'On my easel' is a series of posts that I am adding to the Self-Isolation Residency Blog which will consider a current painting which is within days or sometimes hours of completion. This isn't quite the same as 'work in progress' as many of the pieces under consideration in this category may actually be complete already. These are generally going to be works which I am reflecting on for one reason or another and it is these needs for reflection which are preventing me from 'accepting' the work as complete.'

Today is a day to stand back from my current painting and reflect; so it's also a good day to delve back into other forms and thoughts.

19, 20, 21: Finding a reason to paint, in search of the sublime. 16 th January 2021.
Part 12: 'Interpretation, abstract, illusion. Describe what you actually see?.'

As history ticked forever onward market forces demanded that the call for painting moved mainly from these areas of illustration and education and more towards those of leisure and secular fields. Deities became Monarchs and subsequently Monarchs became businessmen. In Western Europe the rise of a new, affluent, middle-class, with the all-Important resource of disposable income, both helped to drive that demand for art and also raised the status of the painter in their turn so that craft-technicians became artist-philosophers.
 
To be continued…

19, 20, 21: Finding a reason to paint, in search of the sublime. 15 th January 2021.
Part 11: 'Interpretation, abstract, illusion. Describe what you actually see?.'

Historically it could be argued that the illusion of painting has almost been an attempt to trick the eye, trompe-l’oeil, of the spectator into the belief that the image was in fact physical. On the whole, I don’t subscribe to this as a general notion, although it has to be said that there have been instances when that argument may be considered apposite.

Much of the early history of painting revolves around the idea of painting as a form of education by illustration; this holds true for both the, probable, purpose behind early cave painting and it was certainly the motivation for the creation of all devotional art. Painting, and by default drawing, was developed to transmit ideas; it was for millennia the only means by which it was possible to pass any form of educational thesis onto an illiterate populous. Be these notions of where the richest hunting grounds could be exploited or as a method to impart to the masses the ways of the unwritten, or at the very least, the illegible ‘word’ to the illiterate.  

As a devotional art form used to ‘adorn’ sacred spaces it could be argued that painting did inhabit this paradigm of trompe-l’oeil in that the images were unquestionably conceived to edify the attendant flock in the teachings of their, particular, devotion. From this perspective what better way to reinforce these messages that by creating the credible appearance of a deity or spiritual leader emerging from the walls of these seminaries?
 
To be continued…

'On my easel' is a series of posts that I am adding to the Self-Isolation Residency Blog which will consider a current painting which is within days or sometimes hours of completion. This isn't quite the same as 'work in progress' as many of the pieces under consideration in this category may actually be complete already. These are generally going to be works which I am reflecting on for one reason or another and it is these needs for reflection which are preventing me from 'accepting' the work as complete.'

19, 20, 21: Finding a reason to paint, in search of the sublime. 13 th January 2021.
Part 8: 'Interpretation, abstract, illusion. Describe what you actually see?.'

This idea of the illusion of paint is something that, although obvious in hindsight, has a tendency to affect the way that the spectator appreciates a painting. Whilst a spectator considers that a painting is the actual thing being portrayed, as is demonstrated by the assertion that the painting of the Mona Lisa ‘is’ the Mona Lisa, and even if that misapprehension is at a subconscious level,  it creates a barrier as to the spectator’s method of understanding both what a painting is and also what it may have the potential to be beyond the mere surface interpretation of it being an image.

To be continued…

'On my easel' is a series of posts that I am adding to the Self-Isolation Residency Blog which will consider a current painting which is within days or sometimes hours of completion. This isn't quite the same as 'work in progress' as many of the pieces under consideration in this category may actually be complete already. These are generally going to be works which I am reflecting on for one reason or another and it is these needs for reflection which are preventing me from 'accepting' the work as complete.'

Interpretation, abstract, illusion.

When an observer gazes at a painting, be it La Giaconda of any other painting, what they are actually seeing is paint. Now that paint may well, by the skills and talent of the artist, have been arrange in such a may to form a two-dimensional illusion of a recognisable image, but at the end of the day it is still just paint.
In the above paragraph there is one really, important word, and that word is of course illusion.
 
To be continued…

19, 20, 21: Finding a reason to paint, in search of the sublime. 10 th January 2021.
Part 8: 'Describe what you actually see?.'

To further exhibit the idea of painting being its own subject matter let us once again flip the coin and consider what figurative painting actually is. I have already stated that all figurative painting is, by its very nature, abstract in that it is always the artists interpretation. This is made as a statement of fact but I do understand that to the none painter this may seem to sound more like the ‘interested’ opinion of a painter rather than a fact and so I will at this time break down this idea.
There is actually a very simple and instructive way to consider paintings that will illustrate my statement, it is a process that I have used on many occasions’ whist giving lectures to students as we stand before paintings in art galleries. In that first-hand context of viewing art, it is always an instructive exercise: I am not quite as sure that it will be so functional in this essay form, but we will try. For our example, let us return to our earlier reference, La Giaconda, The Mona Lisa. If we enter the Louvre in Paris and make our way through the bustling crowds of spectators to stand before and gaze upon that hallowed edifice I will ask you a question and I want your immediate, honest, first answer to this question: describe what you actually see?
Now if this question is answered immediately and instinctively as it should be there will be answers that differ slightly but generally they will be variations on the themes of “a woman/in a landscape/the Mona Lisa/La Giaconda”…and these answers are of course all wrong.
 
To be continued…

19, 20, 21: Finding a reason to paint, in search of the sublime. 8 th January 2021.
Part 7: 'An Idea of Scotland.'

This idea of Scotland, of landscape and of location ask the question of where are we in regards to it? As a spectator we see landscape as the backdrop against which our lives are played out. But as an observer I’d like to think that we ourselves are part of that landscape.
Dark lands, light skies.
Layers of land and veils of sky.
Without light from the skies all lands would be dark.
The solid or (and) ragged edges between the elements of land and sky is where we stand; our feet on the ground but our whole bodies in the sky.
 
To be continued…