Studio Update 12/12/11 - Collage

Three walls now covered:

Centre Wall
Integration of colour
Use of board module and yellow picked up from cardboard chip boxes
Triangular yellow wedges, diagonally across boards setting up tension with strictly horizontal /vertical format   (Ref Lothar's Colour Installations in his Talk of 5/12/11)
Decide on shift in intensity of colour as form gains height. Act almost as shafts of light from the high window in the space, but with density inverted from the 'natural order'.

 

Hockney / Sefton Park / Tate Liverpool

To Saltaire to view some of Hockney's work.
What always strikes me is how full of life his work is.

• drawing skills are manifest with much energy in line and cross hatching
• inveterate experimenter, embracing latest technology- currently doing flower piantings every morning on his ipad and sending them to his friends so they have fresh flowers every day!
• disappointingly his latest very large Bridlington tree paintings were not being shown
• colour being pushed more and more in his landscape work- strong purples, blues, oranges giving a very vibrant palette.

Sefton Park, Liverpool
Interested as the renovation of historic parks was one of the specialist areas I engaged with when practicing as a landscape architect.
Park design result of a competition which was on by a Frenchman, Edouard Andre, who worked in conjunction with a Liverpool architect, exhibits most of the classic elements of a late C19 park (opened in1872):

• Enclosing woodlands, large areas of grassland, serpentine pathways, satatuary, bowls, tennis water features and a superb Palm house .

How could these 'classic park elements'  be expressed in paint without being directly descriptive?
Texture is a key component and widely  expressed:

•  fine textured grass /course grasses/ clipped box and yew. Course holly providing a dark and occasionally reflective background
• gravel /smooth marble/ stone with lichen patina

Water, textureless- reflective

Colour
This, of course, is dynamic and changes during the day and the season. Seasons, I am sure, have been done to death but could form an interesting series of paintings and would get me slightly closer to my goal of addressing 'time in the landscape'

Compositional posibilities:

• Series of vertical coloured bands, taken directly from the palette of the park
• Possible basis for determinig width of bands - based on approx proportion of the particular element in the park e.g grass say 60% woodland 15% paths 5% other elements constituting the balance -maybe too restrictive but proivides a rationale. Probably need to add a notional quantity for 'sky' as this is an integral part of the landscape exxperience.
• If go along the seasonal route some colour shifts would be quite marked while others more or less a constant - e.g lime leaves going  from young sap green through to strong chrome/ cadmium yellow whereas yew/ holly remain as a constant. Therefore band widths in each painting would remain a constant but some of the colours would change.
• Does it have to be 'the four seasons'? (Alarums / enter bear stage right / Vivaldi)
• Square format canvass as 'record' rather than landscape statement, however the eye would read the paintings together in 'one landscape sweep'

Colour and Composition Workshop - Nov 5th

Occasional workshop run by artist, friend, Barrie Ormsby.
Chance to explore ideas of time in relation to landscape and explore low technology! (use of OHP)

• Using photo of Spanish courtyard to provide basis for acetate outline
• First lesson - projector will not focus down sufficiently to include three images on the canvas board I have brought  along. Have to use much larger board which is good in some ways.
• Charcoal images made - 3 similar images
• Colour added l to r 'Early morning, ''High noon', 'Early Evening'

                                                                     

       

Studio Update 2/ 12 /11

Now cleared Chicken/ Agricultural based collage to start anew in the large space fronting Steve's office.

Attempting to use the architecture of the space rather than use wall as a pin board for sticking collage material to.
Modular nature of pinboard significant.




                                                                               

Materials:
Timber offcuts
Cardboard boxes
Small square canvasses

Materials taken across door and onto adjacent wall.
Verticals pushing above line of notice board and  engaing with the wider space.
Colour limited to natural wood/ buff of cardboard boxes with strong black/yellow graphics/ white of unused canvasses.







Materials taken onto third wall
Vertical / horizontal timber slats conform to overall dimensions of rectangular canvasses.
Same colour restraint observed but with magenta substituted as the dominant colour.