Contents
Reflections
More a making-heavy project this time around. I found myself reading a few words in the linked texts, then wandering off to my studio to push paint around. Balance, I suppose, is needed. I will get back to the readings, and research, and make sure I get through them thoroughly.
My iterations on the still lives that arose from the exercises in this project were quite enjoyable. Each brought with it a bit of realization, and in particular how I could use stronger colour in my work and that “how” is “patience”. Something I’m generally not good at, but once I had a dry, stable painting that laid out the value structure I wanted, then it was easy to re-interpret that into brilliant chroma. But any time I try to build straight into strong colour, I get mud. I can’t work through the value structure on the canvas — lesson learned: patience and structure are needed.
A detail I love in the third painting is the two mirrors. The colours of their “background” are contrasting warm/cool, which shows how they are tilted slightly differently to each other.
Regarding readings and their impact
Its interesting to see the readings — what I got through of them — still hitting what I’m doing. Red/Orange for shadows echoing Cangiante Colour, Itten’s colour extensions all over that same work.
Weirdly tangential, but systematic recording of work (Alber’s Homages to the square, Richter’s colour charts, Chevreul’s colour wheel) echoed in my studio memory system. Alber’s squares are a knowledge graph, but represented as visual artifacts with visual relationship rules (reference: Tech Diversions in Personal Practice)
Then Alber’s simultaneous contrast “discovered” again by my pushing paper strips around on coloured backgrounds.
I’m a very intuitive maker. But clearly even when I can’t focus on readings, they’re making their way in. What I need to work on is finding a bit of balance between the intuitive and the intentional. Being able to recognize what I’m doing in the moment will help me harness it and become better for it
Other reflections
I was reflecting on feedback my Tutor provided to my last project. Specifically referring to my interpretation of the shaped support exercise, and how the result sort of looks like a landscape within a person. Later that day, the following painting came across my social feeds. Its an interesting visual juxtaposition, that strongly implies an inner-life vs an exterior-life. Maybe I’m projecting my cold grey corporate existence, vs my personal life. Something more to ponder
Jonathan Kent Adams works located here
Despite my brain’s refusal to follow the written word in much depth this project, I did spent a good chunk of time flipping through art books. I’ve amassed quite a collection over the last couple years, as I’ve picked up exhibition catalogues or other sources of visual inspiration. I pulled out a retrospective on Marina Apollonio, held at the Peggy Guggenheim, which I had the opportunity to see in person back in 2024. I was also flipping through Taschen’s big Rembrandt book which I use to weigh down my house to prevent it from flying away in the wind.
Also a big month for spending time in galleries. I was scaring the guards by getting real up close to look at brushwork, and see how specific effects were achieved.
The woman’s chemise caught my attention. The heavy under layer of impasto, with other paint brushed and smeared on top. It creates an fascinating contrast against the smooth tones of the model’s face and neck.
The model’s eyes are barely modelled. A few quick strokes of thin colour, on the underlayer of paint. The woman’s skin is then modelled as a layer above, thick and bright it leaps forward. Its extremely effective in person.
Reading & Research
Assigned
- Johannes Itten (1970) ‘Color Contrasts: Hue to Extention’ In: The Elements of Color. (s.l.): John Wiley & Sons, Inc. pp.32–64.
Self-Directed
- Georg Simmel (1950) ‘The Metroplis and Mental Life’ Translated by Kurt Wolff In: The Sociology of Georg Simmel. New York: Free Press. pp.409–424.
- Marianna Gelussi (2024) Marina Apollonio: Beyond the Circle. (s.l.): Peggy Guggenheim Collection
- Volker Manuth (s.d.) Rembrant. the Complete Works. (XXL Edition) (s.l.): (s.n.).
Exercises
Exercise 1: Greys
I began with Prussian Blue and Raw Umber as they roughly are opposite sides of the colour wheel, and can make some interesting green grays. Following a discussion with my tutor on Morandi, I decided to start repeating the exercise and adjusting one pigment at a time. This lead to the second version, using Prussian Blue and Cadmium Orange.
This latter combination struck me as very interesting from a portraiture perspective: the cold/warm combo creates interesting possibilities for flesh tones and shadows. I tested this out as part of my Personal Practice (below) as I’m exploring a possible book-like painting artifact.
Exercise 2: Discord, Pattern, Repetition
I chose some transparent colours, and I think that may have been a mistake
I tried a variety of combinations, but didn’t really ‘get’ what was I was seeing until I took one of them and placed them on top of a series coloured papers.
Depending on the paper, the yellow/teal intersections started to leap forward, or the reds became more intense. The purple and brown backgrounds seemed to drive a “downward” emotional intensity.
An interesting exercise. I don’t tend to work with large quantities chromatically strong colours, as I just don’t know what to do with them. But I do like using them in my highlights (when I remember to) as it adds a lot of visual interest.
anyway, something more for me to think about.
Exercise 3:
I like the secondaries structure here. Purple/Yellow slightly off from Itten’s “harmonic” ratio; yellow/orange/red acting against the cool blue/purple.
The greens of the fabric are a bit ‘off’ from this, but I like them.
I think the brushwork I did this time also presents the fabric better, than on earlier attempts.
I struggled with this one, until I decided to paint overtop of the prussian blue/cadmium orange still life from Greys.
Suddenly I could play with colour, where before I was getting mud. Perhaps I needed the other failures to “unlock” my brain somehow, and create this?
This painting is in brillian summer, and glows with warmth. I wanted to play along a yellow/purple axis, but let myself stray into other secondaries as I built atop the existing foundation.
The perfume bottle looks like gold, or copper, now. Shining and brilliant.
Perhaps it was my looking at Matisse this morning, that pulled me into unreal colour? In particular the Red Studio. I knew I wanted intense warmth in my attempt, and it must have come from here.
Personal Practice
With a box of paintings shipped out the door to a gallery, I found a heavy gravitational pull to work on filling the inventory back up. A good problem to have. A better problem to have: the paintings sold before the gallery’s show opened. That is a nice feather.
Looking back through my various units, April/May is always very scattered for me. I reach out in many directions and try my hand at a ton of stuff. The rest of the year seems to be about consolidation. And interesting pattern.
On Naming and other Musings
I find I like the poetry of naming a work, but this also slows me down. I need to stumble on just the right pattern of sounds, phrases, etc.
And so I collect a file of them when I find them, even if they have no current work to be assigned to.
This week I added “Heart with the sound of its own unmaking”, patterned from Morris’ “Box with the sound of its own making”. Morris’ work is accompanied by audio of sawing/sanding and such.
But hearts break in silence, in moments of realization before reaction. And I think that lends very well to painting, and my slowly evolving “Strange Intimacies” series.
Musing on naming leads right into…
Another Theseus, again. Today
Finally settled on “Another Theseus, again. Today”. Took a bit of back and forth with myself to be happy with the name.
I was thinking of mythology, and in particular how Greek myths always tend to go wrong for the people involved.
Anyway, where the painting now stands. I’ve spent a lot of time layering the shadows in the back wall. And I can see, from this photo, I need to adjust some things in the departing individual — their foot is huge. Easily fixed, later — perhaps I’ll save that for Project 4: Redaction. This painting is all about paint-and-pull-back, then glaze to darken, and lift up. over and over.
I find PJ (the model) intimidating in this pose, so I’m slowly painting in a spiral, inwards towards him. Until all that is left is building the courage to finish his presence here.
Books of Paintings
Over the last couple years, I’ve kept cycling back to the idea of a painted book.
- My first “final project” studying this degree was a book of watercolour paintings that I embroidered.
- I returned to the book idea during the end of Level 1, as I considered painting covid masks on clear acrylic pages that could be pulled back to reveal a mirror.
- And now I’m thinking of some form of book artifact where each page hosts a painting (lightly affixed, removable) that are all related on a theme. Maybe Morandi-like still lives, maybe portraits, not sure yet.
I’ve been testing materials for that last idea. I’m currently considering linen bonded to thin acrylic to keep them light, but sturdy. Prior to that I tried linen on masonite (too heavy) and linen on paper (too flimsy).
The painting on the right is the linen-on-paper test, 8×8″. Prussian Blue and Cadmium Orange (+white).
Returning to Odalisque
Traveling to my childhood home for Easter meant many hours sitting on trains. As always, my sketchbook comes with me and I ended up adapting poses and compositions found while web-surfing into the sketching on the right.
I like the idea of breaking the ‘gaze’ of the viewer. Here, the model ignores the viewer, and has full attention on the painter in the background. The painter regards either the painting or the model (haven’t decided yet).
I’ve begun doodling in my paint sketch. I decided I wanted a moody, dark space so I (once again) turned to Prussian Blue and Raw Umber creating this murky green. Lots of thinner has created an interesting visual texture, that I had fun subtracting from with a rag.
I also spent a chunk of time looking at Ferdinand Hodler, and his Night painting. Perhaps not directly applicable, but it just struck me as hilarious — the expression on the middle guy is masterful and horrified and utterly hilarious.
Technical Diversions: Studio Memory
Its interesting having a wide range of professional skills, particularly when it comes to the hard technical skills. I’ve been finding I wanted a more robust way to interact with my past notes, links, and post-its, so I started designing a platform on my home machine. Build on top of the CIDOC CRM ontology for cultural heritage, the system forms a “Knowledge Graph”. A knowledge graph is a mechanism of connecting “nouns” to other “nouns” via their relationships. ie, Gusave Caillebotte( Noun: Artist) painted (relationship) The Floor Scrapers(Noun: Artwork). Could be artist-to-artist connections, events, places, and so forth.
Having this web of connected to my own practice, musings and works, allows me to find connections I hadn’t been conscious of, keep notes and otherwise leverage data more formally within my activities. Of particular use is tracking which of my works remain available, or if sold when/where/to-whom. Then I can just run queries against this to rewrite my “available works” extracts, and so forth, or track sales prices through time.
Of course, eventually that becomes complicated to manage. My graph currently contains ~500 nodes, and ~10k relationships. Manually managing that became untenable, so I started building out a user interface.
It only works for me, right now, as it is entirely local. But the Entrepreneur brain is asking me if this is something others might find useful.
