Fast painting

I used to believe that the more slowly and deliberately a thing was done- specifically a work of art- the better. I thought that because I saw slowness as proof of deliberation, thoughtfulness, and care.

These concerns were fundamentally moral. They don't necessarily need to be present in the aesthetic sphere- a work of art can equally well be spontaneous, thoughtless and careless. It just depends on your terms.

There's no proving that one set of values is better than the other because in the end the artwork is just a thing: it has no moral life and - though part of me rages against this- it doesn't really matter very much in the scheme of things anyway.

Personally, I've always been a much better fast artist than a slow one. If the pace is too slow I get bored- I don't concentrate more. On the contrary, if I have too much time to make corrections then I over-edit. I fuss, changing things that don't need changing, blunting my original message with compromise.

This is partly why monotype is such an appealing medium for me, it's "time-limited", you have to get the image right in an hour or two or the ink dries. But I have attempted to discover the same midset in painting, here.

Edinburgh

Back in 2001 I did a series of monotypes based on city plans, called The Ideal City.
These were quite successful, and were featured in the Urban Planning journal, Planum.

They were also exhibited in The Polish Cultural Centre, in London, and a couple of prints sold to the accountancy firm Ernst and Young.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28509471@N05/sets/72157607392792398/

It's time for me to revisit these themes. I'm most interested in 18th and 19th cnetury planning- as seen in Edinburgh and London, especially the use of the "circus" used as a visual contrast to the more frequent rectilinear shapes.

My working methods here will be subjective- responding to the shapes and colours as I procedd, usually from a simple schematic base. I'm not going to copy the plans. I want to work from felt memory. I'm confident that I've internalised the ground plans of these cities.

And in the end, it is the emotional effect of the finished image that counts, not its veracity.