I mentioned that I wanted to go back to painting but with the aim of maintaining the energy of the marks I’ve made with the brushes and prints. I also want to continue to explore the concept of places and journey. I started off reworking a couple of small panels 20cm x 40cm the aim being to explore the fragments that  had achieved with the prints for the book. I levelled off both panels leaving hints of the colours underneath. I then used some of the thin printed papers as collage over both panels, the aim being to get some of the marks to show through. I then used torn paper to act as a mask and painted over with white paint.

Various things were not working. The dark areas were too dark…lacked the energy of the prints. The white picked up layers of texture, which in essence I like but again just made a mid tone. Once the white was dry I went back to them…big mistake, but into fiddle mode rather than identifying and sorting the problem. This is what I ended up with…..yuk!!!!

This is what I wanted..but as a painting?

So…another day another panel. I had a large (90cm sq) one that I had shown at an exhibition but wasn’t happy with it. I sanded it down and began building layers of texture and lines using the handmade brushes, working intuitively. I found that brushing on gouache worked as a mask, the dribbles revealed underneath layers.. This photo shows the paintings it was , top left and a few of the many layers being built…more than once it was turned 90degrees.

This has gone on for several days now and as usual the play session is over, I need to make some order from the chaos. This is where I left it this morning……

I have purposefully made it a mid-tone painting as I know I want to go back in with lights and darks. The marks appear random but they are made by using the hand made brushes, wiping, sanding, scoring….adding and subtracting, concealing and revealing. The aim being its both of and about a journey. Even though I know much of it will be covered it still exists even if only as a memory. When we travel it is a time based activity, we don’t ever see the whole of a journey at once, and only remember fragments. So where next? I reflected long and hard on why the first paintings didn’t work. One reason was the lack of using the brushes directly, that I have now done. So then it’s the usual problem, COMPOSITION this is the stage I always find difficult when painting. When I’m printmaking compositional decisions are easier as it’s much smaller than 90cm, and it’s only paper….not a big panel with lots of paint. But it’s this lack of confidence with composition that results in my making paintings that are either formulaic or simply rubbish! None of this is helped by my reluctance to work representationally, been there, done that, far too easy! Abstraction is so very much harder…well it is if you are determined to be authentic, get it right, not follow a formula etc etc… With nothing to hold onto I’m lost at sea….So I keep adding layers, makes the final painting interesting..or just a delay tactic? I took the photo and played with it with digital layers to see if I could create a composition I was happy with. Taking lines and fragments as a concept I added layers and ended up with this ..

There’s things here I like; the opacity and translucency, pulling the grey green out to use on the under layers, vibrancy and history peeking through. But it looks very illustrative , like a nice card or wallpaper.. This led me to reflect on what aspects of my journey with FFF were the most exciting. Apart from the prints it was the slides, the small sections of drawings that I had isolated and framed. I have often wondered why a section of a painting, print or drawing is often more exciting than the whole? Why zooming in a photograph creates an energy? As Robert Capa said, “get in close then get closer” (led to his death when photographing action in the Spanish civil war) I’ve decided to go back to the ink drawings and see if they can provide a composition I can apply to this painting. That would complete the circle, the cycle… I chose this section of an ink drawing.

Digitally I added layers to the painting using the same green-greys, whites and blacks as before and got to this…..

Now I feel I’m getting somewhere… A simple composition of a few shapes but with an energy that reflects my aims…. TBC…