More Woolgathering

Another New Studio

Further research around woolgathering led me to looking again at Ivon Hitchens and in particular an exhibition held at the Garden Museum in 2019.

and its companion exhibition ‘Ivon Hitchens: Space through Colour‘ at the Pallant House Gallery in the same year.

The idea that Hitchens had was that space was colour and vice versa and that the paintings he made were essentially reconstructions of the particular space and time in a lyrical fashion. He talked about the visual music he wanted to compose.

There is also the notion that Hitchens, and other English painters at the time were examing Paul Nash‘s questioning as to whether it was possible to be an ‘English’ Modernist. Apparently the answer is no because Modernism is Internationalist.

This resonates for me because Hitchens was very much attached to the woodland he owned and built a house in and worked consistently from throughout his life. The feeling I have is that this landscape source is specific for the individual even if it becomes universal as it reaches out.

This begins to explain the developments I’m making in this current project.

woolgathering maquette 02/09/2024

After working on the flower drawings and building the maquette I applied some colour to it to see what I’d got. The thing is that the wire is too thin for what I want for the pieces I have in my mind so I ordered some 6mm steel rod.

Woolgathering Maquette

I built four bases from some of the reclaimed MDF and put together a version of the maquette as a small sculpture.

Woolgathering 06/09/2024

More Woolgathering

I then worked up a drawing of the small sculpture ‘Woolgathering [Flowers 2]’ on one of the big sheets intending to use it as the work in progress piece for my PG2 presentation.

In the end I used the ‘red gardens’ VR environment as a more complete and coherent response.

Flowers 8 09/09/2024

I worked the other drawing up to a finished [?] state and collected some more foam from the vast store of it at the studios.

Woolgathering Maquette 09/09/2024

Studio 09/09/2024

The presence of the materials ought to make the building much easier.

Woolgathering [Flowers 2] 16/09/2024

I added some pieces into the flowers 2 sculpture and built the ‘tree piece’ over the next couple of weeks.

Woolgathering [Flowers 1] 16/09/2024

Then started the ‘Woolgathering [Flowers 1]’ sculpture, built around a partial cube.

I also stretched some big pieces of paper thus declaring the other two drawings finished.

Woolgathering [Flowers 1] 20/09/2024

The next week I painted the sculpture and added the red flowers.

Woolgathering [Flowers 1] 20/09/2024

Woolgathering [Flowers 1,2,3,4] 25/09/2024

At the end of September I broke the lethargy and managed to build the ‘Woolgathering [Flowers 3]’ and ‘Woolgathering [Flowers 4]’ sculptures and positioned as I originally intended while I consider painting the new pieces.

I’ve scanned these into Polycam and have worked up blender models ready for 3d and VR.

Drawing

I’ve continued to draw every day;

The September drawings can be seen here

…and the August images here

There is a link to the previous month’s Gallery on each page.

The drawings are posted to Threads and Instagram each day.