Ray Atkins at Art Space Gallery

Ray has a show on at the Art Space Gallery in Islington until 22 July. Do go!

Having got to know Ray, and his work, over the last couple of years, I still marvel at his talent. With almost random marks of colour, he builds a complex layering of paint that up close looks lively and free and completely abstract. But step back and suddenly you are in a landscape which rises and falls, is populated with trees, meadows, paths and hillsides, all quite solid and real. And when you know the landscapes he's describing, then the sense of place is all the more tangible.

The only issue I have with the current show is that the gallery is small, and most of Ray's work is huge, and really needs to be seen from a distance. In some cases, it's just not possible to get far enough away from the works to really take them in.

Abstracting the townscape

I found this two day course held at City Lit, and thought that it would be helpful, since my art attempts often seem to want to go that way. But I really don't know what I'm doing or why...so go and find out!

The first day was spent sketching the townscape from the balcony, paying particular attention to shapes and how they overlap. Then in the afternoon we started transferring these shapes, painting them in restrictive palettes - shades of grey with hints of green/ red, and then orange/blue. Here are my efforts:

I wasn't very inspired by these paintings - the muted colours are not my cup of tea, and other than colour change, I didn't feel I was moving to abstraction. But time was short, and I was feeling a bit confused about what I was trying to achieve with these explorations.

I did become aware of how powerful neutral greys can be; any hint of colour near them is that much more vibrant. 

 Homework: to find an artist I like who abstracts townscapes.
I've found Paul Klee's Red and White Domes. I love his endless variations of colours and the atmosphere they evoke.

And Peter Joyce. His are landscapes, not townscapes, but I like the way the textures and layers of the paint take over from the forms. And yet, his website shows how closely his works relate to the photos he takes.

Second session: I worked on two paintings, inspired by these two painters: Paul Klee (watercolours) and Peter Joyce (acrylic) . Both of them using layers to build up an image.

We were encouraged to consider the repetition of shapes, angles and lines - and the effect that they have on the emotion of the work. Here are my second week paintings:

Working on an easel meant my thinned down paint started dribbling very early on, but actually I liked that! The diagonal band of purply-brown has also become too solid on drying, and therefore too dominant. I should have broken it along its length.

With the second work I was looking for texture; lines of undiluted paint applied with a palette knife, creating ridges and spots of intense colour, which would then be obscured in part by the translucent over-layers. I had wanted to scratch through the paint to under layers, but acrylic dries so quickly I didn't get there fast enough. I mixed the top layers with some PVA to reduce the opacity of the paint, and that worked well.