Back in autumn I threw my paint brushes into the solvent.
I was half way through my "Frog Prince" series, something
just wasn't happening for me on the canvas. Too much colour,
too much symbolism, dredging around in too sparse ideas.
I felt like I'd painted myself into hole. I like to extend on
my ideas, but it often becomes a problem for me. I'd really
like to paint the same picture over and over again, which is
pretty funny, because each time an art dealer has asked
me to do that my upper lip has curled.
But that's the truth, if I had my way, I'd have painted that
same Frog Prince face over and over. Its like that for me,
I watch the same bit of a DVD over and over, the same
piece of music, the same book, it absorbs me totally.
But I got ,myself hung up on variety, as artists we are
taught techniques, and the technique of extending
ideas. Its lead me into too many dead ends artistically.
I need to stop it.
Art always seems to swing between two opposites
for me, its either you squeeze it, milk it, and it feels like
prostitution in some way. And its ironic how that feeling
of prostitution is so unsatisfying. Or it has to be virginal
and pure. Drawing can be like that for me, very pure,
thats why I love it so much, its such an unencumbered
activity. You have a pencil, a clean white page - simple
- you can focus on the timbre of the piece, it's a kind
of meditation.
Anyway I needed to paint just a face. No colour at all,
total black and white, none of that turgid green pigment
to deal with. I found a lovely black and white image,
and painted away. It was sheer joy to do. I blocked
in the simplest underpainting, I didnt focus on likeness,
it was the unalloyed pleasure of the paint coming off
the brush, the expression and texture. It was the most
satisfying thing I've done in yonks.
There is something to be said for artistic virginity.
It reveals itself in strange disguises. My friend Howard
Arkley used to say, "Like its the page", when he was
articulating composition. We used to laugh over the
way he said it. But we knew just what he meant.
Sometimes its the most satisfying thing; paint, surface,
a scungy well worn brush and not too much focus on
anything else.
Anyway, I'm now on black and white face # 7.
Similar faces in a satisfying sequence. I can't see
an end to it so far.
