Pembrokeshire Coast 1

For the next three weeks or so it’s going to be pretty busy with work and travelling so not much time at the art table until about mid-April. It’s at times like these that I really appreciate what collage has to offer; snip snip snip and, if nothing else, you can usually come up with some interesting things going on. I had some off-cuts of this striking colour scheme of black, white and fluorescent orange so I made up this landscape quickly. The photo doesn’t capture the intensity of the eye-pricking fluorescent orange; I never thought I’d actually be able to use this colour much but I like this way it looks here and I did tone it down a bit with a coating of matte acrylic gel. I actually cut out a whole range of other elements I was intending to use as well; additional branches, leaves, rocks, foreground foliage, but none of them made the final cut and I decided I liked the image pared back to just these few shapes.

While I was snipping away I had in mind the Pembrokeshire coast, possibly my favourite landscape in Britain – it has a unique beauty and is also blessed with better weather than much of the country too. I came here on holiday as a child, and my interest was reignited when I discovered the work of Graham Sutherland who found a great deal of inspiration in the little winding valleys and coastal inlets here. I think once I’d looked at Graham Sutherland’s work I was never quite the same, it really speaks to me about the landscape in a way that I understand. There are a couple of references to his work in this collage, and probably plenty of influence in my work generally that appears unconsciously.

Forge Road, Spring

Hedgerows across the British Isles in spring and early summer are among my favourite things in the world. They don’t seem to be quite the same anywhere else, perhaps it’s our weather and our light that help create the unique, delicate magic of the hedgerows that wind along the country lanes here. I’ve often painted them and when I was sorting through a pile of old paintings and papers this weekend I came across this piece which was one of a series I did a few years ago inspired by the hazel hedgerows along Forge Road near Harrison’s Rocks in East Sussex. I’d walk along the road, with these hedges on either side, quite often whilst on my way to Harrison’s Rocks, which is the nearest proper rock climbing to London (one of the first posts I put up here was about this lane, see it here although I think I mistakenly said it was Kent back then and it’s actually just over the border in East Sussex). I’d be fascinated by the changes in the landscape throughout the seasons and for a while the hedgerows along Forge Lane, along with hedgerows along the Crab and Winkle footpath between Whitstable and Canterbury became the main subject matter of my painting and drawing. I depicted these scenes repeatedly because I loved them but I also used the lattices and screens of vegetation to work out new ideas in my artwork and to develop my own vision and voice.This painting, from late summer 2011 is a scene from earlier in the year, right at the end of the winter, when all but the evergreens have died back to leave a skeleton of branches and stems. The webs of old growth, meshed and intertwined together look quite spooky,very much like systems of veins and arteries, nets of living matter, emphasising the interdependencies of the ecology of the hedgerow. The painting was one of the last acrylic on canvas works I did in this manner as I didn’t feel I wanted to go much further in this direction at the time. A few months after and I began to look for bolder approaches which led me to collage and a very different way of working. I suppose this painting is from a period of about six months which represents something of a transition time for me, a time when I was feeling a bit stuck in my work, when things weren’t flowing easily, when I was frustrated and a lot of work ended up in the bin. There are things I like very much about my work from these previous periods but  I just hadn’t found my mojo and it all felt a bit like hard work. Trying out some totally different techniques unlocked new directions for me although work still ends up in the bin of course! Good to bring this out into the light of day again, though, and look back at some steps along the path that led me to where I am now. I still have some canvasses in the cupboard and I may go back to working on them one day. One thing’s for sure, I still love this subject matter and I’m already getting a buzz from seeing the hedgerows start to come to life again.

I’ve been working my way slowly to the theme for my contribution to the puppet challenge, curated by Peter Slight over on Clive Hicks-Jenkin’s Artlog. I had started by looking at folk tales from the county of Lincolnshire where I grew up, but I’ve recently discovered the writing of Angela Carter, and in particular her re-imaginings of some of the classic fairy tale stories. These short stories have really captured my imagination and I’ve settled on one of her versions of the Beauty and the Beast tale as the starting point for my puppet. The story is called the Courtship of Mr Lyon, and it was published as part of collection of short fairy tales in The Bloody Chamber.

I’m not 100% sure of exactly the type of puppet I’m going to make yet, but it may be a rod puppet or some form of that style, so cut-out flat card figures manipulated with rods and levers. My first step was to make the maquette in the photo above, to try and get into the character of Mr Lyon, focusing mainly on his fear and his loneliness. Other figures I want to include are Belle, of course, and the little King Charles spaniel who lived in the house of the beast and who is crying out to be included.

A recent post from Clive on the Artlog shows how the project has been inspiring some really wonderful work from the contributors – you can see their progress here.

I’ve been enjoying reading Angela Carter’s reworking of classic fairy tales recently and I’ve been particularly taken with one of her versions of Beauty and the Beast in her short story called The Courtship of Mr Lyon. The writing is wonderfully descriptive and atmospheric, lending itself very well to illustration and I’ve started with a quick collage of the door knocker of the beast’s beautiful house. That front door is like a portal into a magical world, and a good place to start I think.

Gone and lost my camera today so apologies for the crappy photo taken with the iPad.

Independent and second hand bookshops seem to be making a bit of a comeback in the UK after having a tough time competing with big chains and online shopping, but they appear to have faired better over here in Berlin and  have never really gone away. There are plenty in our neighbourhood and I hope they survive the encroaching gentrification and rising rents.

i spend about a third of my time here in Berlin and browsing round these book shops is always something I enjoy and look forward to; full of great stuff, fascinating discoveries, oddities, and great bargains.

Here is what I came back with after a visit to a great local second hand bookshop yesterday for just a few Euros:

This book about ghosts and spirits from the 20’s is great fun – some of the illustrations are pretty weird and one or two are a tad saucy:

i also got this cute little booklet about Braque’s graphic works:

And this relic of the GDR era, a folder of plates from the Friendship Gallery (pretty GDR for a start) in Köpenick, just South East of Berlin. There is very little information about the contents, just a line written in pencil inside the cover saying something along the lines of ‘graphic work from the specialist art camp, Dresden, 1975’.

i don’t know what they got up to at the specialist art camp but I do like these prints, wish I could find out a bit more about who made them.

And finally an early ’70s paperback with a cover design I liked by Werner Rebhuhn: