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.  

 

Bricks in pastel

A few minutes to spare and needing to draw something..anything. As we were tidying up we found some bricks, which found their way onto my table, so they were it. I thought I'd play with my oil pastels and this is the result:

I'm pleased with how it's gone, although the top brick looks a little like it's got a long red nose!
I was trying to follow the suggestions of Susan Sarback in 'Capturing Radiant Colour in Oils' - blocking in planes of colour, then modifying them to relate to each other, varying them across the surface. I think the lucky coincidence of the turquoise table being complementary to the yellow ochre bricks has something to do with the whole thing too....must work more on colour theory......

Went to see the Watteau drawings at the Royal Academy this afternoon.

Such economy of line to evoke posture and clothing. They're quite small too, so how did he make such fine work with chalk? Interesting to read how he used firstly red chalk, then later added black and white chalk.The results seem to produce blues and greens as well...not sure how.

Also at the RA was a small room of  Frank Bowling works on paper.

How colourful is that? And he works in acrylics. Interesting textures from gel combed out from the centre line. Indeed all these works had a strong central line.

Art in Islington

As I'll miss Ray Atkins' show at ArtSpace Gallery in Islington next month, I wanted to go to the current exhibition to see what was there. And this is what I found (below). As usual, it is huge, and animated by such lively strokes of colour. I never cease to be enthralled and inspired by Ray's work.

The show of his work opens on 24 June. For a taster, the catalogue is reproduced online here, but his work really needs to be seen in the flesh. Photos just cannot do it justice.

In the same gallery there was also a painting by George Rowlett - paint so thick it looked like icecream, and I wanted to lick the colours.  This is titled Poppy Fields in Wind and Rain 2007

Then down the road at the Parasol Unit was Yinka Shonibare's  installation Jardin d’amour, originally shown in Paris. We walked through maze-like passages created by high, ivy covered trellis panels to find clearings with headless figures in scenes straight out of Fragonard or Watteau, dressed in elaborate costumes unsing Shonibare's trademark textiles, right down to ribbons on their shoes. It was beautiful, thought-provoking, exquisitely crafted work.

And somehow the fact that they didn't have heads only made you appreciate how much the gestures of the bodies made the story. Heads, and therefore facial features,would have been a distraction.

Chelsea Art Fair

Thanks to to Helen for the suggestion and Helen's Mum for tickets to this show last weekend, selling works for people to take home and live with. So there were many fewer conceptual pieces than in many London galleries, and quite a lot of rather mundane portraits and landscapes and still lives, but among them a few artists I wanted to note:

Ellen Bell: thoughtful and delicately created pieces using strips of printed paper from specific books or with specific words. Often they wrinkle or curl up from the surface giving a further texture to the piece. 

 

Heidi Koenig for stunning colour. Her website has other different tones, but how could I resist the red one?

Next to Heidi Koenig was Byron Gin - layers of paint stripped back and peeled away.

Andrew Hood for figures and landscapes that are kind of there, kind of melting into a lively ground of layers and splatters of paint.

I laughed out loud at this: Lisa Swerling's Glass Cathedral series, boxes full of sparkle and miniscule figures. The message above this one reads: 'The World is a scary place, but I have Armbands'. Fabulous - gives us all hope!

Window No 1 evolves

My last post had the ghost tree meshed with a misty ground. But they were too much the same.

Strips of paper torn and glued over the tree shape gave a smoother form to the tree, and differentiated it from the rest of the woven support. Next I tried burnt siena on it, with some ultramarine and burnt umber to cool it down:

But now it's too dark, and still orangy hints creeping through, so lets go grey instead:

And that's where it stays...for the moment.