Sometimes it seems my painting style has the consistency of tutti frutti ice cream.
People often step inside my studio for the first time and comment on the eclectic nature of the pictures.
I think there is an expectation that a painter must have a particular style that they are known for. Something that makes them stand out. For me that would pose an ethical problem; which is that I cannot be authentic and also stick to a prescribed way of doing things all the time.
Each painting is an adventure; a journey. I can plan it on a map in my head but the reality is often as different when I set out on it as any actual new hike is from the one you imagined when setting out.
It’s also about the changing inner landscape; mood, energy level, current interests and so on. Pablo Picasso is well known for going through different phases in his creativity, moving from figurative work through a blue period and towards cubism.
If you follow my work over time you can see that I also have phases in the way I respond, but unlike Picasso these cycle round constantly rather than being one long episode that gradually morphs into another. Much of the time I work in a realistic but slightly impressionistic way, carefully planning the piece and taking days or even weeks over it. However, I also do a lot of quick sketching, and especially enjoy quickly jotting down observations when travelling.
I love studying work by other artists and was taken to every kind of art exhibition as a young child, which makes me often want to try getting into the skin of that artist and using techniques they practise. I just love the sense of adventure and fun you get experimenting without knowing quite how it will turn out. As a teacher (of various subjects!) I am always on the look out for ideas I can share with students, aware that everyone has a different way of doing things and will be more inspired by certain techniques than others.
I like to set a rule for a series of paintings. Last year I was re-creating the sketchbook of Emily Bronte and all the pictures in that book had to be done using materials she might have used and images that would have meant something to her. This year I am on a mission to create a series of paintings describing the local Hampshire countryside during this long, hot summer. I have restricted myself to square canvases of 50 x 50 cm and 60 x 60 in size to create uniformity and now I find myself pushing the boundaries of these rules a bit by listening to the song of my muse.
Today’s painting was different to any that had gone before. I knew I wanted to do a landscape of the golden brown farmland nearby and that I was more interested in simplicity of form than in trying to recreate a field in detail. I also wanted to work quickly and boldly as I was tired but still keen to press on and make progress, with a deadline in sight. Recently I had seen that working quickly and boldly does not necessarily mean you create worse paintings than if you plan meticulously and I wanted to ignore my reservations and paint without anxiety; just a calm curiosity.
I thought people might be interested in the methodology of this one, so here is a blow by blow description of the process.
To start with I painted the whole square a glowing ember colour; a hot orange that would show through the gaps and transparency of thin paint like lava peeping through the cracks. This painting was all about searing heat; the 30 degrees plus days when people stay indoors and the sun beats mercilessly down on the fields.
Then I had to decide where to place the horizon line. How much would be sky? Would I obey the rule of thirds? If so, which part of the trees would be counted as the interesting focal point? It was important to me that the line should be rough and not too smooth.
Next I mixed up a combination of cerulean blue, turquoise and white for the sky, with a gradation from dark at the top to lighter lower down. It took two coats to get a solid enough colour.
I often find it tricky doing clouds in acrylic. Today, in a playful mood, I grabbed a tissue, scrunched it up and rubbed it randomly, adding extra layers to build up mass.
The trees gave me some tricky moments as usually I like to do the dark colours first and lighter ones afterwards. In this case I had to work dark over light so that the wispy clouds behind them looked natural. I tried doing them with a rough brush, a palette knife, scraping lines into them and washing over them with a finger dipped in thin paint. The last thing I wanted was for them to look carefully rendered, but at the same time I wanted them to appear to be alive!
The field was actually full of sunflowers, but I didn’t particularly want to pin it down to any specific crop as it was more about the season than the precise plant. I really enjoyed doing this bit. My aim was to build up texture with different layers of colour. I squidged out horizontal, blobby lines of paint and then used a piece of cardboard from the cover of an old sketchbook to drag the paint down. It created the sense of horizontal lines, changes of colour and light and thin vertical lines as if they were stems of crops. Very exciting, because I never knew quite how the effect would turn out and just had to work from instinct.
Although I did not want to try and paint sunflowers, I did do a nod in their direction by using a cardboard tube dipped in paint to create some abstract circles in the foreground and some smaller ones further back using a rolled up piece of paper and even my fingers.
I made some smeary brush strokes and partially rubbed them out with a tissue to suggest the long grass at the field border and dipped a cotton bud in pink and scarlet paint to suggest wildflowers (campion, rosebay willowherb and poppies) and then took the whole lot outside, covered the sky and flicked white paint over the scene to suggest white flowers and give it more movement.
And then it was finished. I looked at it in surprise. The thing I had created was not my ‘usual’ thing, but it said what I had set out to say and in making it I had learned more about how paint works and it had taught me a few things.
Interestingly it was really hard to capture it in a photo. Some paintings look much better on a phone photo, but this one really didn’t. My iphone couldn’t pick up the turquoise colour of the sky and it failed totally to show the pink and red wildflowers. However, when I printed it out it surprised me by looking rather good; like a front cover illustration for a book. I felt rather pleased and proud of my unexpected newbie.