City in the West -1996/2004

‘City in the West’
Oil on Board
122 x 61 cm
Started in 1996 & finished in 2004
I’m currently trying to fix a seriously leaking roof & so am moving stuff around the house as I get to DIY in various rooms… These pesky portfolios of paperworks from under the spare bed, and now, the studio is being moved about & the larger format oil painting are coming out of deep hibernation. I’ve never photographed this one & in fact only ever exhibited once.
It was meant as a partner to ‘Glovers Island’, which is the same size. A duo, sort of urban vs. pastoral idyll.

‘Glover’s Island’
Oil on board
122 x 62 cm (ex frame)
1996-2004

Slower Paintings

Both are large paintings that were slow to realise. Eight years doesn’t get me noticed in the ‘painting a day’ blog-roll of fame.

What I was saying about fast..slow..fast. They aren’t alla-prima plein-air small formats, nor are they spontaneous one-take watercolours done from direct observation. Rather they were made in the studio from imagination & memory & the odd sketch. They both needed a long ferment & much looking at before I could see what they needed. They are also products of doubt. I was engaged in much thought about the landscape & the functioning of an image in the viewer’s imagination. Lots of stuff which I forget now. Anyway, here they are together, documented, together as I meant them to be.

Last night I was referring back to a biography of Turner, where Turner himself is quoted :

“…it is necessary to mark the greater from the lesser truth: namely the
larger and more liberal idea of nature from the comparatively narrow and
confined; namely that which addresses itself to the imagination from that
which is solely addressed to the Eye. “

Ahh me, these ideal landscapes, do they ever exist outside of our own personal mental maps of where Heaven & where Hell is found?

Anyway, the opposite is easily found on teh internet. Great numbers of  “comparatively narrow and
confined” landscape paintings, where it is thought that just simply copying appearances is all taht is needed to make a good painting. Wrong view, IMO.

my visionary mode

BTW, I’m getting back into my visionary mode as I’m going to take part in a project to celebrate William Blake’s birthday. When the roof is fixed & the studio & office sorted out….