Nesting instinct (cupcakes and swallows)

Ah… two confessions to make. With the best will in the world, I had intended to document every stage of at least one painting, in this case the 5’x5′ oil on canvas titled The Secret. All was going quite well, I would photograph the painting before I started work on it for the day and then again when I had finished each afternoon. I think I got to about fifteen days of documentation before my laptop crashed, taking at least five days of photographs with it.

The computer technician who examined the unhappy laptop shook the hard drive, frowned, and explained that ‘it shouldn’t sound like a baby’s rattle.’ Like many stupid, stupid people the world over, I had failed to back up a lot of my data, including the most recent records of the painting, and am in the process of trying to piece together a whole heap of data such as tax records et al, can’t tell you how much fun this is. Let this be a lesson to you, because it certainly wasn’t for me: something nearly identical happened about five years ago.

My best estimate is that The Secret eventually took about a month to complete. It was exhibited at Watt Space as part of the Animal in Us group exhibition, an event that ran alongside the University of Newcastle’s Minding Animals conference, though I went on to make quite a number of changes to it after the show.

The Secret- day nine

And oranges make their appearance on the tree, it’s something of an event. I’ve been vaguely playing with the idea of painting a golden pear tree,  I like the uterine shape of the fruit, or an apple tree, but thought the painting would overload with biblical references. So oranges it is. Oranges, after all, are not the only fruit.

The cat’s butt is now lodged firmly in the corner of the canvas. But there’s always something new to fret about: I’m worried that the symmetry of the design will make the painting look too static, vaguely considering adding some kind of compositional element to add more movement. Perhaps a diagonal shape, perhaps some kind of curling ribbon blowing in the wind, perhaps have something falling from the sky (petals?) in a dynamic, curvey shape. (Trivia: a painter I once knew said that painting was like life: it started off ok and then you spent all your time trying to fix it.)

The Secret

Struggling to finish this painting for an exhibition deadline next week. The frustrating thing at the moment is that none of the different areas of the image are resolved, nothing is truly finished, even the simplest forms are crying out for more paint. Today I realised that I didn’t like the way the cat’s spine was echoing the curve of the girl’s back and decided to move the cat over so it was wedged in the corner of the canvas, which was actually the original intention.

The Secret, work in progress, day seven

The birds at the top left and right corners of the image were originally conceived as some kind of half human/half bird figure. I’d vaguely imagined these bulky birds, shaped a bit like buzzards but a bit more graceful, with human eyes and heart shaped wings. (A bit of trivia: one of my neighbours married a strikingly beautiful young German woman. The village where I live is, to put it kindly, at the redneck end of the human spectrum so whenever I run into her I always muse that it’s a bit like a chance encounter with an alien life form. Anyway, where this gets relevant to painting is that I’ve been trying to give my animal images her eyes- fierce/gentle and honey coloured).

But after I’d worked on the birds for a while they began to emerge as owls, something I have never painted, and I liked the oddity of owls sitting on what will eventually be a fruit tree in broad daylight. It sits well with the central theme of the painting which is all about secret histories: of nations, individuals and places. The final image will have two curious children exploring the contents of a small striped box while a variety of animals look on. The initial idea of painting thousands of stars in a night sky will be replaced with the daytime visual equivalent: hundreds of small daisies on the green grass and probably a shower of pale pink blossom falling from the tree.

The Secret, work in progress, day six

A bit of trivia about my studio. It’s in a building that used to be a maitenance shed, and half of the building is still used by the maitenance crew that looks after the University grounds: I’m pleased to report that the proud tradition of the tea break still lives on. I haven’t had the studio space for very long and am still settling in. RL kindly donated an antique cassette recorder, fortunately the radio still works, and it’s in the process of being rusted onto JJJ.

Day six saw the first day of painting in oils, I started by working on the sky. I’m trying to give the plane of the sky movement and texture by hatching it with lighter and darker shades of blue, kind of thinking of early Rennaisance painting and trying to use the brush strokes a bit like threads in an old tapestry. Vaguely considering using embroidary on some other smaller canvases, but maybe not, I like kitsch but there is a line which even I am reluctant to cross.

The Secret, work in progress, day five

Neither the female figure on the right hand side or the cat sitting next to her were working so I painted over them. At this stage I’m still working in acrylic, though just about to swap over to oil paints on the sky.

The Secret- work in progress- day four

Still working in acrylics, struggling with the drawing of the female figure on the right hand side- something about the shape not working.

The Secret- work in progress- day three

At this stage I’m still working on the underpainting, working in acrylic to try and speed up my production times, at the moment it’s taking about three months to finish a single image and this just isn’t viable. The aim is to use acrylics to sort out the composition and the drawing and not to move onto oil paint until I’m basically happy with the image. In the past I’ve spent months fiddling with a nearly completed image because I’ve noticed that the drawing was flawed, or I didn’t like the placement of a particular form.

The Secret- work in progress- day two

The Secret was originally supposed to be a night scene, I had this strong desire to paint a dark sky and thousands of twinkling stars. I’d partly been inspired by an Allen Jack + Cottier sports hall that had been built at Berry: the external concrete walls had a number of small holes so at night, with the internal lights on, the building looked like part of the night sky. Everything I looked at seemed to reference starry nights, even turning on the television to watch playschool ended up with a children’s book reading about the moon waking up the stars. Anyway, when it came time to start the painting my personal life had taken a turn for the worse and I found the idea of working on a dark painting repellent. So The Secret became a scene from a day in early Spring, pale blue sky and the almost luminous greens of new growth.