Birdshead revisited

Returning to an earlier set of pieces: the birds.

 I had worked on them and they had become more and more like very obvious toys. I like toys, but the toys I like have a sense of abstraction about them, which is what lends them their charm (contrast Britains' very realistic animals and soldiers and cars with the far more abstracted tin soldiers and cars of earlier epochs).

I'd forced the pieces, making them far too explicitely "fun" and decorative when I should have let them be, allowing the viewer more space to draw their own interpretations.

Thus, in the guise of Redon, I return.

I also began making some horses: again I haven't found quite the equilibrum between a sort of Giacometti abstraction and realism, and they became too cute: I shall persevere.

The mountain, Palhoça; miniaturism

The mountain, Palhoça, oil on card, 11.7 / 14.7 cm

Palhoça is one of those towns on the periphery of Florianopolis, like so many satellite towns in other Brazilian cities, so undistinguished that is it difficult to know quite why it exists.

But there is the mountain: undeniable, like the mountains in Poussin, rendering all below to insignificance.

*

Further thoughts on miniaturism, and small painting- notably the observations that the act of painting small seems happily to place one in opposition to bombast -as I write, as my country idiotically flings money at that costly, grandiose, pea-brained extravagance called the Olympic Games, giving good taxpayers money on ephemeral kitsch while cutting vital assistance for people with severe disabilities.

More pertinently, have not most art lovers at some point in their pilgrimages found themselves wandering with  dulled eyes through vast chambers in European Galleries and Palaces, uncharmed by endless rows of joyless gigantic Baroque paintings, extolling this or that official virtue, lined up in great halls in European galleries and palace, to find themselves suddenly delighted by a small and intimate painted voice?

Timber yards off SC 401

Timber yards off SC 401, oil on card, 9.5 / 11 cm unavailable

A small painting: I love the intimacy and intensity that you can get when working small.

I like the play that comes when between painting great themes on a small scale: a sort of psychological game linked to miniaturisation, where the viewer has to "peer in".

Suburban gardens; miniaturism

 Suburban gardens, oil on card, 8.6 x 10.2 cm - discarded

On miniaturism: someof additional points to yesterday's post:

1. When you paint miiature you can combine colours which on a larger scale would jarr. For this reason, painting small is not a good thing for novices, because they need to learn the full effects of colour combinations. Ditto for other aesthetic elements

2. The miniature has assications with the keepsake, the aide memoire: ergo, its nostolgic feel.

3. Things are made interesting merely by being small: they invite peering