Thoughts about painting

The Easter holidays means a two week break from working on my painting of my mum.  Sometimes it’s good to come back to something with fresh eyes although I would prefer to plough on with it.  I have two other paintings on the go here at home and have other work to catch up with and I have sproggies around so it’s certainly not a case of twiddling thumbs.  Anyway, yesterday whilst stuck in a queue at Lidl during the weekly trolly dash to stock up on body fuel (I’m not a foodie person), although the bonus was I did also stock up on some cheap flat paint brushes they had on offer, (brush destroyer that I am), I was giving some thought to the painting, and the last bit I’d worked on.  I remembered how I had battled with the last egg cup in the background which I seemed to spend more time focusing on and even seemed to give it a different treatment in terms of the way I painted it.  It then occurred to me that this egg cup is one of my favourites and that must be why it was slightly more pronounced even if it was a subconscious thing on my part.  This I realised is maybe what art is all about, it’s about the artist’s reality.

 

The artist is not painting a visually accurate representation but painting a part of themselves.  The painting being coloured by their associations, feelings, experiences and everything else that colours their reality.  For me this is a huge part of what art is about.  The process of painting is an attempt to express their reality, their feel in that medium.  To quote Picasso: “He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen”.  I think a lot of the time this sort of thing is quite subconscious although I have been thinking about how artists also purposely manipulate the eye around a painting.  Often for example in a portrait the focal point is in sharper focus than the surroundings which mimics the way the human eye works. 

  We really only have sharp visual focus in the central part of the eye called the fovea which is used for scrutinising detailed objects and this area has a high concentration of tightly packed cones (the colour perceiving bits) and no rods (the rods being the ones that help you see in the dark, and I don’t think I have any!).  

 

 

Surprisingly we have many millions more rods than we do cones and the area around the fovea is more designed for peripheral vision which is for seeing the broader picture and larger objects.  (I do wonder if the grainy texture that you see in the dark ,….well I do, is a result of the cones being more spaced out in amongst the rods in this area).

This play with focus in painting is referred to as lost and found edges like in these paintings for example:

Vuillard

 

Ambrose Mcevoy

Ambrose Mcevoy

 There are some interesting articles on the net of how Rembrandt used techniques for manipulating the way the eye moved over his paintings, although we don't know if this was instinctive or calculated.

http://www.livescience.com/9920-magic-rembrandt-painting-technique-revealed.html

Arty Farty Genes

Although not particularly interested in history,  I do find more recent history of family and places really appeals.  I love looking at old photographs of familiar places, I suppose things I can relate to.  I'm sure this theme will make an appearance in my artwork at some point as I love the idea of layers of time and the transient nature of life and the perception of time.  When I get the time (ha!) one of the many interesting books I am reading is 'Unlocking the mysteries of time perception" by claudia Hammond.  Anyway during a coversation with my dad recently he mentioned that his grandfather used to paint.  My dad had been a draughtsman which I had also done in my early days of work but I'd always thought the arty farty genes had come from his mum's side where there were numerous hairdressers and signwriters.  Incidentally both of which I've dabbled with, although my big stumbling block with hairdressing was my aversion to touching strangers so the only advantage now is that the kids get free hair cuts.
Anyway, as coincidence would have it, during an online perusal of old pictures of Bristol I was really chuffed to find this photo.  This was a gallery framing business in the Arcade in Bristol belonging to my dad's great grandfather, who also used to do sculpture apparently.

 So, although not art related this brings me back to my ponderings about genetics and instinct.  How much of the things that we are drawn to or like or do are pre programmed into us.  A lot I suspect, but I will keep thinking about it.

Kathe Kollwitz

Having stated in my project 3 proposal that I was striving to capture an 'essence' or 'feel' I have been looking at the work of Kathe Kollwitz.  Her images are deeply moving and emotional.  She was a German printmaker and sculptor born 1867.

In her work she depicts the social conditions in Germany at the time.  She draws images of sickness,  poverty and of great suffering and death.  A suffering she personally endured which included her son being killed in World War 1 and loosing a grandson in World War 2.

Self portrait

 Kollwitz’s intensive artistic engagement with the war and the death of her son make clear that all of her work was shaped greatly by her personal life, by events and emotions that she had experienced directly. Thus, after her first two series, which dealt with revolutionary themes, she portrayed increasingly passive states, such as those of suffering, waiting and enduring. A more active tendency returned to her work in the 1930s, triggered by the advent of World War II. Kollwitz was persistently concerned with the themes of mother and child, war, death and misery, and the self-portrait, for example Self-portrait with Karl Kollwitz . The themes were explored not only in her prints and drawings but also in her sculpture throughout her life. Hands and faces served her as vehicles of feelings, with bodies for the most part concealed beneath shapeless articles of clothing.

(http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=3201)

An interesting insight into her methods:

First, instead of making her drawing directly on the prepared copper plate, she used soft ground to transfer a drawing made on laid paper. The procedure most often consisted of laying a sheet of paper over the copper plate, which had been covered with soft ground, and then drawing lines over it with a hard pencil. This action would remove the corresponding ground, allowing the plate to be bitten in those areas. When printed, the lines produced would be softer and grainier than the usual etched ones. Kollwitz extended the potential of this procedure even farther by creating entire backgrounds of texture, often transferring by means of the sensitive soft ground grain of the laid paper on which she made the original drawing. This is visible in all the Peasants' War prints and in Woman with Dead Child as well.
The second technique Kollwitz used during this period to create large expanses of texture and tone was the addition of a so-called "mechanical grain," described as exhibiting "unmistakable rows of tiny, parallel dots. This grain, "only added in later states," has been observed on every sheet in Pesants' War except for Outhreak. Its striking regularity and fineness and similarity to reproductive print, has activated a debate that turns on whether or not Kollwitz, used sorne kind of photomechanical process to transfer, the tone created in this way. Careful study colloborates the suggestion that she did. Most likely, Kollwitz laid a half-tone screen over a copper plate grounded with a light-sensitive emulsion, transferred the dot pattern from the screen by means of exposure to light, possibly the sun itself, and then etched, the pattern into the plate. The rest of the image was obtained from soft-ground procedures, stopping out, and direct etching.

(http://www.mystudios.com/women/klmno/kollwitz.html)

Woman with dead child 1903

The prisoners 1908

Artists that painted their mothers

Now in the process of painting my mum I thought it would be interesting to look at other artist's paintings of their mothers. I've tended to go for artists that I know, to see how they have gone about this portrayal whilst being a bit familiar with their other paintings and painting style.

The Painter’s Mother IV

 

Lucian freud apparently spent over 4,000 hours painting his mother and I've been looking at him more lately as I am striving for more of a loose painterly feel when painting people.

The Painter’s Mother IV is one of a series of eighteen portraits of the artist’s mother, Lucie Freud, that he made in his studio in Thorngate Road in Maida Vale, London, between 1972 and 1984. The series includes ten paintings, five drawings and three etchings, and Lucie sat more than one thousand times for the portraits over the course of a decade, with the sittings lasting between four and eight hours and each portrait taking several months to complete. To make The Painter’s Mother IV, Freud first applied two layers of white primer to the canvas to ensure that the surface was almost entirely smooth before colour was added. Freud then applied the paint using a hogshair brush, and in several places achieved the depth of texture in the painting by applying raw pigment directly to the canvas – for instance, red lake and viridian green were used to underpin the flesh tones and the browns of the sitter’s clothes. Detail was also achieved by using the brush to take paint off the surface as well as to apply it: the fine fibres of the woman’s jumper were created by adding several layers of

successively darker paint to the canvas and using a small stiff hogshair brush to expose the lighter coloured parts beneath.

Freud began to produce the portraits of his mother shortly after the death of his father, Ernst Freud (1892–1970). After Ernst’s death Lucie suffered from depression, from which she never recovered, and which at one point led her to attempt suicide. The curator Andrew Wilson has suggested that Freud used the series as a way of ‘combatting her depression’ (Wilson 2008, p.116), and her grief is reflected in portraits such as The Painter’s Mother IV in the muted grey and brown palette and Lucie’s melancholic expression. The paintings in the series bear the same textured surfaces and psychological detail seen in Freud’s later full-length portraits, such as Leigh Bowery (Seated) 1990 (private collection) and Benefits Supervisor Sleeping 1995 (private collection), though in the case of The Painter’s Mother portraits, the scale is far more intimate.

 (http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/freud-the-painters-mother-iv-t12619)

Vincent Van Gogh, Portrait of the Artist’s Mother (1888) Van Gogh’s introduction to art was through his mother, Anna Carbentus Van Gogh, who was herself an amateur artist. 

 According to van Gogh’s letters to his brother, Theo, this portrait of their mother was based upon a black-and-white photograph. Of the portrait, the artist wrote, “I am doing a portrait of Mother for myself. I cannot stand the colorless photograph, and I am trying to do one in a harmony of color, as I see her in my memory.” Despite his intent to liven up her visage with his palette, van Gogh created a nearly monochromatic version—in a pallid, unnatural green. Nevertheless, this preeminent figure in the artist’s life sits attentive and proud—a model of middle-class respectability.

(http://www.nortonsimon.org/collections/browse_title.php?id=M.1968.32.P)

Rembrandt, The Artist’s Mother (1629)

 ‘The Artist’s Mother’ by Rembrandt is a study in old age by a young, aspiring painter who rapidly gained a reputation for this kind of work before moving to Amsterdam to develop his career as a portraitist and history painter. Executed towards the end of his time in Leiden (c.1629), this painting already reveals Rembrandt’s mastery of precise detail in the treatment of the folds of skin, the sunken eyes, the taut mouth and the prominent nose. The figure wears an exotic deep purple hood with a fur mantle over a dark dress culminating in an embroidered white chemise. The tone of the painting is sombre, but it is offset by the parchment pallor of the skin, the colour of the chemise and the yellow embroidery of the hood. The treatment of the light falling from the right of the composition directly onto the face is masterly in the way it focuses the viewer’s attention on the features.

( http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/collection/405000/an-old-woman-called-the-artists-mother)

Andy Warhol, July Warhola (1974)  One of Pop Art’s founding members, Warhol captured his mother in the medium for which he has become best known – silkscreen.

 

David Hockney, Mum, 1985:

Hockney chose the day of his father's funeral to portray his mum, creating an image of unveiled human suffering and emotion.

Salvador Dali, portrait of the artist’s mother, 1920

Pablo Picasso, Portrait of the Artist’s Mother (1896)

This tender portrait of his mother was one of the best of Picasso’s formative years, and reflected their close bond.  I'm not sure if it's accurate, but I saw something on the net that said he painted this when he was just 15 years old!

  Edward Hopper, Elizabeth Griffiths Smith Hopper, the artist’s mother, 1916
 (You can see where Hopper got his looks,....looks just like him)

And for some female artists: 

 

Mary Cassat, the Artist's Mother reading Le Figaro, 1878:

 

 
Alice neel  My Mother 1952: 

Alice Neel was a great admirer of Cezanne, and attributes to him her realization of the importance of the sitter’s psychology. We can see this influence in the gloomy portrait of her mother, below, with its solid modeling and the sombre red and blue tones, reminiscent of Cezanne’s late work and well expessing the suffering of old age.

 (http://www.escapeintolife.com/essays/alice-neel-2/)

 

The artist, 63-year-old Daphne Todd, had painted her mother several times during her lifetime, and they had agreed that she could paint her after her death.
"I talked things through with the undertaker, and they kindly gave me the time and space to paint the portrait. She was on a trolley, raised up on pillows, as I remember last seeing her in hospital."

( http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/apr/29/artist-daphne-todd-portrait-mother-death-bp-prize-shortlist)

 

I've only recently become aware of Daphne Todd due to the BBC 'The big painting challenge' where she is one of the judges that is quite direct with her comments.  I've included this as it is certainly a different portrayal of her mother.  I think it's macabre though and can't relate to wanting to paint anyone this way, especially your mother.  Painting portraits for me is about trying to capture something of that person but this is just the empty shell.

Project 2: Evaluation and Reflection

The aim of this project was to use body casting methods to produce body forms that could be used to shape other sheer and less dense materials that could then be stiffened to capture the body form in a less solid way.   In terms of the materials and some of the processes I intended to use; these were to be very much experimental and trial and error as the results were unknown.

For example my attempt at using netting was unsuccessful (with PVA anyway), as I couldn’t get the fabric, which was quite floppy, to stick to any defined area of a hand cast, however, the trials with having distressed the fabric were more promising as was the stitching on dissolvable fabric which I would like to experiment more with.  Had I a face cast or a larger body part to apply it on, I think it will be moving closer to what I want to achieve.  The lack of bigger body part was a result of having bought a duff bag of alginate, and although having now experienced the process of having a face full of the stuff in an attempt to create a face cast, I still have no cast with which to work.  I do now have some new alginate and my intention is to still pursue this project idea.  I would like to experiment with heat reactive materials as well and resins still, but this is time and space dependent.

My other body casting trial involved draping net material over myself before having plaster poured over it.  This was not to create a detailed cast but more to create the impression of a piece of fabric that may for example, have blown in the wind and caught some of the shape of a human form.  The idea was for the plaster to stiffen the fabric sufficiently.  It did not.  I think if I were to attempt this again I would need to use an initial layer of mod roc in the hope it would add sufficient support and strength to the form.

As already stated this was very much experimental and was limited by time in terms of sourcing material and working around assistant help.  In terms of outcomes, there is no end product but successful in terms of experimentation and learning.

Project 3. Summary of Intent:

I’m continuing my overriding theme running through all of my projects of a subjective sense of reality, making sense of, and looking at my reality in a figurative way. 

I’m also feeling the need to strive for more, and stretch out of my comfort zone and so I am intending to work in paint on the biggest canvas I can within the practical confines of limited space at college.  I have only ever worked small and very detailed and tight.  This will also I hope, force me to work in a looser, more painterly way.  The other aspect of the challenge I have set myself is the subject matter.  The subject is a portrait of my mother.  This is a challenge on a personal level for not only do I want to capture the ‘feel’ of my mum but this process also means dealing with many aspects of emotional associations.  I do feel this painting is something I have to do, both for growth as an artist and also for personal evolution and growth.

Overall, this project is about putting feeling into work.  The priority is no longer technical accuracy which I may have been a bit preoccupied with before, but more about capturing an ‘essence’ or ‘feel’.  I need to use paint again as I have still got lots to experience in the medium and need to keep the continuity in this learning.  I would still like to use print at some point but it’s all time dependent.

Painting the Queen

Well I’m going to start painting at college having so far only worked at home due to practicalities.  I am going to be working on a largish canvas (I can’t actually remember the size I asked for,…..dip stick that I am), as I wanted to do what I can’t do at home ie, work big, and in contrast to my other work I’m going to attempt to work loosely,  (a new challenge).   I want to try working spontaneously and painterly, although having to work from photos again I suppose I shall have to forego the spontaneous life bit for now.  I had initially envisaged a large head, a face, a vibrant portrait.  I wasn’t sure who I was going to paint though.  Well I have always wanted to paint my mother but trying to get a decent photo in the past has been met with refusal and her going stiff at the sight of the camera resulting in a rabbit caught in headlights fear look, (not really the look I had envisaged).   Well anyway, as luck would have it the M & D required a lift, so brilliant ammunition I thought to strike a deal.  I do the lift and they have to allow me to take lots of camera shots (in the hope it would result in something not so fear stricken).  The lighting was not ideal and I was zooming in so as to be less conspicuous while I clicked away during conversation.  I’m sure I could have got something better but that would have required cooperation instead of self-conscious uncomfortable resistance.  Well at the same time I was thinking that this painting was actually quite daunting, a bit like painting the queen.  I mean in terms of my family she is the queen!, the ultimate portrait although now a change of plan.  No longer just a large head, as that wouldn’t be right with the subject matter, after all this was the queen. I googled images of the Windsor version sitting down and coincidentally found some very similar poses to those of dear mama.  Where the queen has robes and all that palaver draped over her, mummit has her blanket, where the queen has her heavy jewels around her neck mummit has her thick scarf, the queen sits on her throne, mummit sits on her high backed orthopaedic one, and the similarities go on in an unsimilar way.

So now it seems somewhat of a challenge to somehow portray a ‘feel’ of my mum.  This seems even a bigger challenge as I consider this is not just about someone’s character but there is a whole gamut of personal emotional ‘stuff’.  I know recently my thoughts have been looking to create something not so solid or even ethereal and transient in other areas of my art but there is nothing ethereal about my mum.  No……, earthy, solid, stable, unmoving are much more apt words.  So anyway, I know what colours she is.   She is reds and reddy browns and so colour is what I have been playing around with.  These are some colour tests I did in my sketch book.   The first was with very warm colours that I associate with the subject but thought maybe this was perhaps overkill so tried the idea of a green underpainting to contrast the warm feel.  That really didn’t work.  So how do I find a way to transfer so many feelings into paint?, ……..To be continued.