Fear of Black

A dear friend and fellow painter once commented that canvases that had been painted over in order to be used again, contained the ghosts of the images hidden beneath. I have to say I agree with her. This recent piece has many ghosts hidden within. This is a large canvas and has dominated the space in my studio for years now, as one idea after another went awry to be primed again in fresh white gesso. I always wondered if the increasing numbers of ghosts from the old images were creating subconscious blocks in my mind. With the last misadventure I decided it was time to take the bull by the horns and find a way to embrace my shadows. I couldn't possibly let this big canvas languish around gathering years more dust. To turn things around I decided to prime in black, an act that took supreme courage on my part.

As a painter, I have always shied away from using black even in the tiniest quantities. You could say I have been almost phobic about it. The sight of this huge black canvas was so daunting that it sat there for months as I procrastinated like mad in coming to terms with it. I'd met my Waterloo.

Then one day, while sitting in my huge deep pink arm chair staring at the lovely deep pink bougainvilleas in our garden I suddenly knew what to do. The idea just arrived in an instant and I leapt out of the armchair and rushed to paint. Although more correctly, the desire to paint these blue squares had been with me for a number of years, but I hadn't managed to resolve the right way to represent them, much less dealing with a black canvas at the same time. Suddenly I had hit two birds with the one stone or three actually. The third was the aim to limit my palette as much as possible, getting as monochromatic as I could.

I started with the small blue square in the centre and worked my way out, moving from tiny brush strokes in French Ultramarine in various tints and tones to bigger brush strokes in the successive outer squares along with reduced tinting and increased toning of colour. The completed piece is the last photo.

Archie naturally contributed to the work. He began by swiping at a full brush of blue paint and ended up with a paint sodden paw which I had to drop everything to clean. His favourite activity then became to sit behind the canvas and punch back at me with his paw as I placed brush strokes that bulged through to the back.

The painting is 180cm X 117cm and was completed on Valentines Day, hence it's name Blue Valentine. I'm reasonably happy with it mostly because of I've finally started coming to grips with my ghosts.

A Jug Full of Colour

This is my trusty old water jug in Ikea blue for which I have a very deep fondness. It's is a wonderful visual record of the dribbles and drops of colour from so many of my paintings. In fact I think in itself it holds the inspiration for a whole new piece. It was certainly a joy to photograph. Every time I pass it in my studio, the sight of the thick layers of creative history encrusted onto it's insides gives me pleasure and invokes a yearning to get using it again.

Introductions and Interruptions

Before going any further it is important that I give Archie his due place on this blog. He is deeply fascinated in every aspect of my life in which he involves himself as fully as possible with great enthusiasm. He can also get quite bossy. He adores painting and manages to get - his nose paw or tail into just about everything, often unbeknownst to me.

And when he is not participating he is curled up asleep as close as he can get to the action.In fact if I am not very careful he will manage to overtake my blog too.

Exploring Colour

In my artwork at the moment I am exploring colour quite intensively. Those who are familiar with my work will be asking "So what's new? All your painting are screamingly loud with colour!" And this has become a pattern I am interested in understanding more. Why do all my paintings end up this way? I seem to be completely seduced by strong colours. At the completion of every new piece I am saturated with the intensity of the dominant colour and vow that my next canvas will be white on white. As coffee clears the nose of the parfumeur, I think of white as coffee beans for the eyes, a cleanser of the visual palette.

I am taking an extensive workshop to help me break out of my penchant for boldness. It comes in the form of a book called Colour A Workshop for Artists and Designers by David Hornung.

It has a series of 16 assignments which are to be explored over a minimum of 16 weeks. Each exercise only needs to be very small, about 6"X 6" to allow the student to move through them quickly. The focus is on experimenting with colour and not the composition, so in the first exercises, only very simple geometric shapes are used.

At the very least it will break me out of my usual palette of colours which will be an interesting and refreshing change.

The Beginning....

With the emergence of this new blog I feel a happy sense of anticipation that I just might have found a superb medium to weave together so many strands of my life. Here I hope to share my painting processes and other art work, my thoughts, maybe an odd recipe or two and anything else that I encounter as I explore my creativity.