The Self-Isolation Residency 21st April 2020: Day 23

Tonight I'm returning to my self portrait after another 2 days work on it. As I said I'm very much working on the finer details now, not necessarily something I always do, but in this painting it seems to be appropriate. I often painting in a very 'impressionistic' style, I like to make the paint work for me and I love the energy that I can impart into a painting executed in that way. However as I hope to demonstrate with the detail at the top of the painting, detail and style are really just a matter of scale and why all painting is really impressionism.

Styles of painting, or '-isms' as they are sometimes known, appeal to different parts of the audience in different ways. Some people will always favour an ultra-real, photo-realistic style of painting, this is usually because that part of the audience mistakes what painting is really about. They tend to think that high detail is a sign of high art, generally they couldn't be more wrong. If you want to own or look at an image that looks like a photograph here's a novel idea, own or look at the original photograph that the painting was based on. Photography is a perfectly good art medium and one that should be allowed to stand on its own two feet and not be copied by painters who should know better. Another part of the audience with be attracted to what we think of as an impressionistic style of painting; what we generally mean by this today is a much looser usage of paint, the artist doesn't try to achieve high detail, they literally just wants to give an 'impression' of the way light falls onto a subject or even just an idea of the image they have in mind. The term Impressionism was actually coined as an insult by the critic Louis Leroy after he viewed Monet's painting 'Impression, Sunrise'. Leroy though of the work as nothing more than a sketch executed by an unskilled 'amateur'.

I would have to say that having studied art for the last 40 years (I know, I don't look that old but I started very young!) I have come to the realisation for having looked at thousands of paintings in hundreds of galleries around the world that really all painting is impressionism. There is a recognised method of viewing paintings, especially if you are viewing them in an art gallery, and if you approach paintings in this way you will quickly come to understand what I mean. If you enter an art gallery to view a painting don't approach it immediately, when you first see the painting in question stop to look at it from a distance, 12 feet away is supposed to be the ideal distance. Study the painting from here, get an 'impression' of what is going on and what it is all about. When you think you know how the painting works walk up to in and get as close as you can, in this case the ideal distance is 12 inches away. Not study the painting from here, this time not the over all impression of the piece but the individual brush stroke that make up the piece, when you do this for the first time the chances are you will be quite shocked at exactly what painters get away with. What you thought at a distance was intricately painted details turns out  daubs and smudges, but just the right daubs and smudges.

And so to my to images tonight, yes, technically I've posted them the wrong way around, but as you've all seen the whole painting several times already I thought I'd lead with the detail. So the image at the top of the post is my 12 inches away if you like, look at how the bottle,  glass and plate are really just these daubs and smudges I've talked about and then look at how they work in the 12 feet away version below to give the desired 'impression',