Mythical creatures on a mystical night. We camped overnight under a full moon and read books about mythical creatures.
As luck would have it the mythical creature in the book was a Leviathan which we had visited earlier in the day.
Overlooking Plymouth Sound for overnight camping we were not troubled by the low sad songs of unhappy Leviathans. Instead they jumped and frolicked in the bright moonlight which was untroubled by clouds or any other weather predicament.
The Leviathan and a full moon at StonehouseThe Leviathan and Plymouth Hoe
It helps, of course, that Nana drew a Leviathan a few years ago.
It has been a blisteringly hot week. I have always been a lover of hot weather but as I have aged my tolerance is reducing. I have a new understanding of seeking out shade, a light breeze, avoiding the hottest parts of the day and sun hats. Sleeping at home daily has become like the giddy first nights of a holiday trying to adjust to flimsy bed coverings.
Abroad I love the abstract shapes that sheets form after a night of fitful sleep in a foreign climate.
This week I have had abstraction at home.
Which I agree does not look all that exciting, but by reducing the detail and adding some colour my bed looks like a sculpture.
Something I might never had discovered if my tolerance for heat had not diminished. So maybe I am not so bothered after all.
Is that why the Italians in particular are so brilliant at creating folds of fabric from marble. Bright Sunlight and folds of bed linen every morning before they even get up.
I always thought this failed attempt at a colour wheel looked a little like a Phoenix from the side .
Combining her with a pigment tray from the near the Vatican and some printing experiments has been interesting.
I think I like her best as a dark disco creature.
The reason for all this artistic time wasting, is that for once I am as prepped as I can be for the next art exhibition. The original works are ready and framed. I have done my experimental print run, and am now just waiting for the real print run to be done. The mounts and envelopes are in the studio. Everything is poised for the next flurry of activity, but creatively I am at an impasse. So footling about with some odds and ends was quite cathartic. I might even have rinsed JMW Turner out of my head.
Over the weekend I believe I finished my project of creating art inspired by the work of JMW Turner and his locations. I have been focussed on that for about 6 weeks. Doubtless some of the stuff I have learned along the way will stick with me. The random technique that I really like is staining watercolour paper with cold tea. So here are some tiny tomatoes in the saucer of a blue glass cup and saucer caught in sunlight. Nothing Turneresque about it apart from tea stained paper. To be clear Turner did not dye his paper with tea but it was an option to create paper that was more authentically matched to watercolour paper of 200 years ago. I might also try bolder colours like beetroot or turmeric.
Just a waterfall in the English countryside, below a pond.
With a glass shute that humans and cows can walk under.
And a message.
If people, or cows for that matter, for just one minute, allowed Modern Art to get into their heads rather than allowing it to flow over their heads, the world would be a very different place for them.
Or maybe significantly different. Not so likely for the cows.
5 minutes is all it takes at Delamore Arts. Staying longer is even more interesting.
Beltane , Mayday, caught me out yesterday. It was a day filled to the brim. Not another thing could have been squeezed into any second of the waking day. So much so that the blog was brief and largely unexplained.
I combined two exercises from Paint Like Turner to create a painting of our local tidal pool.
The first big takeaway was that watercolour painting 250 years ago was not done on paper that was anywhere near white. So the process took about 24 hours as I dyed paper with cold tea.
The process and the result.
Then dried the papers in hot bright sunlight, which bleached out the colour a bit. I think I quite like painting on imperfect slightly beige paper. In real life the image has a warmth about it which I quite like.
Then to read the instructions and dig around in my paint store for the suggested colours or as close as I had.
I was working from one of my favourite, very atmospheric photographs of the pool.
At this point I should point out that this is the pool on an excellent day.
And this once again is the painting. Very curious to create art from firm instructions.
I need to sort this horizon out before actually attaching the mount.
I was quite thrilled that the painting more or less has a Turner colour palate as demonstrated by the biography I am also powering through.
But the painting is nothing like a Turner in reality and much more like my photograph.
Which rather neatly brings me to the end of the day. Which was spent with a huge glass of Pimms , celebrating a friend’s success in the London Marathon. 26 miles of determination and endeavour.
This photograph has the colour palate of the sun going down through a glass of Pimms.
I can never be sure where a book will take me and this one is no different. But the project for today is unexpected.
Drum roll…
Turner did not use white paper or canvas, his whites are created by white paint. Which I am slightly averse to. True Whites in my paintings are usually gaps in the paint. Today I will be soaking paper in cold tea and drying it in the sun, for a more random 250 year old look.
These slightly mad little experiments are unlikely to make it into the public domain, even at a Turner inspired exhibition, but the way colours react in different circumstances is fascinating to me.
But none of this is where this book has taken me in the last few days.
While I was busy doing a job not involving art. I was on a parallel and self guided path of art appreciation and dabbling with watercolour. Until I decided to give art a more academic and educational space in my life by committing to many years of part-time study doing a Foundation Degree and then a Fine Art degree. While still studying the essential science stuff for my career.
Without much research I started the journey towards a degree in Fine Art, imagining that I could immerse myself in the world of artists from Turner to the Impressionists. Not to be. Without due diligence I had signed up for a Contemporary Fine Art Degree. One of life’s awkward moments, regrettable at the time, but the fees had been paid. Turner and the Impressionists slipped from view, pushed out by Rothko and Grayson Perry and many late 20th and 21st Century artists*.
*This was the best learning experience ever, so glad I made this error.Contemporary Art really stretches thinking, and thinking makes for great pondering.
This last couple of months has been the first time I have been truly back with the older generation of artists for 20 years.
The things I did not know about Turner are manifest. In the last few weeks it has been easy to find Turner locations on the Devon/ Cornwall border. But unknown to me my London life was very Turner centric. The number 3 bus from Crystal Palace to Oxford Street is like a Turner Experience. If only I had known when it was my daily commute.
I took this quite a few years ago because life was mimicking art.
As I lay in bed writing this blog, I realise that by chasing down references to JMW Turner’s painting and sketching exploits in the Tamar Valley I am going down some fascinating googleholes.
Curiously the location of Mr Turner’s position to paint Plymouth Dock is very similar to where I sometimes watch the British Firework competition, although I face more to the right.
Maybe I can paint a Turneresque Firework painting…
This week I was at Newbridge. Mr Turner did not leave much more than a blank page
Following my own Mr Turner theme of Mists and red splodges. I have done two Newbridge sketches.
But now I am thinking that my bedroom is lacking a little Turner ‘ something’. But I could put that Mural in my loo/futility* room. A mural in there would just add to our eccentric smallest room.
*the futility room is tiny and yet somehow completes all of the tasks of a utility room but not in any logical way. Hence the name futility.
Now I am very much risk averse , harm averse would better describe me. But if I switch the word risk for unpredictable outcome or experimentation then I am much more comfortable with the whole concept of taking a risk. I am not a huge fan of timid or obnoxiously certain people because their place on the risk taking spectrum is so different from mine.
Arty and creative risks are my favourite things to do. A bin full of failure is the foundation of my creative practice.
I took a risk with the picture above. I had a stash of very old (20 years) but very good quality Ink Jet paper.
This image is a bit of everything, gelli printing, collage, watercolour and pastels. Under such pressure many papers would fail and this one was no different. But the failure, where the surface pulled off is almost its greatest success. The orange area above the boat got a bit too wet in the process and the surface started to lift off. Working into the area with pastels created the cloud texture.
Then a bit of photo meddling created two different images.
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