Kim's Game - work in progress 2

Pen drawing of an aesthete.



Below: Kim's Game Oil on canvas, 59 x 65 cm - stages 4 (above) and 3 (bottom)







For previous versions see:

http://tadeuszderegowski.blogspot.com/2009/09/kims-game-work-in-progress.html

and

http://tadeuszderegowski.blogspot.com/2009/08/work-in-progress.html

What has happened? I've cleaned the background, making it more uniform. The broadly triangular shape to the bottom left above he maroon oval has been refined. It reminds me of both a salt cellar and a phallus. The pink oval on the top row has been given a brown edge, which makes it seem 3-dimensional.

I am not sure if making everything sharper was really the right way to go: the gentleness of the previous shapes was part of what was appealing about them. But it is incredibly difficult- impossible, I'd say- to "go back". Paintings become more and more focused, shapes become more and more defined; insistant as you work on them- it is unavoidable.

A picture which was meant to become suggestive becomes less is as it is elaborated. And, so it seems to me, that I am best at artwork which denies equivocation.

*

I am good at ink drawing because this technique has a knife-edge quality about it: there is no half-way point between failure and success. If it is good it is excellent; if not, the drawing goes directly into the bin. It isn't really possible to correct an ink drawing because you cannot erase the ink.

Oil painting of the sort above is difficult for a personality such as mine, because oil paint allows endless tampering: it can be scraped off, overpainted or wiped away, and I am unable to resist the temptation to make endless the little corrections which seem necessary but actually serve merely to reduce the force of the image.

My happiest style is akin to the quip, to an aphorism, or a rebuke. It denies regret. My paintings are like over-elaborated jokes, they are laboured: they miss the point of a quip which lies in its rapidity and surprise in a given context and not necessarily in the profundity of what is said.

Lost is concision, that much underrated quality in art. And critical here is the notion of "the gesture". There are oil painters for whom "the gesture" is an intrinsic to their vocabulary- Kokoschka springs to mind- but even so this element is less apparent in his painting than in his drawings and is more prevalant still among the draughtsmen such as Kubin, Belloc, Lear and Beerbohm who are my true companions: ironists and satirists mainly.

This sort of work is sarcastic and slight: it has wit, but sometimes lacks substance and one can become trapped in irony and that is why I shall continue to try to make oil painting work for me.

Kim's Game - Work in Progress

A few changes were made to the painting, removing fussier details, making the dhapes simpler, often more egg-like. See previous version - http://tadeuszderegowski.blogspot.com/2009/08/work-in-progress.html

Kim's Game is played at children's parties. A series of objects are displayed to the children on a tray for a limited time period and they have to record what these objects were. The winner is he who recalls the objects most accurately.

According to Wikipedia, "The name is derived from Rudyard Kipling's 1901 novel Kim, in which the hero, Kim, plays the game during his training as a spy."

I played the game at Malcolm Smith's birthday party in 1975 or 1976. I remember the objects being brought to us on a tray, then being removied exactly two minutes later, after which we each wrote down the names of the objects we could remember on pieces of paper.

I remember how poorly I recalled the objects despite forcing my concentration. I had a feeling of frustration when writing down the names of the objects, fearing that the process of writing them down was so laborious that in the time it took the other objects would fade from my memory.

My host's mother returned the tray to us for comparasion with the lists- I do not recall who won- it was not me! How mysterious it was that I had simply forgotten some objects so prominent they were: they had indeed disappeared from my consciousness, as if their presence had been a mirage. But they had surely been there as much as those whose names I had recorded.

Paintings in Progress - stage 5

I've tightened up the details, but more detail is still needed in both.

Neither picture has been especially popular on Flickr, perhaps because they lack the sort of clear singular images that make things stand out there.

The Yellow painting (B) makes me think of Bertie Basset. I like long titles, and may call it, "The Hero on his way to even Greater Glory". I like the Russian-ness of the title- the painting takes some things from Malevich and Rodchenko.

The Green (A) has much to do with growth and fertility. I may call it "The Garden of Earthly Delights, or Weird and Kinky"

Day 3

More changes, mostly adding in darks and straightening lines. I'm working quite rapidly. I seem, instinctively, to live certain triangular forms and to work in a very est European way with bold graphic images. The dunce figure has, I think been unconsciously stolen from an artist called Tadeusz Makowski.

Painting in progress- beginnings.

Two newly begun pictures, both on old canvases using oils, the progress of which I'll photo and publish here.

I don't know how I want the picture to look like in the end: I shall be making it up as I go along. I have something Malevich-ish in mind at the moment, however.

The yellow picture is x 66 cm, the green 50 x 57 c. The canvas is fine linen, oil primed.

I may start a third picture, it depends how impatient I feel. Having worked with monotype for most of the last year, I've become used to a very rapid work pace.