Girl Sitting 2012

It's been a while since I posted an image of my work despite producing quite a few paintings over the last twelve months. In the third chapter of my MFA dissertation on the notion of fear in the paintings of Peter Doig and Neo Rauch my writing focussed on the materiality of the paint itself. As a figurative painter it's taken me a while to take pleasure in paint as a material, in its manipulation, especially in oil paint as a material. Describing paint I wrote, 'By investigating the artist's methods to evidence on the surface of the canvas "the appearance of something", a phrase Moyra Derby uses in  Illusion and Materiality in Contemporary Painting, I am constantly reminded how the 'physical tricks' of paint can regularly provoke the emotions of the viewer.
As a developing artist, this extra pleasure of paint as well as content is driving my technique as a painter to explore the link between figuration and abstraction.

Just to bring this blog up to date. Today's date is Monday 9th July 2012 and I'm coming to the end of my 2 years Master of Fine Art course. It's gone incredibly quickly and I've been too busy to add a 'painting-a-day' to my workload. This academic year (the second year of the course) involved 3 months writing my dissertation, which was handed in in January, and was all consuming so I did no painting until January. My dissertation title was Fear in the Imagined Landscapes: The aesthetic experience of fear in the landscapes of Peter Doig and Neo Rauch. The work sort to explore notions of isolation and alienation in painted landscapes. As a consequence of this work I feel my painting has developed both in cotent and process. I found the notion of a universal human experience as one of estrangement a fascinating concept and since January I have painted a body of work, approximately 50 small scale paintings and 4 large scale paintings exploring these ideas. At the end of August I will have an opportunity to show a selection of these pieces in the MFA degree show.

Taking a break

When I began this blog I was hoping to use it as a means to challenge my painting technique.
I wanted to attempt to move away from a very tight photorealistic style and free up the paint marks I was using in order to be more expressive.
To begin with this is exactly what happened but before long the work began to take on a life of its own and the subject matter of the paintings began to dictate their outcome.
The photographic images I found in the free daily paper Metro often showed images of people suffering in one shape or other, after-all it's a newspaper and suffering in all its forms is news.
These images were often the most dramatic scenes in the paper showing the human condition in pain and grief. The recorded images from Wootton Bassett of dead soldiers returning home to their loved ones say it all.

I wanted to finish 100 paintings but I've decided to take a break and review what I'm trying to achieve.
The theme, for want of a better word, of suffering is still an important one for me but I feel I need to continue with a clearer view of the way forward.

I will reach 100 paintings and hopefully beyond.
Today's date is the 6th April 2011 and I've just had a large painting turned down by the National Portrait gallery's BP award. I'm disappointed but maybe this is what I needed to make me reflect on what type of art I want to make. I know I want to make it feel real and relevant and I know I need to make a leap of faith to move it on.

84th Painting

83rd Painting

82nd Painting

Exhibition

40 of the paintings exhibited in the Long Gallery at Newcastle University, February 2011.