How I Finish A Painting and Some Thoughts on 'Perfection.'

'B Went Missing in the Land,' acrylic and ink on canvas, 70 x 50 cm (2018)

The posted painting is one that caused me so many problems! Some of my recent paintings have focused on creating a lot more open and 'quiet' areas but this one evolved quite intensely. In the end I decided to let it have its own direction and to consider it carefully for some weeks before making changes. Then a few days later a curator came to my flat to select work for a London exhibition and this painting was one of the works she liked! It just shows that artists are not always the best judges of their works. (She also chose another painting which I had been unsure whether to include in the selection! See below.)

'Landscape Poem,' acrylic and oil on canvas, 100 x 100 cm (2016)

The paintings were exhibited in the offices and foyer of Gordon Dadds solicitors in Covent Garden, London, and the Private View was very well attended on Thursday evening with wine and canapes. The whole of the fifth floor was set out like a gallery and looked fabulous! (I will be posting photos of this event soon.) There was also a very beautiful catalogue.

Seeing your artwork on show always gives a new perspective on the work. It rarely looks the same as it does in a cluttered studio and I was pleased that it actually looked better. My paintings were set out in a white office with plenty of space between each one and the curator told me there had been very good feedback. I always find that a London audience has a wider knowledge of art styles and can appreciate the more abstract kind of artwork. I spent some 3 hours speaking about my paintings and my inspiration to people who really connected with my descriptions. I also took inspiration from a view of windows seen out of the large office window; different shapes and colours seen within each window.

On the way home on the train I was thinking a lot about my next body of work and about the idea of perfection. I used to strive for perfection but rarely does any painting ever meet my idea of this, or perhaps we fix our ideas too much on one specific route or how something 'should' look. Some paintings can seem 'complete' in their own terms; perhaps this is a kind of perfection. Most times there is a niggling part of the painting which causes endless re-consideration! As I often tend to get too obsessive about 'wrong' areas, it helps to start something new because this releases my fears and I feel unblocked. There is nothing worse creatively than feeling blocked.

'China Poem,' acrylic and ink on canvas, 70 x 50 cm (2016)

'Finish' is another concept which can block you. How do we know when a painting is finished? I can know with some certainty when the painting is figurative because inadequate areas will scream out for attention. But with abstract, which for me means expanding and exploring the language of paint, it is not always so certain or signposted clearly. Perhaps the best thing is not to think of these things, just to paint and let time be the judge. My husband has stopped me ruining many paintings by telling me to lay it aside for a while.

In An Ideal World Artists Could Paint Every Day

In an ideal world, artists would paint as many days and hours as they wished or needed. Most painters I know complain that they don't get the chance to paint as much as they need in order to push their ideas forward and I feel the same. I would love to paint 7 days a week but life obligations inevitably reduce those precious hours. There are various Admin jobs that you have to keep on top of: website updating, social media posting, applications, noting deadlines in my diary, etc. I hoped today to get the chance to start some new, vertical canvases but instead found myself bogged down in these Admin jobs!

Paintings that are going to London, to show in the offices and foyer of Gordon Dadd solicitors (Covent Garden) on Thursday next week had to be prepared and bubble wrapped. Frequently this means tidying edges of canvases, attaching D-rings and making sure the work is signed. Then I spent ages updating social media, my website, and sanding stretchers prior to stretching canvas. 

For this post I've added some photos of myself painting in my studio in Daugavpils, Latvia, during the Mark Rothko Plein Air residency in 2012. It was one of my happiest times because I had a really large studio and could spread out the canvases and work as I prefer; bouncing between canvases and letting each one send ideas across to the others.

I think the truth is that no matter how many hours we paint, we will always want more, and the Admin times can also be good for thinking about what comes next. While considering a new body of work, I have also been busy finding a Paris hotel for the forthcoming Salon Des Beaux Arts (Caroussel du Louvre) which I am taking part in (December 13-16th). Having booked both hotel and flight from Gatwick, I'm beginning to feel really excited. My hotel is near the Louvre and I can't wait to see all the marvellous artworks that will be on display.

Finally My Painting Is On Its Way to China!

Me with my painting just before packing

An hour ago a local transport company collected my painting for the first part of its journey to Shenzhen, China from the UK. I had been waiting a few days in mounting anxiety as the deadline was approaching and delays suddenly appeared. I am posting a few pictures of me with the painting, the packing, and the painting in the van.

We packed it late on Tuesday night, while CNN was showing the US midterm elections! It took about 5 hours, with metres of bubble wrap and foam padding, and the packing time was due to having to make sure the canvas fitted safely in the box with no chance of warping or rubbing in the case it was dropped, laid on its side or banged against by other cargo. In a very short time the carpet was speckled with pieces of foam as my husband cut sections to border the frame.

My husband is a much better packer than I am! Luckily I have a collection of packing materials and he chose which were the best for the job.

The box is very heavy and we could barely get it up the 10 stairs today and into the van!

In the van

Then I heard that it will go to Germany and from there on to Shenzhen, though I don't know if it will go by air or train.

I watched it leave!

The transport costs for the return journey are paid by the organisers of the event.

The Dafen International Oil Painting Biennale will be held at the Red Cube Public gallery in Shenzhen (November 30th-December 20th) then the Dafen Art Museum (December 26th- February 20th 2019).

I feel a sense of achievement about this selection because I began painting this canvas only 6 days after my mother's funeral on March 9th this year, and 5 days after I had surgery to remove a carcinoma from under my right eye (the day after my mother's funeral)! I even went to the doctor the day before I stretched the canvas to see if it would be ok for me to be stressing my incision by bending over a stretcher frame (you are meant to not exert pressure on the wound).

The painting is called 'Social Integration, Peace and Opening Up,' oil and acrylic on canvas, 100 x 140 cm

New Work, Tweaking Work, Abstract versus Figurative

'Untitled,' acrylic on canvas, 120 x 160 cm

These new paintings are from this week. The first is a canvas I'm painting for a potential exhibition submission and there is a deadline of mid November so as soon as I stop writing I'm getting back to work on this! It is large, 120 x 160 cm, and I'm inventing the elements as I paint, with one thing leading to another. 

Figurative painting makes you look at edges and transitions of colour in a different way to abstraction and it is challenging (something I welcome), and impacts on my abstract landscapes in a positive way. If I had to define what the main difference is, I would say that working with figuration helps to make the 'drawing' elements in the abstracts more definite and focused. I don't define drawing necessarily as putting a line around a shape and filling in with colour; drawing, for me, is the way edges meet and relate to space, shapes, and this includes the transitions of colour and mark making.

'Moon Web,' acrylic and ink on canvas, 40 x 40 cm

'Moon Web' is a painting which also seemed to evolve by itself. I became interested in the moon as a painting subject recently because I love night imagery and often watch the moon and moonlit sky at night. I also liked the idea of webs being a creative factor and they relate to how I see myself as an artist: spinning webs all the time and trapping ideas. 

'Arriving Home,' oil on board, 60 x 45 cm

This is a work in progress from a few years ago. I often go back to older paintings and tweak them and in this one I just want to soften the 'white tree trunk' on the left and sort out a small area in the middle front. Often I find that time needs to pass in order to 'see' what is relevant in a painting and what needs to be tweaked or changed. Some paintings shout out that they are finished, many need that extra time to consider them - though not always years.

'B Went Missing in the Land,' acrylic and ink on canvas, 50 x 70 cm

As well as these works there's a canvas that I started yesterday which is driving me mad! The colours are in reality much brighter (iPad photos tend not to be too accurate). Hubby says 'leave it alone' but when I am frustrated by a painting it generally means that I need to do more work on it. Sometimes the extra pushing at a painting really improves it, sometimes the whole painting gets lost, but it always improves your general practice to push for more. The thing is to never be afraid to want more.

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.)

Fiona's Paintings 2

Thoughts on Painting and Some Tips

'Three Escape the Deluge,' acrylic and ink on canvas, 70 x 50 cm (2018)

As an artist sometimes it is interesting to stand back and analyse the source of your painting ideas and stylistic changes. The painting posted above has a different approach to some of my recent work in that it has included figures and is quite detailed. I was not sure about it but my husband persuaded me not to paint over it. I did not plan this painting but I believe that this theme was influenced by my large Dafen Biennale painting (posted on 20th July)), which explored thin washes of paint against texture and pattern, with figures in a landscape setting. I think that each painting an artist makes filters in to new work, even if in minor ways. Language is always referencing itself in unknown and unconscious ways.

'Daytime in a Jug,' acrylic and ink on canvas, 50 x 50 cm (2018)

While still involved in abstraction and finding forms for landscape that can be translated in to an abstract language, (as above) the figurative paintings are inspiring a different way of looking at abstraction. Painting is certainly not easy because while allowing the image to evolve within its own terms, I am also aware of what I am seeking from paint and in particular the use of mark making and calligraphy. It is like a spiral, sifting around and around through various competing elements until the ones with 'meaning' take a paint form.

My work also involves at times an autobiographical element. I paint pictures that may reference an event in my life, or thoughts about places and people, or a News item. I learned not to worry if these ideas enter some paintings unbidden - or if they seem to take me away from my 'core' vision. The more I paint, the more I believe that you should not censor ideas; just let them appear and keep working. Ideas are always evolving and for most artists there is a constant looking back at past paintings and extending aspects from those in new work. I also believe that working in a figurative way helps to strengthen your awareness of elements such as drawing and colour when it comes to abstraction. 

This painting, from two years ago, is about Migrants. Here the colour is much thicker and mostly oil paint. Working with thin paint was a result of working with ink on rice paper after my trips to China, but I also like the dialogue with thick paint as part of my process.

'Migrants,' oil on canvas, 70 x 50 cm (2016)