WHAT?

Tori Day’s work, as seen on her website, www.toridayart.co.uk, appealed to me for it’s apparent simplicity; a bit like Jacqueline Utley’s flower paintings, Tori takes a household object, placed on a table or shelf against a plain background, and makes it into a satisfying and “sufficient”  work – for example, 

“Turkish Coffee (ii)”

2020

Oil on panel

13 x 18 cm

I also liked the way that, although many of her objects are placed centrally within the painting, a few (such as this example) are not, indeed are even truncated, and when looking at the series, which she has laid out as thumbnails on her website, it adds interest – I could imagine them being displayed in a gallery like that.

I am going to continue working in egg tempera for this series. I have worked looking through a viewfinder before, but the idea of taking a photo and then laying the viewfinder over the photo is something I have not tried, so I am going to experiment with this using my iPad – it’s certainly a lot easier than trying to hold a viewfinder up in the same place for any length of time.

SO WHAT?

The photos will all be taken in one room of my house, looking at what’s on shelves and surfaces.

The first two are truncated paintings of the same plant holder on a windowsill, painted from this photo, just moving the viewfinder around. I worked with a dominant yellow/purple theme.

The purple was alizarin mixed with a dash of cobalt blue, and the yellows were a construction of lemon yellow overlaid with Naples yellow and then greys mixed from yellow and purple, sometimes with a touch of extra cobalt blue.

The next three had a dominant blue/orange theme, and were taken of the same sink edge from two different photos:

The first one of these felt a bit tight and overworked, so I tried to work more loosely with the second and third:

NOW WHAT?

• Unregarded corners of a room can make for an image which tells little stories about the person who inhabits that space – almost demarcates that space! (see separate blog post, Call and Response with Hayley Lock)
• I am loving this method of working with a viewfinder
• I have also found that choosing a main colour pairing helps me to simplify an image where I would otherwise be tempted to fiddle and fuss

WHAT?

This involved a group of 16 students with Hayley. We were invited before the meeting to research the exhibits at PAMM (Perez Art Museum, Miami) and jot notes of any exhibits which caught our eye on a shared padlet. We then focused on an exhibition by Ebony G Patterson, who is also Professor of Painting at Kentucky Art School.

SO WHAT?

• It was interesting to research the collection and exhibits at this museum which I had not previously come across; some of us found that their digital presence did not always include all the information we wanted, but we were very much encouraged not to be passive but to get in touch with museums and curators if we wanted to know more.
• After looking at some of Ebony’s work, which uses beauty/bright colours/ garden images to draw a viewer in, with some more uncomfortable messages revealed upon closer inspection, we were invited to make our own work reflecting on the demarcation of space/the value of space.
• All the students approached this in very different ways. I wasn’t sure how to start so took inspiration from the “bling/garden/possibility of hidden things” aspects of Ebony’s work. I began to paint large, slightly unworldly flowers and foliage using enamel paint and gold acrylic liner on black pastel paper; I chose black for the background to help give the idea of things hidden in shadow. As the work grew I added some pieces of pot pourri stuck on with PVA to give a 3D element to the work. When it had dried I was uncertain where to take it, but then I thought what a striking tondo it would make:

NOW WHAT?

I’m not convinced I have met the brief, i.e. produced a piece which talked about the demarcation/value of space. 

However, I enjoyed cutting loose with the enamel paint – everything I have tried to do with it so far has felt really structured. I was surprised how much it soaked into the pastel paper, I had to apply quite a bit of some colours, particularly blue and green, for it to show at all – so I have learnt another characteristic of this paint. And I have created a dramatic and vibrant tondo – although I’m not sure it has much of a message beyond the exuberent fun of letting rip.

WHAT?

I had wanted to look more at Winifred Nicholson’s work after learning about her understanding of colour in the St. Ives School of Painting course with Jill Eisele (see separate blog post). I was able to obtain the book of the exhibition of her work, “Winifred Nicholson – Liberation of Colour”, curated in 2016 by Jovan Nicholson, which was published by Philip Wilson Publishers, London. There I found the painting “Easter Monday”, c. 1950, oil on panel, Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery Trust, which I believe might have given Jill Eisele inspiration for the daffodil painting exercise we did.

I chose to look also in this blog post at Jacqueline Utley, to whom we were referred by the course materials for her jewel-like flower paintings, amongst others; I found information about her on her website, www.jacquelineutley.com

The two seemed to go together, not just because they painted flowers, but for their love of colour.

SO WHAT?

I began with Winifred Nicholson, who spent her working life studying colour and light. In “Liberation of Colour”, Jovan Nicholson says “The first thing I look for in a picture by Winifred is the colour she calls magenta pink, for this is almost invariably the key to the painting” – and he’s right, it’s almost invariably there, as Winifred thought of magenta violet as the colour on the spectrum as dark gives way to light.

I’d been given some flowers which were just beginning to go over, so decided to capture them for posterity sitting on a windowsill, in a similar setting as that shown in Winifred’s painting:

“Amaryllis”

1967

Oil on canvas

Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Lakeland Arts Trust

You have to hunt for the magenta pink, but it’s there, around the top of the vase and the edges of the shutter.

I did a quick sketch of the setup, trying to think as I did of what colours I would use where, as suggested by Jill Eisele. In her course we had looked at the pairs of complementary colours orange/blue and yellow/violet, so I wanted here to focus on the combination of red and green, whilst getting some of that yellow/violet combination (which I really enjoyed in the daffodil painting) into the background and sill. Here are the flowers in their original state, with my rough sketch:

I worked on A4 NOT watercolour paper in egg tempera. I tried not to fuss about each leaf and petal, working quickly to catch the essence of each type of flower, as Winfred does. I also tried to indicate very roughly in white the design of the cut glass of the vase, as Winifred did in “Amaryllis”, above. Finally, I was determined to get my magenta pink in – a dash along the sill, and also centre stage with the little bobbly flowers (of whose name I am sadly ignorant), which I think pick out the yellow in the vase.

I have to say I’ve never gone in for drawing or painting flowers, knowing full well that I would get hopelessly bogged down in details right from the off…..but this way of painting them is great fun and allows me to focus on the colour and shape. Winifed said “My paint brush always gives a tremor of pleasure when I let it paint a flower.”

And so to Jacqueline Utley. Her website shows her recent paintings, many of which are of colourful interiors, large rooms containing small, slim people. I particularly enjoyed her paintings of flowers which are, indeed, jewel-like. For example:

“The bird flower vase”

2011

Oil on linen

18 x 13cm

The painting has a simple background – a vase on a table/shelf against a plain wall – but closer inspection shows that the background is painted in streaks of colour, many of which are then picked up, but more strongly, in the flowers, with those real pops of bright red to bring the whole thing to life. She does this with many of her paintings – rainbow chalky colours suddenly brought to life with just a touch or streak of brilliant red somewhere.

I wanted to try working on board with an egg tempera background, then adding the flowers and vase in enamel paint.  Jacqueline’s painting is indeed small at 18 x 13cm, and the nearest I had was 22.5 x 15cm. Jill Eisele had suggested that, if you’ve really concentrated on thinking about colours whilst doing your preparatory sketch, you should be able to paint from memory; I wasn’t brave enough to try that the first time, above, but, having now done one version of the painting, I had a go at painting from memory here. Here is my egg tempera streaky background…….

…..and here is the painting completed with the enamel image:

Interesting to see the apparent difference between the colouration of the background in the two photos! – I think I took the first in bright sunlight, the second in interior light. 

Well, not much like Jacqueline Utley…….but I have tried to use her way of picking up the background streaks where I could in a picture dominated by red and green.

NOW WHAT?

I have learned:

• The difference between “painting in the style of…X”, and looking carefully at key features of an artist’s style (here I have focused on colour) then trying one of those features out in your own paintings
• Painting flowers can be fun
• I have been a bit slap-happy with colour up to now, but am beginning to see glimpses of how it can work for me

Enamel seems so rich and shiny, it draws me in as a painter – but the egg tempera allows for a depth of colour which I want to learn more about.

WHAT?

These were 2 hour sessions making up a 4-hour short course looking at colour. 

Jill covered a massive amount of material in this first session – have tried to pick out some key points below. She tried to make us think in a “colourist” way.

SO WHAT? – FIRST SESSION 

This was the “Minds” part of the title – an analytical look at colour.

• Making a painting involves 4 steps (miss any out and the end result might not be what you hoped for):
  • Research
  • Experimentation
  • Consolidation
  • Making
• This session will be based on some of Johannes Itten’s list of colour contrasts
  • Contrasts of hue
• As soon as you add a colour to another, you’ve make it a “broken” colour and it will be a bit duller
• A standard colour wheel is based on cad red, cad yellow and ult blue, but you can make others (e.g. lemon yellow/cerulean/alizarin, or yellow ochre/indigo/Indian red)
  • Contrast of light and dark
• Relating colour to tone – get this and you are then free from local colour! (Ie the colour that you actually see – you can substitute other colours of similar tone.
• Where you have colours of the same tone, you don’t see the line between them if you half close your eyes.
• Using these colours mixed with black and white to make their tints and shades: ultramarine blue, purple, cad red, alizarin and cad yellow, we tried to paint three apples, one light, one dark, and one mid-tone:

• Cool and warm colours
• These help to give you a sense of depth; cool colours recede, warm colours come forward – example – Cezanne’s mountain – cool colours at the top, warms at the bottom:

• Important to try and make the four corners different for interest, and always take a little bit of the cool colour down into the warms, and vice versa, to harmonise the painting
• Cool colour examples: turquoise, phthalo blue, cerulean, lemon yellow, quinacridone red, magenta, alizarin
• Warm colour examples: ultramarine, indigo, cad yellow, yellow ochre, cad red, napthol red, vermillion
• We took the example of a Francis Bacon painting of Van Gogh, which we had in black and white, chosen for its strong composition – verticals, horizontals, V shape, contrasts of light and dark. Using oils, we tried to make this into a colourist painting
• We looked at how you can use a rag to rub in, move colours about and create texture and interest

• We also looked at “Tonking” – removing some paint by laying a sheet of paper over the painting (called that after Henry Tonks)

SO WHAT? – SECOND SESSION

This was the “Hearts” section of the title, and was based on the work of Winifred Nicholson. I did manage to obtain the recommended text by Jovan Nicholson from 2016, “Winifred Nicholson – Liberation of Colour”, Philip Wilson Publishers, London.

• Consider thinking of, say, 5 artists whose work you are considering at the moment and start every day by thinking how their art relates to you
• Working from black and white allows you explore colour relationships in a more emotional (less “botanical”) way
• Today we worked particularly on pairs of complementary colours:
  • orange/blue has the greatest contrast of warm/cool
  • yellow/violet has the greatest contrast of light/dark
  • red/green are the most tonally equal.

First exercise:

This was working from a black/white image of a Lautrec bar scene, and we tackled it in gouache using the greys mixed from orange and blue (plus black and white) with highlights of the two main colours.

Here is my version:

Second exercise:

This time we worked from a real image of a vase of daffodils, and two smaller vases, placed on a windowsill looking out onto the beach.

We made a quick drawing first, and the image was then removed from our screens and we were encouraged to paint from our sketch – Jill suggested that we thought about the colours we would use as we sketched, so we were ready to start.

We painted in oils using the complementary pairing of yellow and violet (plus some white). We worked on thick watercolour paper pre-prepared with a thin gesso ground with just a little lemon yellow. Jill said that she prefers to use big brushes, leading to gestural marks which show “a passage through time”.

Here is my piece:

NOW WHAT?

Some key things I have learned:

• Think colour possibilities while you’re drawing – have the question of colour choice right there at the front of your mind – how will the colours work together?
• I’ve a better idea about tone and how to vary it using colour
• Think how to create a sense of depth using colour
• I’ve learned a lot about working into the surface of a painting using paper, rag, palette knife, to break up the surface and add interest
• Let go of your initial work, be prepared to change bits of a painting
• Look more into Winifred N’s work as research for Part 4

WHAT?

I think of Johannes Vermeer when I think of interiors, having seen his “The Milkmaid”, c 1657-8, oil on canvas, at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam a couple of years ago. I consulted a book by Axel Ruger, (2001), Vermeer and Painting in Delft, National Gallery Company, London, looking in particular at the way Vermeer and the other artists discussed therein show the way light enters an interior space. The image which most struck me was a detail from Pieter de Hooch’s “A Mother and Child with Its Head in Her Lap (Maternal Duty)”, c. 1658-60, oil on canvas, also at the Rijksmuseum.

SO WHAT?

I decided to apply my method of abstracting (see separate blog post of “Ways of Abstracting”) to this section of painting.

I started my colour studies in gouache, using titanium white, natural grey, cadmium yellow and burnt sienna.

I then used pencil, charcoal and hand made natural red dye (applied with the wrong end of a paintbrush) to make my drawn studies.

Next, no longer referring to the original image, I made my set of 5-line drawings from the drawn studies and matched these with the painted studies.

Something about the grainy nature of the original image (or at least, my reproduction of it) made me move to soft pastels for the final abstractions, and I tried to choose the same four colours as I had for the gouache studies. I made all the final abstractions on NOT watercolour paper.

The first picked up on the contrast between curves and straight lines and also various little motifs of pairs of people which had caught my eye on the wallpaper of the original.

I liked the textured effect of the pastel on the paper, but the overall image seemed “bitty” to me and I felt I hadn’t made the most of the pastel medium.

My next effort focused on the quadrilateral shapes in pastel, contrasted with the curved shapes in ink. I used a mixture of “raw” pastel and blended pastel. I think this is a stronger composition as the eye is led around the painting by the angled lines, with the three curved shapes providing interest along the way.

For my third abstraction, I covered the whole page with the yellow pastel first, rubbing it hard into the paper with the heel of my hand to make a base ground. I have placed the strong straight lines around the edges, and have an off-centre group of curved shapes in the space left. There still seemed a lot of space available to play with but I decided to leave it at that – I think that dark charcoal line is enough in itself to dominate, and I don’t think it leads the eye out of the picture on the right because the angled sienna lines underneath pull it back in.

For the fourth abstraction I covered the page first with rubbed-in burnt sienna pastel, leaving a white square of blank paper for the light from the window. This is then a picture of quadrilaterals (with one hexagon, the section of light on the floor). I think the eye goes straight to the area of greatest contrast (the dark doorpost against the light of the window) and can then travel around the picture in a figure of eight, always being sent back to the window by the angled floorboards. I think this is my favourite – they all refer back to the original to some extent, but this one does so most closely.

NOW WHAT?

• This method of abstraction is quite formulaic – obviously it is aimed at those who haven’t tried much abstract work before; however, I feel I progressed as I moved through my series of paintings, so I think it is working.
• I enjoyed working in pastels, not something I’ve done a lot of, and made quite a mess with them – you can make some lovely strong marks, and they do bring a vibrancy to what was actually quite a dark and gloomy interior.

WHAT?I looked at his work as suggested by the course materials, particularly studying his web information on www.axisweb.org, where he has an informative page about his art. His Artist Statement explains his method, which very much links his work as an Art Psychotherapist with his interest in classical art and stories – here is a recent example from the website, entitled “Prophet in the Wilderness (St. John)”, acrylic and oil on canvas, 150x90cm:

That swirling, multicoloured mark-making reminded me of the work of two artists I had looked at earlier in the course, Mimei Thompson and Yuko Nasu.

I was particularly interested in his current method of working as described in his Artist Statement:

“Paint is now poured and manipulated to create areas of thick and crusted surfaces, that are allowed to wrinkle and pock mark as the various mediums used dry out. Once this process has reached a certain point, the image is again finely adjusted to create areas of shadow and recession, to a point where a form may begin to emerge, but hopefully not too much. The pause button is then pressed, to hopefully allow something to sit forever on the cusp of becoming – neither an abstract blob of raw sienna nor the fold of flesh in a stomach, but both, and neither.”

SO WHAT?

By the nature of his interests, Iain’s paintings generally involve figures telling part of a story. However, I wondered if I could adapt his method to domestic interiors.

On an A3 sheet of multi-media paper I drew out some circles to get me in the tondo mindset; I flooded each with water, squiggled some streaks and blobs of acrylic ink in each (variously, brilliant yellow, sepia and indigo) and left them to dry, so that I would not have blank white circles to work into. I decided to work in acrylics, as Iain often does, and chose Liquitex soft acrylics, in particular their “muted” range – this paint is fairly liquid so wouldn’t need diluting, and comes in squirty bottles which would allow me to replicate Iain’s method of pouring paint on to start with. I squirted dollops of paint into each circle in different colour combinations and dragged them around in various random patterns using an ordinary table knife, sometimes using the flat of the knife and sometimes the edge. Then I left them to settle and partially dry while I looked at them for inspiration.

Iain says he looks at his paintings at this point hoping that a figure or story will emerge; I looked around my garden room, where I was working, to see if anything leapt out at me and, when it did, I worked into the semi-wet paint with either my table knife or a cocktail stick, moving paint around, removing it, or adding extra bits just to try and give a hint of some aspect of my interior. Results were interesting…..

…my old red chair…

…the mystery plant growing in the corner…

….the window frame…

…the tiled floor…

…….my lemon seedling (grown from a pip; lockdown makes you do strange things)..

…and, finally, the garden table.

My husband remarked upon my wonderful imagination, which I’m guessing means that he can’t see the objects in the paintings, so maybe I have taken Iain’s words about something being “on the cusp of being” slightly too much to heart.

NOW WHAT?

• I was surprised by how much I enjoyed doing this, it was rather like a “spot the pattern” puzzle, matching up my initial random swirls and blobs with the reality around me
• I think Iain was much cannier that I – he looks to be working a properly prepared background landscape so has chosen his swirly paint colours for his foreground with much more care, meaning that he has less head-scratching to do in a short time (acrylics drying as fast as they do) to decide what he was going to work into and how the image might develop
• Is this a good method for tondos? – I think it is – I nearly always ended up with a big swirl somewhere round the edge (which was basically trying to get the accumulated paint off the knife at the end), but that turned out to be OK (except for the first painting, where it’s too obvious) as the bulk of the marks were curves anyway
• Before I even embarked on the painting, I thought this would be a method of working which I would try and then write off – but I can see possibilities (especially in the “window frame” picture) so will keep it in the toolbox for later.