On Friday (26th January) I went to view a potential new studio through Axisweb. It’s a town centre shop with four floors that would be ideal for a studio/gallery. The last occupant was a charity, the Doncaster branch of The Real Junk Food Project, and the place is a bit of a mess. Lot’s of tidying up to do and rubbish to dispose of, but I was so taken with it that I asked when I could move in and was given the keys.
Subsequently Axisweb contacted me and told me the Landlord had not yet given permission for the shop to be rented to them so I’m holding keys for a place I can’t access. Fingers crossed that agreements are reached as I envisage some really interesting projects coming through the space.
As I have no reason to go to the sculpture studio until I shift my gear I’ve been finishing off some paintings I’ve been working on in my attic on the days I’m not at the studio. My working practice has been to spend some time painting on each day I’m not building and I have nothing else to do.
I made a series of paintings on a small scale, a mixture of 10cm square and some 13cm x 10cm or 12cm. I also have some A4 ish canvases and off cuts of MDF that I’m painting on.
The paintings tend to be landscape based, drawing on imagery I’ve been using from the garden series and the views through the window, treated abstractly, working on colour balance and dynamism.
balbylandscape_jan19_003
I’ve also experimented with coloured backgrounds painted directly onto unprimed, and primed, hardboard.
balbylandscape_jan19_001
Toying with formats, so the first pairing is presented on a background cut to the golden ratio and the one above is cut square, as is the one below.
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There is occasionally some pencil work in them as well, to pick up textures implied by the painting and glazing.
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There are also a series cut to landscape format like the one below.
balbylandscape_jan19_005
Paintings on MDF off cuts like the one below
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and paintings on small canvases, about A4, like these two.
balbytreescape_jan19_001
plantstudy_jan19
These are some examples from a total of around forty small paintings.
These are very appealing. What’s going on?
Thank you. What’s going on is that I’m using painting to fill gaps between building the environment, I like the discipline of working for a day and taking time away. The paintings came from the practical desire to make smaller work that i could easily take to Fairs etc., and then they began as images of a large rose climbing rose we have in the garden. From this start they’re a balancing act of space, colour, texture (to an extent), a kind of art-game for one, patience? There are around forty small paintings in this series at the moment.