Love and Fragility Underpainting Day 2, Roxy Music and New Frontiers

Underpainting of Love and Fragility complete. During painting yesterday and today I listened to the first five Roxy Music albums, which have a surprising similarity, though each gets a little better. Bryan Ferry's latest album Loose Talk is spoken word over music. Not as good as Fall in Green, so at least here we have leapt over that great artist. I'd like to capture something of early Roxy.

At times I feel at a false artistic peak, in that new things seem harder to discover and become excited about. This feeling lasts only a day or so before I discover some new insight or challenge. Every artist, it seems, stops growing, stops getting better, but I hope, by force of will and careful and constant analysis, by seeking new frontiers with new binoculars, to keep getting better. Now I see my past work as think how bad it is, and how much better I can now do, how much better new work in paint and music can be. My enthusiasm and excitement for these new brilliant things, these new ideas and aesthetics, these new skills, is greater than ever. My primary limit is my health, and of course the eternal angst of money.

I've been gifted lots of chocolate for Easter but I don't want it. I fear its fat. I'd much prefer a luxury gift of olives, or olive oil, or sun dried tomatoes, or cocoa powder, or even sparkling water. There are so many healthy luxuries.

Hope and Death, Love and Fragility Underpainting

A day of painting. Started with a small idea called 'Hope and Death'. It needed a little work as the idea was initially too simple. Some people write any old words, improvised, and call it a poem, but a poem requires more (sorry bad poets, sorry Duchamp!). A poem must have structure, linked rhymes or themes which can subvert or reward expectations, or some special imagery which sets it apart from the prose of ordinary reality. In short it must be crafted, and have the depth and intensity of artistic command. This is the difference between a work of art and just 'any old thing'.

The same is true in visual art, which, after modernism, is now (joyfully) mature as an artform, like poetry. Any painting of a scene or thing which can be seen by a person or photographed is not good enough; this is no different from a poem of 'any old words'. Art must be crafted, given more. It could have repeating visual themes in different areas, such that the thematic copies (shapes, objects) reinforce the ultimate object, the key one which the viewer will ponder (in a poem or piece of music, this is the ending or start - either way, the 'thema'). It could subvert expectations in other ways, with a surprise or unreal element. It could also include bioforms. Humans are very receptive to faces, more than any other pattern, then figures, finally other organic forms such as animals or plants, or biological shapes which look living. Even with a lifeless scene of rocks or mountains, for example, the rocks must have some element of being alive applied to them, the rocks made into a face or figure, or somehow imbued with an organic or biological reality. Lifeless painting of rocks are rare. Most landscapes include figures, or trees, or animals; perhaps for this reason.

I pondered on this philosophy and added more to 'Hope and Death'. Here is the initial idea sketch:

At first I imagined a simple scene; the distant sun, and somewhat misty mountains, rather like my 'Infinite Tiredness of Ageing', but the idea too simple and twee, a first draft needing refinement. More was needed. Here's my underpainting:

The sun is black, but not just black, is has become an eye, the clouds partly a face, the mountains partly a mouth. Expectations subverted, and bioforms included. I also noted the coincidence of painting a crucifix scene on Good Friday.

This took only an hour or two. After this, began the underpainting to the Love and Fragility painting, a painting of sufficient complexity already. Here it is so far:

Backups, Good Vibes, Frame Filling, Router Jig Plans

Quarterly backups on the 31st, a day early as it was the Good Vibrations event in Congleton Library on the 1st. Then traced over the underdrawing for 'The Empty House'.

A nice Good Vibrations day yesterday, and a relaxing visit to Sandbach for some supplies on the way back. These 4-weekly events are our social breaks, my only day off, although I aim to practice performance skills, of course. No activity is, or should ever be, a rest. While alive and able, we must do.

Today, slowly trying to enter painting mode, trying to inspire enthusiasm. I launched The Myth Of Sisyphus pre-sale on Bandcamp, a week before the album is released. I started work tidying up four solid wood frames which have a few dents and blemishes. I tidied up these with a little chalk, water, and acrylic paint to made a very sandable filler, which does the job well. I aim to spray these black, although I feel I'm distracting myself a little with excessive focus on frames.

More distractions too as I developed plans for a 2.4M long router jig to allow me to cut rebates, or make other router cuts in long lengths of wood. This is a simple design: two long L tracks of wood, like a slot, to hold the router. Beneath, a few slats, like the planks in a railway track, which will hold to wood to cut. This will be held by M6 bolts from the side. Not difficult to make, but at 2.4M and about 20cm wide, it might be difficult to store. This, however, will allow me to cut rebates into any length of solid wood, or even apply bevels or other decoration to the outside with fancy router bits. With my other skills of applying gesso and angle cutting, this seems like a logical step to making better frames, although I do now enjoy finding old existing frames.

Plus I need to remember that the paintings, not the frames, are the important thing. Why do new ideas feel exciting and alluring, and old, if superior skills seem less attractive?

I've drawn out a little idea today too called 'Hope and Death', an old design from Scrapbook #3.