Trees and houses by a lake, winter, Lagoa

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Trees and houses by a lake, winter, Lagoa   AVAILABLE

 oil on card, 25.8, 28 cm

An example of the blocky style, bold and almost poster-like. 

I started working in this way when I began working on a larger scale. The methods I'd used previously were fine for a smaller size, but become fussy when I moved up in scale. I wanted the work to express very simply the strong immediate feeling you get when arriving in a location, and wanted to to do so using big brushes and strong colours. 

I pinched ideas from Travel Posters of the 1930s, children's art, Japanese ink drawing and German expressionism. 

The style is hard to get right, you can easily over-work. Or one of the colours will have got dirty and when its complete you wonder if that matters and should you just start again? Or sometimes the light changes so that the reference for the immediate sensation that inspired you is lost, and with it the painting.

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A trip to Chile: Villarrica, part 3

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This pair from Villarrica was painted in the woods by the river-one of the few places, in the unusual heatwave, to offer shade.

The two paintings represent two stylistic approaches that I have been playing with over the last years, the former more detailed and constructed of smaller strokes, the second made from fewer, larger areas, and with much thicker strokes.

One reason for the second style is that it is a reaction to the former, which can degenerate into fussiness. The fussiness happens when the light shifts on the motif- and as a result I unconsciously start repainting various areas, and therefore the painting loses the compositional objectives it had the start. To resolve the resulting  confusions I  simplify the composition using larger brushes. 

Another reason for this style is that I am conscious that pastoral painting can easily become twee. This awareness makes me want to use a more forceful style  to prevent this from happening, and which I call the blocky style and which produces pictures that are a bit more like posters.

In contemporary art twee, or any sweetness is an anathema. This is connected to the idea that artists should participate in (and ideally lead) revolutionary movements and these have to be utterly poker-faced and cold and aggressive to achieve their objectives. There are one or two exceptions, such as Klee.

Villarrica, forest path, oil on card, 24 x 28.2 cm

Villarrica, oil on card, 28.7 x 23.7 cm  unavailable

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Painting in Trindade/ the blocky style - blocks, Trindade

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Blocks, Trindade, oil on card, 20.5 x 25 cm   available

Painting in Trindade

There are an increasing number of new blocks, none of which have much aesthetic merit or even interest. But I am trying to find something in the patterns of their facades. The older architecture isn't that interesting either, to be honest, but there are one or two older houses which have a certain charm. 

It's good to work around here, to walk to destinations and to feel that one is discovering ones own neighborhood. 

I'm working larger. I want boldness, a poster-like quality, like those famous Deco posters used for tourism advertisements- I'm preparing for Chicago which I shall try to paint in a broad and audacious manner.

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The Blocky Style
or
 fat crude lively pictures... 

The pictures here are larger than I have painted for a while and the idea is to construct a new style

The features of the new style are- 

1. thick outlines describing elements

2. clear colours

3. limited colour range

4. simple geometrical shapes 

5. cheerful storybook atmosphere.

To assist working on a larger scale I reduce to palette to four colours- a blue, white, a yellow and a warm dark colour such as a red or brown. This makes mixing easier. I use big fat brushes too. It might end up looking a lot like Sironi but less sad.

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