Back to Painting Big!

My Canvas has arrived!

Back to my favourite size 1m x1m. 

I started sketching this yesterday and today I've started adding colour on the base layer. 

There is no plan it is all spontaneous - 

While eating Chocolate and Cheese and drinking Green Tea!

Speak Little Black Sheep!

Sometimes accidents or mistakes can result in positive outcomes.

 - Everything happens for a reason, (My mum would say) 

Even if it is very differcult to see or understand at that moment in time.

 This painting is spontaneous as pattern and shape come into play by little more than a doodle. There are no plans, it just happens. Now that it's done I like to look, to try and find what it is I can see, similar to how you  search for shapes in the clouds. The trees were there before from an old picture of Mimi in Itchycoo where she was sitting waiting for her rainbow seeds to grow and they do, when she cries and her tears nourish the soil. There is a hint of this in the acid bright colour but also from the shape of the zig zag red / pyramid which echoes the shape of the bend in from Mimi's legs, the red that was her dress and her tears that have now become a waterfall. In the right hand corner it looks like an eye - big brother is watching! Above this are figures of eight's that are entwined that look like music. A little higher up is the mistake. The paint seperated and started to drip, normally this would have been painted over but I decided it will stay because it reminded me of a lost little black sheep. Following the dark blue that almost arcs away from it there is a sharp blue zig zag. This reminds me of a side profile of  a beak belonging to Donald Duck- the ark becomes his voice as he speaks on behalf of the little sheep. I then came onto thinking how there is often a black sheep in the family and this is telling that person to be strong, stand up and believe in yourself. The sheep  is also hidden and insignificantly small. That's how I got my title.

Here are some details.

Here you can see the side profile of a beak that arcs up to little black sheep.

Big brother watching!

Starting Something New Onto Something Old.

In the photo below (Which is hard to see I know) are a couple of canvases that I had drawn a scene from a thought of a story from Itchycoo.  Mimi is sitting in the middle of a clearing singing, spreading her love, wishing for her rainbow seeds to grow - when she cries , they do blooming into giant flowers that morph into animals in Itchycoo. This was two years ago, where my final story has changed many a time - this is no longer relevant. I have kept the trees and the shape of the landscape and the idea of the rainbow colour, but Mimi, the animals and the flowers have long gone. Bottom layer base done, now for the top.

The Obliteration Room

For 40 years Yayoi  Kusama has made paintings, sculptures and photographs using dots to cover surfaces and fill rooms, a process she calls 'obliteration', which means the complete destruction of every trace of something, in this case white space. The room, which is part of her 'Look Now, See Forever' installation at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, took visitors to the Australian gallery two weeks to create and is now a flurry of colour and random dots. A huge fan of dots myself, I love it!

It's Coming Down.

When I saw the Grand Canyon it took my breath away. Like David Hockney I wanted to capture its grandeur by making a montage of images. I loved his 1998 painting, A Bigger Grand Canyon (Below) A set of  sixty interlocking bright, acid coloured canvases. I planned to paint my own smaller version. If you look at my final painting you would never guess its American roots because it bears no resemblance to the sketch underneath. It took me 6 months  trying to work out how I was going to do it. 

 David Hockney's 60 canvases above with a study below.

During a visit to Australia in 2000 I saw a huge number of aboriginal artworks. I found myself profoundly affected by their style, earthy tones and reference to nature. Back home I started to paint, I abandoned my plan and just got on with it and went with wherever it was going to take me. This was my first dotty picture, it's 24 canvases - painted with a tooth pick. It took a year to paint. 3 years later I see it for the first time as a whole picture. I painted each canvas in 2's only taking the meeting edges together. Luckily when it did go on the wall it worked. It was only after seeing it up and having that space of 3 years that I could face picking up a paintbrush again. Pink Sock Soda Pop was the catalyst for all my subsequent paintings. 

It was influenced by a (flipped over) Paul Smith Ad! 

 So 9 years later it's coming down!!!

 Details

 How High? This High!

How Old? - not sure...

 Putting them up wasn't great either. As they were the cheapest canvas I've ever used, brought in from when I was cabin crew working back from America - they are all slightly out of shape. My kind framer tried his best to rectify this, however as no frame was the same a bit of blue tack and duck tape became it's best friend by helping to butt up or space across. 

 Poor Giles.

Our sitting room has 52 holes that he has filled- each needing to be drilled, filled, sanded, re filled - sanded and then again just to get the wall back to normal. 

Our hallway down stairs has 25 holes.

That's just the start.