Learning in Colour

So many things floating in my brain, so little time.. a good thing for the start of a post; only hope it ends up vaguely coherant. Spent the day in the gallery with Stu today, him helping out priming canvases and providing a sounding board and conversation which is something usually lacking in my normally solitary weekend occupation. Sadly we didn't get much in the way of chatty customers today; I have met some fantastic people and wandered off on subjects most varied in my gallery sitting duties but not on this occasion. I moved around some more ideas in my head though and started the ellusive Bun Hanzo painting tonight. What I love about painting is the learning process, as long as you have the kind of nature that can go 'Oh, that's how you do it' or more precisely; 'Ah, that's a better way of producing the marks that I am seeing in my head and thus get the old hand/eye co-ordination thing to do its stuff'. Sometimes this happens all at once, like today, when a series of things gang up on you to reveal one blatantly obvious fact that has never quite sunk in. I remember vividly, not so many moons ago, realising that (bear with me here, its obvious but hard to verbalise) you only need to use the marks you want or need to. In other words, when drawing an outline of an eye, you don't necessarily need to go right around the eye; sometimes a tiny mark will suggest the rest. Told you it was obvious. The next extension of this is that the tiniest bit of colour left or placed on an image can make a giant difference to the end result. I love writers who think about all the words and how each one sits in a sentence. Sure, they don't write a blockbuster a year, but what they do write can be so vivid and beautiful it comes close to painting or exceeds it in ability to conjour an image.

I have started Bun by secitoning off areas with masking tape so I can concentrate on each panel individually, making a kind of collage without collaging; I also hope this will make me think more about the elements of the picture plane and how they relate to each other in creating the whole.

It also means a compromise from my initial idea, which was to use actual collage. One of the things I like about the way I work, however, is incorporating the patterns on the board surface rather than cutting and sticking (not that there is anything wrong with this, I just like the other way), hence the use of masking on this one. I imagine it will take a while, but I have a while and I am interested in how this will work. Note; if you never hear of this painting again, your own conclusions can be drawn.

Also, and quite excitingly, I was reminded by a Facebook friend of the work of Odilon Redon, who I haven't looked at in aeons and whose colour blew me away as well as his drawing and use of charcoal and pastel. Co-incidentally I was looking at pastel earlier on June Carey's piece for the 'Art off the Rock' auction which is taking place in Stirling tonight. Never really used pastel but in a ballsy way it is pretty cool; there are too many awful insipid pastel pictures out there which I think put me off using it at school/college. Maybe one too many diversions for just now; there are enough ideas and mediums out there for a few lifetimes, that is the problem, and a few hundred if you have a part-time job!! So, Odilon is my hero du jour, and I will be gazing at some of his amazing paintings and sinister illustrations later.

The other phrase I wrote during the day was 'the manga in me' which refers again to the Bun Hanzo picture, who seems to be one of those 'characters' who spring fully formed out of my pencil - the comic books of my youth (Halo Jones anyone?) obviously still close enough in the filing system to access for this one. It is weird how some things just seem so natural to draw and so frustrating when trying to come up with ideas on a specific theme for a competition, exhibition etc. or just because people tell you that you 'should' be painting something else. This is before you realise that the best bet is to tell them to **** off and paint what springs out naturally, however strange and wonderous it may be....

Thanks to another friend for the following quote which was part of the general outpouring on the subject of Monsieur Redon:

'My drawings inspire, and are not to be defined. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the undetermined.' Odilon Redon

Good luck to Artlink with the Art off the Rock auction and Ritchie Collins, who has the private view today for his solo show 'House of the Moon' in Drymen.