Tuesday 29 March 2022

RULES FOR PAINTERS? RULES FOR LIFE

 


In the first term one particular tutor provided advice and encouragements in the Painting and Colour Theory classes. A natural teacher*, with a lightness of touch, that  

I started to capture her ideas verbatim. Some are highly practical others knowingly philosophical. There were over thirty. Here are some and read like lessons for anyone's life.

RULES FOR PAINTERS - extracts

 


 

1.     Stand back from your work every two minutes to take stock.


2.     Don’t tickle your painting. Instead, go somewhere one it, do it and then again, stand    back.


3.     Painting is active practise not meditation.


4.     Start with overall form then go to detail at the finish


5.     Speed: What can you do to speed up the process? Avoid making the paper too wet for example.


6.      Time management. Meaning1 tactics to ensure you are not waiting around. Instead have several pieces on the go at once.


7.     Never stop making work.


8.     The last surviving painter on this planet is the one truly driven to paint.


9.     What strategies can you develop to deflect influences that stop you enjoying painting?


10.  Never stop making marks.


11.  Painting demands huge reserves of energy, mental and physical.


12.  Don’t sit to paint, it drains your energy.


13.  Painting is knowing we have done our best.


14.  Don’t work about the system, worry about being an artist.


15.  Painting is about discipline, the long haul and going through hell and back.


16.  Painting is about how you see the world around you.

 

 

1meaning mass production 

*She reminded me of Hector in Alan Bennett's The History Boys, Hector's  classes always appearing effortless, full of fun and deeper meaning



Friday 25 March 2022

COME ON SPRING, YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO

ON THE ROAD TO LLANYBRI  Acrylic and Oil pastel on paper 40 x 60 cm

Perhaps seven warm days does not a Spring make. 

And yes, the month of May does bit back with near sub-zero over the bank holiday weekends, however the verges around here a crammed with primrose, late daffodils and yellow aconites partner with snowdrops.

 

Lynette Roberts in her poem The Seasons

It clears a path for hope: reinstates

Faith, which we had too easily omitted

With death, in the caustic months of the year. 

 

From Lynette Roberts Collected Poems Published by Carcanet Press 2005

 

Roberts lived close by on the other side of the Afon Taff in Llanybri, the road to there will be decorated with all manner of flowers soon now.

Saturday 5 March 2022

IMPOSSIBLE GREENS

On St David's Day



Land of Impossible Greens 14 x 20 cm Acrylic on Paper with Gold Leaf


Oh you land of impossible greens,

You defy me not to love you.

Everyday, green, grey or gold,

I return your love.

To this land of impossible greens