patternsthatconnect

Move 4!

…x2

How is it that working on much smaller paintings than I have been used to for years seems to have helped me now I return to a slightly larger scale?

This is one I am working on and I have determined to cease in (possibly) one more ‘move’, before it becomes overworked.

It is like a big watercolour in that I think the colours gain their brightness from the light underneath: the white of the canvas. On this occasion many coats of white paint have been applied before even beginning to lay down the colours.

And in a different part of the studio…

…the surrealism of contributing to the works in the cabinet of Stephen B. MacInnis continues.

Taking some of the smaller works and acting as if they were studies …

…

I like to think that it doesn’t matter which way up the work is presented. I paint them on the horizontal and rotate the canvas or paper. I see a piece all ways when I am making it and I think it could be shown any way (or all ways) when viewing it.

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When I see paintings I did long ago (usually a chance meeting) sometimes I dislike what I see, other times I get a pleasant surprise. I saw a few during the last few days, and quite enjoyed them, particularly these two (snapped on my mobile phone).

The first one is from 1987, called Party Piece, containing large collage elements and made mostly with oil paint on paper.

The next, from 2005, Twin Studies 1, is oil on canvas, a diptych, the two canvases joined together forming a painting 3′ tall and 6′ wide.

It never occurred to me at the time, although it was a commission, that the horizontal bands are appropriate for its sleepy setting.

New drawing

High Light 2, May 2012, Highlighter pen on folded paper, 6″x6″

Was it just me that imagined a nude rowing a boat (new drawing, nude rowing)?

Yesterday it was a drawing (?) that may have been sculpture. Today, surely it is sculpture.

Or maybe a greetings card, or origami?

I would like to see this about 12′ x 12′, can you get sheets of paper that big?

Photography is literally “drawing with light”, so what is it when you “draw” a line by folding the paper, maybe it’s sculpture?

?

I feel drawn to draw comparisons between these drawings…

I have in mind that there are two drawings here, each made up of three smaller ones. In both of them I think I am combining “drawing as dividing a space” and “drawing as constructing in space”.

It is the fluorescent colours and their transparency the I am enjoying in these new weave drawing/paintings (who knows what they are?). I sometimes have the impression that they are backlit. They are at least highlit, in that they seem to have so much light.

High Light, April 2012, Ink on paper, 6"x6"