A blue bouncing ball; a mug's game

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A blue bouncing ball

 

This was bought a few days back in from a vending machine at the ice cream parlour (perhaps to use the word parlour to describe this humble shop is to engage in flattery rather, but it is so evocative that couldn't resist it). 

You put in a 1 Real coin in a little slot, then turn a handle, and a ball, the specifics of which you have no choice over, gently tumbles down a spiral chute to a little shuttered container where you pick it up.

I had rather hoped for a marbled one, but I can't complain: that blue is the purest deepest most delectable Matisse. The ball had, and still has to a lesser degree, an exquisite smell, utterly intoxicating. It also bounces incredibly well.

 I did offer J. one, but he refused, somewhat churlishly, I felt.

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I began to mess with this in the photo-editor but in the end left it more or less as it came out of the camera. Part of me feels uncomfortable about editing, as if photography should have some rules relating to truthfulness. 

For me, in part, this means that if editing is done that should be apparent, plainly declared in the final piece. There is a responsibility in the artist to be honest. This idea is analogous to that in western theatre design, which eschews illusionism and magic trickery.

This idea derives somewhere from the notion that: truth + goodness +beauty = art. 

But I happily accept that finding proof of these qualities in specific artworks is a mug's game.

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Paper boats, picture; painting, travel and photography

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 Boats, picture

I`m beginning to miss painting a lot. 

I have been taking  daily photos daily. I`ve found the camera and the photo editing tools to be superb for examining objects, their condition, presence and significance. The immediate realism of photos, and the faith we have in the veracity of the photo makes this an excellent medium to do this, to discuss memory and give a concrete base to a text. I mainly use sill life photography to do this, but also medium distance photos of buildings and in nature.

I find the "hunter-and-prey" aspect of photography unpleasant. I dislike the secretiveness of its black box processing. Shooting people is highly unpleasant, a controlling and highly unequal ritual in which the person being photographed (the subject) is  pushed around and ultimately objectified, with very little control over the way they are represented.

  I suspect that, as an art form, photography attracts a certain profile and that profile contains a disproportionately large number of very guarded,  controlling, and possible abusive individuals. There have been a series of cases with fashion photographers being exposed as such. Nice people who become photographers are aware of portrait photography's unsavoury aspects, and attempt to engage their subjects more democratically in the representational process. But I suspect it is intrinsic to photography with it's tiny viewfinders and hidden image recording.

I found the camera very good for photographing trees and medium distance nature. It's responsiveness to light and detail is incredible. At a longer distance, with more general views, I found the camera brought forward cliches, or at best a certain obviousness.

Some things I miss from painting:

1.  The physicality of paint is marvelous. It has three-dimensionality: texture.  Photography is smooth and dreamlike: Apollonian.

2. Mixing colours is marvelous. And somehow always surprising. And I have a big batch of expensive paints waiting for me in Scotland.

3. Painting landscapes is very "out there". It's a declaration. Yes, that is uncomfortable, but it isn't furtive like photography. I like sorting out the equipment and deciding what to take.

4. Lugging stuff- palettes, brushes, tripod around is annoying. But packing and unpacking and the ritualistic processes most painters develop over years makes them very aware of how their work is a self-conscious construction.

5. In painting you can respond physically, with marks and gestures and they are layered so you convey a notion of process in time.. There's an eye-emotion- hand-  chain which allows mark-making itself to be way of conveying meaning. Photography is dreamlike. I like this too, but I miss the former, and how difficult it is.

Fingers crossed: eventually the COVID-19 situation will be resolved and I can do a painting trip: a massive 6 monther from Ecuador down to the tip of Patagonia. Or something like that.

 

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Branch

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Branch

This was taken over a month ago and is one of the photos that I'd describe as "modest photography". 

That's a term I've invented for a photography that draws attention to slight phenomena or humble objects, depicted in an undramatiising way. It's deliberately unimpressive.

Thus, I finds myself in a contradictory position: I have to decide which unimpressive photo is most impressive. 

That's a paradox I can live with because the possibilities of modest photography are endless. It opens one up to a totally different understanding of the art.  Liberated from the obligation to seek evermore transcendental or memorable imagery one is free to find value in the commonplace, the overlooked. 

I shall next explore this further with photos of little grey stones, small piles of sand, scraps of litter or small fallen leaves.

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Pavement; recent photography; camera

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Pavement

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Recent Photography

I've put my brushes down, and have returned to taking photos for a while. I'd been working very steadily on landscape paintings for a good few years and felt the need for a change. I started to think "this is what I can do" or "this is what I do" and with that comes ennui. The difficulty of travel because of Covid reinforces this. 

Image-making with´painting for me has begun to follow very set processes- finding a place to work, mixing colours, a initial tentative sketch, revising that sketch, then blocking the larger areas, usually with the more distant elements first, Then adding darks and becoming more detailed. 

It's nice, indeed essential, to have a method. But I started to become aware that the method is one that permits certain statements, and negates others, and couldn`t easily shift process. It became uncreative. 

Hence, photography.

I've often had my doubts about photography because it can seem too easy, to be glib. But that is perhaps because I gave insufficient attention to the decision making processes which it can involve, underestimating their possible sophistication;

These photos are extensions of previous essays- the neighborhood through it's architecture, still life, and rustic or woodland themes. Some of them create or suggest narratives, and think of adding texts to some of them.

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Camera

The camera I use is a Lumix DMC-LX7. It's small enough to fit in my pocket but has a Leica lens and works very nicely. Larger cameras are cumbersome, and their SLR feature is much less necessary nowadays when editing on the computer is so easy compared to in the darkroom .

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Tongue

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Tongue

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Wooden wing

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Wing, side a

Wing, side b

 

A wooden wing.

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Lagoa- houses on an incline; Urban Sketchers; photography and social meetings

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Lagoa- houses on an incline, oil on card, 17.5 x 19.5 cm -  -unavailable
 

The Urban Sketchers group seems to focus more on taking photos of their work and each other than actually producing work.

 Actually this is an observation one might make about many social gatherings here- that the taking of photos is their real function- the stated objective of a meeting being merely to provide a vehicle for the narcissism that is endemic in Brazilian society and which Brazilians feel no shame about.

The effect of the picture taking is to disrupt any flow that social exchanges might have, and to impose a very limited and specific interpretation on the meeting (happy, positive, glamorous, fun, in which all attendees are comfortable together, etc). This robs any true spontaneity from meetings (though, ironically, the photos are often posed in a pseudo-spontaneous way). The photos are put on social media and our and our recollections of how things truly were is distorted or rendered questionable. 

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Tranquility

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Tranquility, Trindade, Florianopolis

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Demonic presence on a table top

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Demonic presence on a table top

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Monument, Central Square, Trujullo

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Rather deco styled monument in central Trujillo, commemorating the Peruvian war of independence, erected in 1929. The sculptures owe something to Michealangelo and perhaps Arno Breker.

This isn't Fascist sculpture- if we define Fascist sculpture by its political objectives. But it has some of what my old tutor Michael Bury used to describe as its "pea-braned" qualities.

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At home: 333 Antuerpia

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Saki

Clip-on sunglasses

 Plant

Life.

Glass

Velazquez

Horse's mouth

Home

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My place

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Beetles

Muse

Donkey, Tiger

January, 2017

Tijucas

Tom Waits

Apartment

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My place

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Master

Wildlife

Face

Ezra

Tin

Bowl

Jug

Scallop

Cufflink

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Flower

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A Flower

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A visit to southern Peru: Cusco; part three: the new town

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Cusco: narrow road downtown, oil on card, 10.5 x 14 cm - available

Cusco: buildings, oil on card, 10 x 12 cm  unavailable

Cusco: shops downtown, oil on card, 13 x 12 cm   available

Cusco

I'd wanted to work on the shops which are so striking, selling piles of pig cadavers or novel varieties of potatoes piled up high, or   children's shoes spread out on a blanket on the ground or car parts or bust up cellphones or old university thesis, but there were too many people to concentrate.

 It is impossible for me to work when people are watching. Almost all viewers are pleasant, but their presence transforms me into a street performer and this prevents me from working freely: I begin immediately to think of of what effect each change to the picture has on the viewers considerations. 

I wished I had taken my little Lumix  camera because the one on the mobile is poor, and it'd have been easy to take some nice snaps. There are some things for which the camera is unquestionably superior to painting, and that includes capturing street scenes.

Anyway, here are some, rather expressionist, paintings of the streets. The high perspective is especially reminiscent of Kirchner. With such painting the question is always about finish, knowing when to end. 

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