Homage to Corot

A very bright day, but not too warm. I'm working on a series of pastoral photos, which will go in a Flickr set as "Homage to Corot".

Corot is one of those 19th century painters whose work has fallen by the wayside. Wildly popular in his time, its difficult to imagine it being rediscovered by the 21st century gallery going public. In truth there are a fair number of dubious quality Corots, and the work lacks intellectual complexity. And the contemporary public probably wants something much more dramatic. However, I have often found his work beguiling.

The smell of mud and the distant sun made me think of the woods round Aberdeen, where I grew up, while I was out taking photos today.

The Garden City (nocturne)

Here is the complete print (86 x 60 cm).

One of a number of photos of my hands- the full set is here-

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28509471@N05/sets/72157612104631101/

This particular image might for a good starting point for The Garen City series. The hand here is an opened container, the shell is itself a home, much like a dwelling in a city.

Today was a very unsuccesful day in the print studio, the second such this week, and I need to start afresh. Oddly, it is often a relief to produce really poor work. It tells me, without equivocation, that I am on the wrong track. Merely mediocre work is much more difficult to learn from.

There is something immensely reassuring about the geometric orderliness of shells which I think might also provide me with a new direction for the Garden City series.

Nocturnes

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The Garden City - Nocturne (details) I shall publish the whole print later this week.

 I think of these with piano music in mind- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vkse1g9ibnM

 There is a beautiful tradition of night pictures which I'd like to tap into.

 

 

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The Garden City- more work

Here is some more recently completed work-

The Garden City

The first prints of the new series have dried, and I'm showing them on Flickr.

They're called "The Garden City", as a sort of homage to the planners of the nineteenth century.

I've structured the pieces with an underlying grid, with circles and other shapes overlain.

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.