Selecting for Rio

Forty-four paintings. I will select a dozen to take.

I shall truck round some galleries with my wares in Rio on Friday. I think the best thing is to take a variety.

I'm experienced enough to know that if some people like what I do, some never will. The opinions of those who dont really are of no consequence, because it is usually because they just don't like this sort of painting, however well or badly it is executed, and they are really not "on side". Ergo it's better simply to ignore them.

I will reduce the selection above to a dozen: to show more is to risk repetition. It is better for people to say, "I wish I could see more", then for them to say "ok i think that's enough". The paintings chosen should be bright and immediate. I am visiting totally on spec and I imagine that the galleries will not give me much time, if any.

Confusion

*

Confusion, oil on card, 10.2  8.7 cm   AVAILABLE

This was painted behind my block: in the foreground is a bridge crossing one of the drainage canals in the area.

*

Block, windows, trees

*

Block, windows, trees, oil on card, 11.5 x  8.6 cm (picture damaged and discrded)

Another grey day here.

 Thank goodness I am off to Rio this weekend.

 

 

 

*

Pochades: an attempt at self-criticism II

*

The intellect demands understanding but while I might draw my conclusions, make recommendations, stipulate policies, all this seems to make no difference to the sheer strange willfulness of art-making itself, which is, so much, too much  like leading a lively dog across a meadow full of rabbits.

*

Pochades: an attempt at self-criticism

*

A selection of pochades

I'm going through the pochades of the last three years, dating and titling the backs, varnishing them, deciding if any should be discarded (always a delightful feeling to paint over the dodgy ones, as if someone has taken an invisible rucksack from my back) seeing if I can draw any general conclusions from seeing them en masse.

My conclusions are:

1. The best pictures are not fuzzy. There is a clear focus. When first I began painting the pochades about three years ago I was somewhat under the influence of early photography. I liked the blurriness of those early Victorian images, and even more that of symbolist photographers as in the Camera Work group. 

On reflection, this influence was baleful: the dreamlike effects are a way, Ithink, of artists escaping responsibility, of saying in effect: "it is not up to us to direct you, all we do is provide a certain stimulus".

2. There is a minimum amount of work that the pochades have to show. That is, there must evidently be a transformative process on display, so that the viewer cannot dismiss the piece as mere.

3. The better pictures use clear, clean colours. Initially, I used often somewhat muted colours. I feel this was a mistake, and the result of cowardice: fear of colour

4. The best pictures are very rooted in direct experience, especially a sense of excitement with places or people. This has to be balanced with knowledge. If a place is totally new then it is often overwhelming, but this is better than if it is too familiar, because then it doesn't inspire at all. It is surprising how many of the best pictures come from being in a place for the very first time and I kick myself for not having pursued the delights of travel painting more vigorously before.

5. There is good attention payed to surfaces and textures.

6. There seems to be a maximum size in which I can give the picture sufficient attention within the hour and a half that one session lasts. So pictures larger than about 10cm sq in surface area are generally too large for the results to be satisfactory.

7. There is little gimmicky work. This is good.

*

A road through woodland

A road through woodland, oil on card, 12 x 9 cm

Painted from near Praia Mole.

When I see copses, and woodland like this I think of Seigfried Sassoon, whose beautiful, ironical prose has affected me strongly. I love his sensiblilty of being within events, and yet so cooly, laughably, indifferent to them, and I love his love of nature too.

A Broken Wave

 Broken Wave, oil on card, 9.1 x 11.5 cm (damaged/ discarded)

 

A Whistlerian piece, hopelessly difficult to photograph.

There is a point when painting where instincts have to take over.

 

*