PAINTINGS

I decided after the Aberdeen Art Fair that I would, again, work small. I had been working on a larger size for impact at the Art Fair, but now I feel that is not really my true metier.

How small, I`m still not sure, but I guess abut A5? I will play around. 

There is something about this format, which is to do with the idea of crapping the impossibly big- a landscape- into the  portable- a postcard  size - which I find immensely appealing. 

Moreover, it`s a format that seems to belong to me, as I`ve worked so often within it.

Thus, I proceed- priming boards and getting carriers sorted, and in a week or two should have some work to show, and perhaps am prepared for Spain and Morocco, the Winter escape.

I feel strongly drawn to revisit the works of artists who set me off on my path as an artist: Odilon Redon, Hammershoi Fatin-Latour: late nineteenth century masters of the strange.

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A view into a bedroom

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A view into a bedroom, oil on card, 12 x 13.5 cm  - available

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Beiramar Avenue from the mall; square format paintings

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Beiramar Avenue from the mall, oil on card, 10.5 x 10.5 cm - discarded

The square format was extensively explored by Klimt, often using- to my mind, somewhat mannered art noveau compositions. There are also a good clutch of very nearly square pictures by Hammershoi, the Danish genius.

The square format is symmetrical across 4 axes, and consequently a very stable form (I might speculate that Hammershoi did not use the perfect square because he was interested in maintaining a definate visual instability in his work).

It invites a sense of flotation, of hovering: I am not clear why. Could it be because, while a rectangular format invites a horizontal .linear reading, when confronted with a square, thes eye tends to meander and circle more within much more narrow bounds inside the frame?

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New paintings, canvas

Two new paintings; their first stages.

I'm continuing to explore tonal painting, with references to Sickert, Hammershoi and Hopper (late Edwardian and Early modern art). I want to continue working on a simple style, very straighforward and uncontroversial, and to continue exploring the changing urban environment near here, and the changing relationships between old and new buildings and nature.

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It's surprising how little aware many oil painters are of the importance of the painting surface, specifically that the sort of acryllic pre-primed canvases, cheaply available in the art shops are massively substandard, and will result in much less sucessful paintings.

This is because of the way these cheap canvases absorb paint, and how they make it hard to paint in glazes. I have resolved to chuck out all the cheaper type cnavases I have, to avoid the temptation to repaint on them, and only to use the better oil primed canvas available from the UK.