A road and bushes near the university, Florianopolis

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A road and bushes near the university, Florianopolis- available

 oil on card, 26 x 28 cm

Does the plein air painter go out and respond to the world with paints?

Or is it like this: the artist goes out and finds a motif. This motif is like a key which opens a door in their mind.

Behind the door is a pre-existing image which the artist then reproduces, albeit usually adaptng it so it corresponds wih the scene that they are, ostensible, depicting.

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Three new tubes of paints and three brushes

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Three  new tubes of paints and three brushes

The paints are: 

Brown Madder: I've never used this before but think it might combine with Prussian Blue for depicting  deep shadows.

Light Ultrmarine: this is rather a staple, it's not too forceful and is excellent for skies;

Light Cupric Green (aslo known as Scheele's Green): ths is based on Phthalocyanine, and will be strong, probably  difficult to mix.

There are also three brushes. These tend to lose there sharpness after only a few sessions but, fortunately, aren't too dear.

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Those who repeat the expression, "a good workman never blames his tools" must be people with very limited understanding any craft activity because the choice of tools is so evidently critical to the result, regardless of ones level of experience.

 And so is the choice of material. Indeed, if we say that the artwork is the transformation of matter into meaning then what we choose to use is in itself consequential, before we have even begun to manipulate it. 

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Shadows on a table surface

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Shadows on a table surface

  

This is the sort of thing that if you you can spend hours marveling at if you are in your cups.

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Watch

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Broken Rotary watch

 I bought this watch on a flight to Padua.

 I had often sat in flights and wondered exactly what kind of people were those who bought things from the in-flight catalogues that are tucked into the backs of seats. I had thought, they must be people who cannot go to shops or dislike shopping. Or people whose lives were so haphazard that only when secured by seatbelts in a flight could they resolve to purchase such basic things as pens or wristwatches.

But,  in a gleeful Damascene moment, I caught the attention of the flight attendant and, in minutes, the watch was mine.

Dear reader, had I become one of those people .I had needed a watch but yes, I have often felt a sense of grave oppression in shops, especially indeed jewelers. Because in the jewelers a perfumed manager will present an array of watches on a velvet tray . The stillness in the room will be quite oppressive. And he will be watching you very closely as you inquire about the prices which, though enormous, will be written on the tiniest tags.

You are crippled as the assistant (who isn't an assistant at all but a highly trained psychological bully)  makes you feel ashamed, applying all sorts of ruses so you spend a huge amount on something which you don't need or even want. And if you maintain your good sense and chose to get the cheapo thing you can afford  you wither on hearing the condescension in the sellers voice, "very good sir". 

For a while I didn't use a watch because mobile phone had the time. But then I started to resent the phone, seeing  it more as a tyrant than a liberator. I disliked how I continually felt the need to check it and the inane social networks I belong to. I stopped carrying the phone when I went out.

But I can't do anything without measuring myself against time. It's how I am constructed. I needed the watch.

The thing I like about the watch was how the winder had embedded in its crown a tiny dark blue stone. I also liked how smooth and flat the glass was.  It felt reassuring to stroke it.

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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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Jelly Berries

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Jelly Berries

Gomets Pudim Creme e frutas

Coloured gum, sugar encrusted,  mounted on a white creme base to, just about, suggest a jelly mould.

 They are more or less conical, a shape very pleasing in both hand and mouth. The encrustation of sugar on the surface is lovely to the tongue. That sugary roughness melts to give way to smoothness, an effect erotically stimulating for reasons which you, dear reader, might perhaps enlighten me?

How about the flavours? The idea is that there is a creamy base with a fruit flavour above.

Well, they are not fantastic, the difference in colour being more decorative than indicative of any flavour associations we might make. I do discern a difference with the lime, but that might just be my imagination.

But when taken simply as decorations the colours are, indeed, jolly: bright yet harmonious. 

They would look very nice on arranged on a silver tray as a vehicle to serve drugs such as ecstasy to a assortment of your more louche acquaintances*, perhaps in an ultra modern but just a teeny bit retro apartment overlooking the Thames. You could accompany them with colourful cocktails in martini glasses and  and music by Goldfrapp.

*Will we ever  be louche again?

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Small transparent button and white thread

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Small transparent button and white thread

I was always impressed how clean the items in my mother`s sewing box were. All the things- the reels of thread, the pins and the needles-  had an extraordinary precision about them. They give off silence, concentration. Tools are often mysterious: how they function and what they might make is often not self-evident.

I love the button tin which is made of dark green metal and shakes most invitingly. The variety of buttons is delightful, perplexing even, a tribute to human creativity.

 There used to be such a button shop on Marylebone Lane. I wonder if it is still there?

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