A trip to São Bento do Sul: Part 1: a yellow house

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A trip to São Bento do Sul: Part 1

 

I stayed at Filadélfia Hospedagens, a charming hotel to the north of the town, above a district delightfully called "Oxford", in  beautuful grounds. The town shuts down rather at weekends, alas. 

The weather was perfect: sunny and crisp.

 

 

 

São Bento do Sul, a yellow house, oil on card, 25 x 22 cm

 

 

This is a simple kind of painting that I am working with: the style owes a fair bit to Morandi. 

 

 

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Plate, book, table, window

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Plate, book, table, window, oil on card,  15.6  x 15 cm unavailable

This was painted back in March, and put aside. It still works for me. It`s survived a few months. 

Still life is about a sense of place. But the kind of place is smaller than in landscape. And one has more power to decide what goes in that place. A still life painter has a degree of control that the landscapist lacks. 

A reference in this is Morandi, whose pictures are sometimes interpreted as miniature cityscapes, with towers and blocks

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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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Painting in Orvieto

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Orvieto, looking north, oil on card, 16 / 14 cm unavailable

Orvieto- looking West, oil on card, 18 / 16 cm unavailable

Orvieto is an amazingly situated city with a stunning Gothic cathedral, all very well preserved or maintained,

I tried to do the sort of tourist painting in the cathedral square that almost seems the raison d'etre for travel, but never really enjoyed it. Better were the fantastic views. The second, Orvieto- looking south,  is a sort of impressionism which isn't, in truth, really my bag. I'm a much meatier, heavier and more expressionist painter, much more interested in lumpiness than light. I've always felt a little self conscious about this, the heaviness in my pictures. I want to make this more of a virtue as it is in, say, Morandi or Courbet.

I may shift the average scale up a bit in future trips.

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São Paulo

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Well, I spent most of last week visiting galleries in São Paolo, hoping to find someone to help show my work. Perhaps I got a lead, but I am not optomistic. I am not sure why it is so difficult here: my pictures are selling and are accessable. Perhaps it is simply that there isn't much of a market here, and this makes dealers nervous.

São Paolo is a loathesome place: a brutalised environment with no end of beggers and homeless people. It is highly polluted and I became ill there almost immediately.

However, there is a nice collection of paintings in the USP Muesum of Contemporary Art, itself located in a fine park. I liked seeing the calm Morandis and wonderful Pancetti.

The end of a lane

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The end of a lane, oil on card, 14 x 10.4 cm  - available

Painted in Trindade:  very high key colours for me.

I am trying to play around more with thicknesses of paint, taking cues from Morandi and the Saint Ives artists- whose work I have always found very slight. But perhaps in the specific aspect of textures it can offer something to me.

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Warehouses, an office and a water tower

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Warehouses, an office and a water tower, oil on card, 14.5 x 12cm  - available

Painted from the car on one of those beautiful sunny days that somehow serve to worsen my depressions. 

These are some of the buildings that line the SC-401. I think of the style of this picture as owing something to Morandi.

Sapling on a riverbank; David Sylvian; tourist pictures; getting into my stride

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Sapling on a riverbank, oil on card, 7 x 9.4 cm  - available

 

 

 

The creek cuts through from bridge to bridge at the back of Itacorubi, and I've found a little path, much overgrown. I went along it, passing a couple of fishermen. 

It`s a great place to work- tranquil. I might think of myself there working as John Crome, great Norfolk painter of discreet places. A thread connects all the artwork I've done, regardless of style or medium: the revealing of secrets. Finding and depicting obscure or hidden parts of Florianopolis is a way of revealing secrets, showing an intimate and private relationship with a hidden or un-noticed place. 

This is a theme that connects many artists I love- photographers such as Atget and painters such as Utrillo or Morandi. I first became aware of my attraction to this theme through music, specifically songs by John Foxx, or David Sylvian: 

  Once again I'm hiding in backwaters Running this way and that Trying so very hard to please (beware of hidden snares) Rushing to bite the hand that feeds me Running this way and that (there are always other possibilities) This way and that 

Backwaters, David Sylvian, 1984 

 Given the themes of secretness, hidden-ness and exploration so animate my work, I wonder if the idea of making the London Tourist paintings, and, in November, the Italian and Maltese ones is such a good idea? 

Such pictures of monuments and given views are surely against my every instinct. But perhaps it is good to oppose ones known instincts from time to time. 

 

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Above are some pieces of card being prepared for paintings. I'm very happy with this small format, which suits my working speed and also keys nicely into the idea of "revealing secrets", as outlined above. It took me a couple of years, however, of fairly steady work to get into my stride- to locate myself in the aesthetic- the first little pictures were generally underworked and to my eyes now, sloppily crafted, sometimes painted on badly primed supports. 

As I have worked steadily, I've managed to develop critical axioms, and raise the general level of my work. I'd say of every five pictures (a usual week), one is an outright failure, two are mediocre, and two good. Usually in twenty there is one which I love.

 But I have good patches and bad: now is a good one, though I scarely dare admit that for fear of jinxing it. 

 

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