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Latest effort
I'll show it, but not today. Fun post when it comes.
Following up on the small watercolour I put on the Forum the other day, which coincided with an acrylic on which I was working, I've now (I think) finished the latter. It's a long-format painting; it's of a local beach, as was the little watercolour; it's empty of people, so far - and will probably remain that way; it's about distance, and childhood memories, and my distance from people - distance generally. Made me think - you could regard it as just a long post-card, should you choose to. On the other hand - if I'd wanted to make it commercial I would have included figures, beachcombers, kiddywinks galore with buckets and spades, but - haven't. Yet. Should I? Oh Lor', I don't know..... I'm drawn to wide open spaces rather than to people, but it's always a struggle to consider whether to include people or not. And of course, people, and dogs, are a bit hard to paint - is that why I'm not wanting to do so? Am I indulging in, gulp, an excuse?
These questions plague me, and possibly plague others: but I don't want to include detail because others seem to want it - and yet I'm not of the Alan Bickley school, which (if I may reduce Alan to a 'which') consciously, knowingly, deliberately excludes these extraneous details - on the whole, by no means always - as not essential to the main theme and therefore to be excluded. So I end up with a compromise, basically - no people, doggies, kiddywinks - but perhaps an aching void where they ought to have been.
I'm beginning to think that this painting business is actually quite difficult: not necessarily technically, one gets over that: practise often enough and your technique improves: if it hasn't after 50 years, you've gone a bit wrong somewhere. But conceptually - you don't question how you're painting so much, as what you're painting, and why.
I begin to understand Dégas's comment: painting is easy when you don't know what you're doing; very hard when you do.
I'll post the finished result, when I'm sure it is finished. But I know already that it would never sell - at least, I don't think it would. Whether this is a sign of my just painting what I want to paint, or the abandonment of potential profit, I really don't know. These uncertainties are sent, no doubt, to try us.
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