When I paint still life...; Moccasins

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Moccasins, table, stationery, oil on card, 15 x 17 cm  - sold

When I paint still life I don't much like the traditional set-up with a fruit basket, a vase and a wine bottle.

 I prefer to paint the things that are lying around the house lying, like the stuff  in boxes, the mess of papers and books or the tea things on the table, or discarded clothes. I like to come across these things. I don't like to "set them up". Setting them up would be a bit like a hunter deliberately placing woodcock in a wood for himself to shoot*. I like the sense that these items convey something personal, and so finding them in their places according to circumstances other than compositional needs is most important (it's true that I do occasionally paint flowers in a very traditional format in vases, but I do find this correspondingly restrictive).

I work on small pieces of card and I prefer things that have easily recognisable profiles such as jugs, spoons and shoes, or perhaps certain items of clothing. I give these things a context such as a table top or the corner walls of a room. I use simple colours: dark reds, grey-greens and blacks and I often try out new paints when still life painting.

I usually paint standing up and I walk around a lot, hovering. I work on several pictures at the same time, then at the end of the session discard many. 

I find painting still life is very mentally taxing: I work much longer sessions than when I am working on landscape and have many negative critical thoughts that I process or combat, with considered responses:

     This is weak: Weak in which way? What might strengthen it?

   That is the same as what you did before: Why did I chose that subject before and what are its virtues? Is there something that has similar virtues that simultaneously allows a new angle?

    How boring!: boring is about engagement in this subject. If it isn't engaging then is this because of the subject (because it's impersonal, randomly chosen) or the treatment (usually it is the former) or my mental set (apathetic, tired, over-familiar with the motif)? This question is the critical and shouldn't be dismissed. 

   That looks too easy to deserve respect: what matters is delight. Children's art is unskilled but often  highly pleasurable. Contrariwise, cemetery carvings are often highly skilled but joyless.  

I also listen to music and self-help talks and drink coffee to try to make myself feel better.

* I know that, ridiculously, this is how grouse shooting is arranged in Scotland: with the grouse safely reared in wire enclosures then released a few days before the "glorious twelfth".

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Turps jug, fruit

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Turps jug, fruit, oil on card, 14 x 10.5 cm  available

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A trip to Major Gercino

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Major Gercino: a garden seen from a bridge, oil on card, 18 x 16 cm- unavailable

Major Gercino, River Tijucas, oil on card, 19 x 16.5 cm - unavailable

Between Major Gercino and São João Batista, oil on card, 22 x 18.5 cm    AVAILABLE

 Between São João Batista and Canelinha, oil on card, 18 x 16 cm

Sometimes when I am in the interior I feel a terrible sense of lostness: the country could so easily just swallow me up in its immensity. 

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A trip to Major Gercino

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Going to Major Gercino

Perhaps., weather permitting, I'll go to this little place to do some work. It's about two hours away and should be nice for a day.

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My British trip: conclusions

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Detail: Near Berwick-ipon-Tweed, fields  SOLD

My British trip was short and frustrating. I didn't give enough time to each place: I broke my own rule about spending at least three nights in any one place. You need to give space and time for painting to develop. 

Also, I  became tired and a bit sick from not allowing myself enough time to get over the flights from Brazil and by socialising as soon as I arrived. I'm used to being alone much of the time besides which I'm fairly misanthropic, so spending time with others can be rather taxing.

The weather was not bad-  predictably unpredictable, spitting down first thing in the morning to make you pessimistic, then showers or, in Berwick, wind in the afternoons.

 On the plus side, I think I've discovered a place where I can bed down for a solid week next time: Galashiels! It isn't as pricey as Melrose but it has some of its prettiness and the location is also delightful. 

It's difficult to travel in the UK because the costs are so high. A single room anywhere is a minimum of 50 pounds- and we are here talking about no frills hospitality in remote or unfashionable places.

 So my instinct is to prefer to make British trips shorter and use that money in Latin America where it goes so much further and the weather is kinder. That's an instinct that beats against a need I have to sustain links with the UK and with the artistic traditions there. But I don't much enjoy being in the UK- there is a robotic quality to the lifestyle, and it seems that every aspect of life if mediated by some authority or other so that little, including the endemic drinking, is truly spontaneous.

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Berwick-upon-Tweed

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Four pochades from Northumberland, showing carrier label

I painted the bridge twice. First I felt I didn't go far enough, I didn't "push through" to arrive at a stylistic conclusion somehow signaled by the bridge itself.

 Railway Bridge, Berwick, oil on card, 17.8 x 16 cm  available

Railway bridge, Berwick-upon-Tweed, oil on card, 15.5 x 17.5 cm  - available

So there are two paintings. Now I prefer the first. It's shaky, but I like that.

I walked along the river and painted the tress and bushes in the land beside. Mysterious places- I felt that I could have spent many more days there.

Near Berwick-upon-Tweed, fields, oil on card, 16 x 15.8 cm  SOLD

There's a nice chunkiness about the handling in this one (above).

Fields, Northumberland, oil on card, 17.5 x 14 cm - unavailale

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Berwick-upon-Tweed and an exhibition of the Scottish Colourists

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Berwick-upon-Tweed

The town is solid stone, cheerfully sincere and beautifully situated on the convergence of the Tweed and the sea. It would have been a perfect painting place if the wind had been less strong. The choice of restaurants is not large. There are shops which seem to have been transplanted from the early sixties- traditional butchers or fish and chip shops.

Accents change sharply in from place to place in the UK. There seemed to be no gradation between  the Geordie and the Border Scots.

This lovely town was visited and painted by Lowry- the authorities have marked the places where he painted with information boards. I saw a fine small exhibition at Berwick Visual Arts called Scottish Colourists from the Fleming Collection, which included these lively, unpretentious pictures:

 George Leslie Hunter, Lower Largo, Fife, oil on Millboard, 1919

 George Leslie Hunter, Peonies in a Chinese Vase, oil on board, 1925

Often there are traces of art deco stylisation in the paintings of the twenties.

 J.D. Fergusson, The Drift Posts, oil on canvas, 1922

Samuel John Peploe, Luxembourg Gardens, oil on panel, 1910

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