Occasionally a painting works quickly, mostly there is the play stage, the ugly stage, the awkward teenage stage and gradually the resolution to the finish line. Then there’s the ones that argue continually, they change their minds about what they need and seem destined to be around a while. This is the journey of ‘Pomegranate Party’. This year’s resolution was To be braver with colour. I have a good sense of colour, understand how c loud works as nd can mix pretty much any colour on demand. But that’s very different from using it. I had convinced myself that I had my own distinctive palette, a sophisticated if rather full mix of greys, browns and burnt oranges with the occasional ping of teal or even metallics. But after the success of my abstract prints last year and increasing confidence with mark making I thought it’s time to get over my chromophobia. Something Alice Sheridan was recently inspired me, about deciding what colour a painting is about from the start. So that is how I approached a recent series of 90cm and 60cm paintings.

Pomegranate Party was destined to be a red painting. Now whilst I have problems using colour, I have even greater problems with red. Firstly I don’t like pink…and it’s an inevitable result of adding white to red (why does ink have it’s own name? Light blue doesn’t?)

In addition my mother wore red..a lot, and for some of us that’s not always a comfortable memory or association. But red is a traditional colour here in Andalucia, the land of flamenco dresses, wine and pomegranates.

I started the painting with my  usual play stage, anything goodies as I know it will be covered with just the odd piece peeking through. Mostly this stage is building texture, building history. I dont worry about shapes at this stage, I am laying down colour , line and texture…enlivening the surface. The only vague plan is it’s going to be predominately red….

These first layers are acrylic, it dries quickly and gives a solid foundation. Once it’s done…three or four layers, and dry, I put a layer of Clear Gesso down, and maybe some black or white Gesso too. The Gesso provides a tooth for the oil and cold wax. (For more on the media look up Rebecca Crowell and/or Pam Caughey)

I don’t take photos of every stage so I apologies that this is a few layers down the line. Looking back I can see there are  too many small shapes, no ‘hero’ shapes to be the main players. I’m also dancing around on the edges..scared of that central space. At the time I thought this was a red painting as it was the most red I had ever used? But I can see now that I had almost covered it all up!

On reflection I was keen to get it done, was trying too hard and not responding to what it was asking for.

So…I tried to get some differences going, more colours, more shapes. But hindsight is a marvellous thing and I can see I was just adding to the jumble not clarifying the problem? There’s less white, more texture, more red. But I’m still dancing around the edges.

I left it for a few weeks and when I went back I turned it 90° .This often helps to see a painting with fresh eyes. I was aware I needed bigger shapes so.launched in with that big black shape. It was better, and I added to the top to bring the eye up.Now I felt the problem.was the whites..too much and too bright I made a few into greys and felt it was done. I created a collage for my Instagram page and before I posted it the problem jumped out. Seeing it small.and surrounded bynothet, stronger pieces it looked clearly out of place.

So it was back to the easel. I wanted less contrast and stronger shapes. The weight needed balancing so the dark grey shape on the right and…brave again, more red. It was better, again so I decided, yet again it was done. But my gut instinct was that it wasn’t a success. I knew didn’t want it hanging with the others

I got on finishing others and working on paper and small boards. Louise Fletcher had posted an exercise where you tape off paper into sections and work over the whole sheet. I really enjoyed getting back.to a more intuitive approach. Building layers, being gestural, exploring colours in the safety of small scale.

This is the group on my  work bench about three layers in. Again each piece had its own colour theme but there was more freedom, more mark making. Of course they were not completely intuotive, I was making fast decisions continuously, what colour, saturated or muted, dark or light, opaque or transparent. What marks, how much scraping off, responding to what was revealed.  I left them for a week to dry and then came the day to peel off the masking tape and reveal the paintings. I promised myself I would take them as they are, no fiddling or try to improve them, and once the tape was off that would be difficult without messing up the clean border.

 Peeking the tape off was so exciting, like Christmas! The hard edge contrasted with the tough surface of the paint. Compositions were revealed that I would not have thought of. Of course he ones that work best were those.with areas of high contrast (values) but even the muted ones have an engaging quietness. The following day I went in to have a better look at them.and picked up a red one.

¡Madre mia! It’s clear bid shapes jumped out, it’s confidentially colour, dark transparent reds alongside opaque muted cadmium. Enough light areas to let it breathe That was the solution to ‘Pomegranate Party’. I cancelled everything I had planned for the day and got to work mixing colours. I launched in with large shapes, added, subtracted, responded until finally it stopped asking for more.

For the first time it sat happily alongside its neighbours in the studio.

I was aiming not to recreate but to capture the energy and vitality of the small composition. Slavishly copying would have killed the energy. In my last post I talked about scaling up from a small ink drawing and this process was similar, by their very nature these small works wether ink or paintings have that energy that is often lost when working large. Pomegranate Party  was almost, there it just needed that final solution. It will be shown at Galeria Centro in Compéta as part of the Art Walk at Easter.