Reflections in a garden

This week I was working on a painting from my window of my garden. The difficulty was that the opposite window was reflected in the view.
I discovered that when I looked at the reflection, I could not see the trees but when I looked at the trees, I could not see the reflection. This shows that painting from photographs does not give a true representation of what we see. We focus on one thing and the rest is a blur. a simple reflection distorts our perception of what we think is real.

This is my first attempt of this kind of painting. The window frame with the reflection of the house opposite was very dark at first but when I looked more carefully, it was lighter because the leaves were shining through it.The prayer flags at the bottom of my garden were glowing through the reflection and the reflected sky, which was bluer than the sky in front of me,  had ghostlike leaves through it.






What this has taught me is that the theme of reflections is very complicated and shows me how the way in which I see things might have to be reassessed.

As well as considering how much I am expressing myself, if what I have painted is a reflection, then it is also a reflection of myself. I see the view, it is only through my eyes, slightly distorted and a sum total of my thoughts, conditioning and experience, and therefore, it is an expression coming from me.

Another thought.. if everything is a memory, experience and filtered through my mind, then I must only be a channel for what comes out on the canvas. Who am I if not a succession of memories and images?

Reflections on Clutter

Yesterday's class at Leith was to expand on the theme and take it further than just doing a competent painting.

I set up my still life and realise how much the reflection them was bringing up my lifelong curiosity about clutter and chaos.
Matt encouraged this approach and suggested two works for the day. One, a painting of what I had brought and the other was to be a drawing of all the bottles spilling out of the plastic bags.

 The drawing is in charcoal, A2, and started by being very carefully drawn until Matt came round to suggest that I draw blind, creating more rhythm and movement in the jumble.
I found it difficult because I was focused on the fact that it was all lines and circles. My need for structure got in the way.

More work to be done on this.

The painting changed from being a reasonable likeness of the objects to more of a muddle.
Again, the suggestion was that instead of arranging the objects, I should take in what was actually happing in the surrounding area. To create the difference between the objects and the chaos of what was really behind gave it more life and was more real.








Next week I have to talk to the class about what I am doing, where I have come from and why I am there, with a selection of my work.
I have given this a lot of thought and so far my them of reflections is going to include everything from puddles and shiny objects to myself.
I asked myself, " Why paint?" and came up with " Why not?" The next thought was that my reason changed from day to day according to what I felt like. Friday I go to Leith and so I paint without questioning why.
Then came the thought that I don't have the urge to express myself through paint because everything I do is expressing me. Emotions can come out through playing Beethoven, every mark I make on the canvas is from me alone and therefore says something about me. Everything around me is a reflections of how I see and hear my surroundings.
Krishnamurti says that we only know ourselves by relationship to others and what is reflected back to us and I can see this more and more. It is only me in my head and so impossible to be truly objective.

Perhaps the reason I paint is like keeping a diary? It is a record that I was here, what I saw, what I thought about. Ultimately of no interest to anyone but me.

My early drawings ( from aged 15/17years ) show that I was preoccupied with how things work and investigating everything from the insides of clocks to spaces between objects. That is still there.

What I am trying to do is get the essence of what I see and hear. The paintings that have worked all show this and it is about looking more and understanding more of what I see and feel.
The essence of muddle and clutter is a real challenge because I have noticed how much my early drawings and paintings have been very controlled.
Matt talks a lot about the need to keep a sketch book and constantly draw to explore. Blind drawing, less analytical and getting to know the subject from the inside is always being discussed.
I have realised that my sketch books are full of adequate drawings but not much is explored in depth.

Reflections

October 25th. 2013

The serious stuff starts now!

The brief for after half term at Leith School of Art was to come back with a theme for the rest of the year. This had to be something to work on and expand throughout the year.

I was thinking of movement which would include the sea, waves, people, musicians playing their instruments. etc. It occurred to me that to focus on the sea meant  getting there frequently to sketch in spite of being too far away and winter approaching. The cost of petrol, accessibility etc. was too much. As I am not in touch with musicians in the same way as I used to be, sketching them was going to be difficult.

I decided on "reflections" as my theme. It includes everything from a puddle to self reflection. Shadows and the nature of illusion came to mind and how what we see is only through our eyes, light distorts, glass, silver and water have no colour and yet are alive with reflections.

 The first painting was oil on prepared paper, A4.
I worked mostly on getting the metal bowl to balance with the white mug. As there is very little room to work in, they were balanced on my palette and the yellow paint ( right corner ) is what is reflected in the bowl. At first the mug was too white and I had to thicken the paint and add more  colour to balance it.

November 1st. 2013

The brief was to experiment, do several paintings and not try to produce a finished work.

First painting of the day was tentative, thinly painted and not working. Matt ( tutor) told me to do two very small paintings, quickly within the hour, using paint more thickly, cleanly and without using zestit to muddy the colour.


The painting on the right has a better composition and it made a difference being limited by size. Much easier to see just a small part of the image and make the most of the shapes.

I went back to the original painting and attacked it with more sense of what I was doing.

The final painting was the two items, painting more thickly, mixing more paint and slapping it on to create more life and less preoccupation with detail. One of my bad habits is to get too pernickety.

The composition is not good and it is still too tight but overall, better than when I first started it in the morning.

What I have learnt from this is how much I enjoy the complications of things, clutter and detail.
My brief for next week is to find more objects, arrange them better so that there is not the problem of space versus muddle.
I also have to make a list f artists whom I would like to paint like and those whom I definitely don't identify with.