As I wrote about yesterday on Hedgecrows, my recent bout of collage making was kicked off by an online exhibition over at Clive Hicks Jenkin’s Artlog. The exhibition included some really wonderful work in a wide variety of styles and was a huge inspiration – you can see the exhibition here. I’m looking forward to hearing Clive give a talk about his work tomorrow in Sketty, near Swansea, and to doing a maquette workshop with the man himself!

Clive has written about how he has used maquettes to work out dynamic compositions in his paintings as well as delighting in the pieces themselves. I’m seeing how the strong shapes and negative spaces created by these articulated figures can benefit my work and  how exciting it is to have figures and shapes that can be repositioned in seconds to give a different composition and effect. To limber up for the workshop tomorrow, I’ve done a new piece of a snake in a tree – the long, sinuous shape of a snake is perfect for articulation with paper fasteners of course and it can be moved around the tree into a variety of positions. Although not planned, seeing it now, the snake looks exactly like the jointed plastic snakes i used to have in my toy box when I was a child, it’s made me feel quite nostalgic.

Treesnake

I’ve also reworked an angel I did last month to articulate the wings.

Oak Angel

More recycling, this time it’s waste material from making collages and other artworks that are getting re-used.

For the last couple of months I’ve been using collage a lot. This started when I tried to make a maquette, or articulated figure for the exhibition on Clive Hicks Jenkin’s stupendous Artlog earlier this year. Although that first piece was a bit pants, I was really taken with the medium for several reasons. Firstly, I was able to get an idea down very quickly, and then I could move the various paper elements around and rearrange them to create new pieces in seconds. With a full-time job that often stretches into evenings and weekends my time for painting is limited and the collage techniques were great for working rapidly. I also noticed how working with cut and torn paper helped me avoid being too precious with the work, and that it lent itself to producing quite bold shapes. Over the last couple of years I’ve been struggling in my painting; while I was achieving certain pleasing effects, in light, texture and atmosphere, I felt my work lacked focus and that i was losing touch with form. Collage has helped me get out of that rut and my painting will benefit, I’m sure.

Now, back to the recycling – whilst working with collage recently I’ve ended up with scraps of paper left over from cutting out shapes. Some of these remnants were quite interesting on their own and I didn’t want to throw them away. Also, the surfaces I’d been painting on had themselves become covered with a patina of textures and colour and the templates I’d sometimes used to paint around were worth a look on their own too. So all of the following pieces have been put together using leftovers from previous works. Firstly, here are two small pictures quickly put together using the head template I’d made for The Fisherman in the last post, Going Green 1:

Where we meet (1)

Where we meet (2)

And here is a cut out head that I had made and then discarded. After deciding not to use it I left it lying on my work table so that it got printed over, had my brush wiped down on it, and generally got covered with crap. It ended up looking quite skull-like, so, to make amends for rejecting him, I’ve resurrected the poor fella as a green man of the winter – skeletal, but just waiting for Spring to blossom. He’s carrying a tiny piece of Spring tucked behind his ear to keep his spirits up during the dark months (I don’t know why, but I can’t resist putting a daisy behind the ears of these skinheaded, thick necked butch numbers).

Wintergreen 

Going green, as in recycling – in this case re-using an old book given to me by my friend Maggie. It turned out to be a copy of The Big Fisherman by Lloyd C. Douglas, a novel about Simon Peter, the fisherman who followed Jesus and became a ‘fisher of men’ and one of the twelve apostles. The copy I had was a handsome old volume printed in 1951 which Maggie gave me to draw and paint in and generally play about with and do whatever. I’ve never worked with a book in this way before, but just having started to play, I’m really enjoying the endless possibilities that using  text provides. I’ve included a picture here of a painting I did using a scrap of the book as a starting point. Using a fragment of a page, the words, out of context, take on new associations and meanings; the piece of text here includes the words and phrases violence, overcome evil, smiled reassuringly, good news, and sun shone.

 The figure in the picture is not really Simon Peter but a merman or some sort of sea spirit. He might be a ‘fisher of men’ but i don’t think his intentions are as honorable as Simon Peter’s. Thanks Maggie for the book, it’s keeping me busy.

The Fisherman

When I’ve been looking into the history of the Green Man recently, from time to time I’ve come across an example which is different from the main traditions and which is rather more intriguing. For example, there are a few ‘Green Women’ about, such as the one on a console in the north aisle of Ulm Minster in Germany, or the beautiful, tender mother and child surrounded by foliage on a roof boss over the high altar in the Lady Chapel at Ely Cathedral. Others are unusual because of their odd facial expression, such as the rather unpleasant sneering face on a pendant of the retrochoir at Roslin, Scotland. Occasionally, you see two green men together, for example in a roof boss at Exeter Cathedral, where two heads  spew forth foliage together. My favourite example, though, is at the abbey church at Maria Laach in Rhineland-Palatinate in Germany. An astonishing Romanesque masterpiece of a building, full of wonderful 12th and 13th century carvings, on one of the capitals you can see two foliate heads, their faces pushed up together so they look like they are whispering or cosying up for a kiss. It’s a very beautiful carving but I couldn’t find a pic of these two heads to include here I’m afraid. I love the idea of these characters interacting together; they change from being solemn, rather remote archetypes and become beings with more active personalities. Recently, I’ve been playing with some ideas of two green men together – as its early summer, and, if the ducks on the canal outside are anything to go by, it’s the time of year for coupling up, I wanted the green man to have a bit of company. Here’s an example I did last night. I’ve called it ‘You in me, and me in you’ and I’ll probably play with this idea and do plenty more variations. It’s inspired by the two heads at Maria Laachs, but where they have foliage growing from their faces, in my version they become foliage spewers, with vegetable matter passing between their mouths.

You in Me and Me in You

Having just come back from a lovely weekend in Berlin where the weather was glorious and we spent Sunday cycling through the Grunewald forest and lying in the sun by the Teufelssee lake, this piece fits my mood – it’s time to get outside and frolic!

The figure I posted yesterday has been getting some more attention as I’ve been playing with variations on the same theme today – poor chap, if he had a speech bubble, it would probably be saying something like ‘enough already with the leaves’ but I’m enjoying myself so he’ll just have to cope. I’ve softened the face a bit, and he’s definitely channeling the Turin Shroud photographs now I think. First up, here’s one with leaves printed directly onto the background:

Another which combines background printed leaves and collage:

A head with leaf halo:

 And a different background:

Oh dear, surfaces in the flat are starting to disappear and look like this:

I need a paper storage solution!

I’ve been enjoying combining painting with collage over recent weeks, and in particular using leaf prints for foliate heads and green men figures. Here’s the latest one, a sort of angel of the woods with leaves for wings. It hasn’t got a title yet, I’m still pondering on that one.

It’s rather dark, possibly influenced my weekend up in the Lake District; while the valley floors were as pretty, green and lush as any postcard picture, once we walked up to the hilltops, things got much wilder. Here’s a pic of the view when I poked my head out of the tent early in the morning in beautiful Langdale and a photo from higher up:

The weather changed the mood of the place in an instant. When the sun was out, the landscape looked warm and friendly, but when the weather closed in, it could get a bit unsettling, even in June, and the craggy hills became dark and brooding. The lichen encrusted rocks provided textures galore too – here are a few impressions from a walk on Sunday:

I’ve used a fairly dry, scumbled brush work on the face of the figure in the painting to give him a worn, stoney kind of appearance like some of the rocks I saw up in the Lakes – after all, this guy has been around for a while, I reckon, so I wanted him to look a bit ‘weathered’ – rather like my face after a weekend exposed to the elements!

Finally, three of my pals from the trip, from left to right, Phil G, me, Ihsan, and Harry – i did get up from lounging around on the picnic blanket during the weekend, but not often 🙂