THE SELF-ISOLATION RESIDENCY 7TH JANUARY 2021: DAY 284

New work in progress: 
Working title: "Turn around, The Summoner's Tale".
Oil paint on canvas, 400 x 400 mm

19, 20, 21: Finding a reason to paint, in search of the sublime. 7 th January 2021.
Part 5

There’s a little know fact in the history of 20th century painting; did you know that Jackson Pollock was known as ‘the cowboy painter’? Now Pollock liked this nickname and did a lot to cultivate the image as the tough, hard-drinking, misogynist artist. But that isn’t actually where the nickname springs from. Pollock was known as the cowboy painter because he painted cowboys. Now you may think to yourself ‘I’ve seen Jackson Pollock’s paintings, they are nonrepresentational, there are no cowboy in them’. And on the surface that is true, literally on the surface; what is underneath is something quite different. Certainly, in the early days of Pollocks nonrepresentational work he actually had great difficulty making the initial marks on the canvas that work give him a starting point for his paintings, he needed some marks which he could ‘abstract’. As you’ve probably already guessed the ideas and images that he used to make the initial marks he needed were studies of cowboy, horses and waggons, these were then worked and reworked into abstract marks until the original images completely disappeared. And so in this way, nonrepresentational suddenly becomes abstract.

To be continued…