THE SELF-ISOLATION RESIDENCY 17th FEBRUARY 2021: DAY 325

New painting: "Fateful Traveller." Oil paint on canvas, 610 x 610 mm

19, 20, 21: Finding a reason to paint, in search of the sublime. 17th February 2021.
Part 32: 'Interpretation, abstraction, illusion.
An Unsettling Appeal: Insearch of the Sublime.

Portrait, still-life, landscape? Essentially there are only three forms of figurative painting, anything else that anyone may try to call a separate category, such as religious painting, is just a subdivision or muddling of these prime classifications.  This characterisation of criteria is however not my main reason for approaching these definitions at this time, what really interests me is the means by which two of them also operate as descriptions of the geometry of image making and what, if anything, this alludes to about the third form which does not appear to have the same systematic function?

All painting is a form of encounter, and it can be argued that this is particularly true of figurative painting. The observer interacts with the stimulus provided by the painting, firstly as an object; we sense that we have a foreknowledge of what a painting is and may do, even as we approach it from a distance, followed by the stimulus of the image in holds.

Consider a journey from where you presently located to the Louvre in order to view our old friend La Gioconda, the anticipation of that meeting is already part of the experience even before we arrive, perhaps even before we depart. We finally arrive and then we see if across a crowded gallery the object of our intent, its size, its shape, its form, even though, from this distance, we cannot as yet decern any details of the Lady described therein. This entity that is the painting has already begun to arouse us, even, potentially, at a great distance. We may think that we know the depiction, however, until we genuinely come into the presence of the image in such a way as to be able to ignore the frame and truly focus on the details therein contained, we are only thus far responding to the objecthood of the painting.

And so, to meet with the Lady herself, and our, pseudo, rendezvous…

To be continued…