How I start a Painting; A Painting in Progress

'The Sound of the Waterfall Woke Me,' acrylic on canvas, 80 x 60 - STAGE ONE.

One of my ongoing themes is Waterfalls. I am painting this theme using several processes and with a focus on colour.  I have always liked tall vertical canvas shapes (as well as long horizontals) which allow you to explore the possibilities of conveying a sense of movement through colour and shapes. With this particular canvas I began with the 'drips' of water running down the canvas and a neutral, dark brown background. I built shapes in to the rivulets all the time thinking about sounds of water and water falling across rocks. 

My composition was also based on the unexpected sight of the waterfalls running down the mountains in Beigou, China, when I arrived sleepily early one morning in August 2016. I set myself a task: to combine verticals, shapes, movement and mark making with the starting point of this memory.

STAGE TWO

The painting, (stage two above) threw up lots of questions about how to accommodate these disparate shapes and colours into an image with both space and movement. I have to think about what kind of space I want and where my priorities lie; do I want abstraction and how much, or am I going to include landscape forms? I realised as I painted today that I want a layering of abstraction and calligraphy with a suggestion of place, though place is not so important as the image working correctly in its own terms. I had to add some yellow-green at the top, to open out the top of the canvas and give an illusion of 'sky,' and spatially it does help. I also set back some of the calligraphic marks, erased some, and simplified some of the edges of the painting. However, it is still bothering me and will need quite a bit more work to sort both the space and the composition which I feel does not yet gel. Parts may need lightening or erasing; I may need to take out parts I like in order to create that marriage of colour, calligraphy and abstraction. 

Some parts in stage one may even need to be re-established in stage two - which is why it is good to have photos of previous stages! (I'm thinking especially of the crimson colour on the middle right side of the painting which seems to be necessary now.)

Questions which are on my mind: how far do I want to flatten the space and simplify certain abstract elements? Do I need to darken or lighten colours? Do I need to focus so much on the illustrational, rock-like elements or are they just holding up the composition? (Though some darks seem to be needed). Could I express the idea of the waterfall in a simpler way?

I chose to post a painting that I'm having problems with because often we tend to see only finished work which makes the artist's job looks as if there was no wrestling with the image when the truth is that no artist finds resolution easy. Also, I wanted to show how a painting at a difficult stage with suggestions of how it might proceed. Many of my artist friends also take their paintings through several stages and my best work often comes out of the 'mess' and doubts.  

To be continued!

An Outline of My Painting Process

'Feeling My Way Through the Land,' acrylic and ink on canvas, 100 x 80 cm

Before I begin a really large (120 x 160 cm) canvas I have been working on several medium sized paintings as a kind of preparation for working on a larger arena. I also wanted to explore some landscape elements I may use in the large painting which will be submitted to an international exhibition when finished. (Not a lot of pressure, then!)

The two medium sized canvases I am posting show how I often approach my series of landscape 'poems' from slightly different angles. The first, 'Feeling My Way Through the Landscape' was evaluated during frequent short breaks.  After the initial calligraphy I took time to think about each area before making changes. Some areas of detail remained untouched, some were painted over so that the lovely pale brown under-painting shone through. I wanted that base colour to have an emotional impact and for my mark-making to be like my emotional footsteps across an emerging landscape. My landscape experiences are so important to me that often my paintings are inspired by these. I like the mark making and colours to be almost like 'tracks' across the land.

'The Pathway to Forever,' acrylic and ink on canvas, 100 x 80 cm

This second painting takes a more spontaneous approach because I let the paint language dictate the calligraphic brush strokes and colours, with a lot of layering of fluid colour. (Once again, the photograph is not completely accurate; the blue is more of a grey-ultramarine blue). This reflects my approach when working with ink on rice paper which requires a confident touch because you cannot alter marks once they have been painted - other than tearing up the picture and making a collage (an idea for the future). I like the way that marks and colours can suggest a place or world, and as the 'landscape' emerges I take short breaks to evaluate what is going on, while wanting to retain the spontaneity of mark making. This can mean erasing parts completely, altering the intensity of a colour, or viewing the painting from another side. Sometimes I even prefer it from another side and will continue working it that way around.

The 'spontaneous process' paintings tend to be worked on fairly rapidly and with a lot of destruction and over-painting. Then they need a period of being left alone while I think about them. One recent painting, 'Three Escape the Deluge,' (which I am posting again) was left for a week, pending destruction, but then I decided it was actually finished. Artists are not always the best judges of their work in the immediate aftermath, so leaving a work alone allows the emotional censorship to fade and the chance to see what is actually happening in the painting.

'Three Escape the Deluge,' acrylic and ink on canvas, 50 x 70 cm

Painting really requires much testing of colours and shapes  and making mistakes, especially when your imagery often emerges through processes and letting the paint speak. Painting from the landscape or a figure has an exact set of references that can give a skeletal framework to attach colours to but working in an abstract way requires an intense attention to edges, shapes, colour transitions, colour relationships and also drawing. I am not saying that figurative work is more easy, just that you are starting with something to work from whereas working from the process of putting things down and 'trapping' an image takes some time and a lot of awareness of potentiality. You have to be open enough to follow where certain clues might lead you.

However, I also like to start from a visual memory and the final painting I am posting was inspired by a recent summer evening in the park in Tunbridge Wells (Kent, UK) watching a music festival with my husband. We sat up on a hillside with the moon rising to the side. There was some Lavender nearby. So my skeletal references were: moonlight, the full moon, lavender (purple), hazy shapes of trees, the glow the moon cast across the slightly cloudy sky. Painting that moon was a big challenge and I must have changed its colour, shape and position at least 12 times!

'Lavender Moon,' acrylic and ink on canvas, 50 x 60 cm

Once my large canvas is stretched I will post images of it as it progresses.

(Afternote: For my previous post I added a slideshow of some of my artwork on YouTube. It is not the best video as the colours did not translate well.)