Things seen - de keyser, Newman

Barnett Newman,“The Blessing,” 1944, oil crayon and wax crayon on paper.





Raoul de keyser, Untitled, 2005





Raoul de Keyser, Detail, 2005

Steady as she goes...

Bit less time for blogging in the last few days, I've been Preparing works for art fairs: Art Brussels & ARCO - Watch this space for images of works that will be on view at the fairs. I will also be changing my main website soon...a new look and hopefully more user friendly as the archive of images and texts grows. Until my next post here are two drawings I made in 2007 from a series titled "Sonbou" both are coloured pencil on paper (with elements of collage) 32.5x25cm:

Chris Ashley at Room for painting Room for drawing

Chris Ashley has just opened a show at room for painting room for drawing in San Francisco. He is showing a beautiful group of paintings called the "blue and green paintings" Here is an installation view and the invite with press text..

For our third installation at the gallery we are showing Chris Ashley's blue and green paintings in the room for painting and Scott MacLeod's pencil drawings from 1960/62 in the room for paper. The exhibitions open on Thursday, January 8th with a reception for the artists from 5:30 to 7:30, and run through Saturday, February 7th.

Oakland based artist Chris Ashley has gained respect from art world insiders over the last few years for a unique series of HTML coded drawings he posts daily on his blog. A year's worth of prints from this online body of work was recently exhibited at David Cunningham Gallery in San Francisco. Parallel to this effort, Ashley has maintained a disciplined studio practice as an accomplished painter. Over the last three years he has been working on a formally related group of small canvases, oil and industrial metalic paint on linen, which he refers to simply as the Blue & Green Paintings. We are pleased to be able to present a representative selection from this series. A catalog of the exhibition with an essay by James Harris will be available from the gallery.

Corrections - in process

A few images of things that are occupying my attention over the last few days. Painting can be so slow no matter how much time you invest, it's not all physical intervention either...a lot of time is spent just being around the paintings, looking and looking...but that's good, all part of the process.

In process - Territories XX

Luz Silenciosa

Luz Silenciosa is a film by Mexican director Carlos Reygadas. I saw it last night and I think it is a very beautiful film - really unlike anything I have seen before. I did think of Dreyer's Ordet but Reygadas' use of the specific qualities of place (northern Mexico) and people (the Menonite community) create a totaly unique environment and mood which give the film a great intensity.
Here is the trailer, though I feel it is important to say that there is no musical soundtrack in the actual film.




A bit less time in the studio over last few days. A number of smaller paintings are underway characterized by a central lens or viewing hole which is usually oval in shape. Here is one in process:








A studio view taken yesterday. "Luz silenciosa" coming into the studio at last, after weeks of dullness and rain:

Finally, to all those who visit this blog, very best wishes for 2009!

Territories IV (Rameau)

Studio view this morning with Territories IV.




It's taken a while to get this one how I want. Dark light, the sense of energized space, the criss cross of shadows forming a dense lattice etc. It measures 125x105cm.




A detail...

Territories XVII

Territories XVII (...and I watched you disappear), 1999-2008, oil & spray paint on canvas, 65x54cm





Studio view with Territories XVII...

In process - territories (shift)

This is one of the paintings currently underway at the moment. Quite airy, light and thinly painted. It measures approximately 125x105cm.

Territories III

Some paintings are more of a mystery (even for me) in terms of where they come from: their source. The space is almost urban...very dense. A urgent state of mind: the dominant yellow. This painting really is a place in its own right. A slightly earlier version was reproduced in the blog recently.

In process...medio día

Comments

Hopefully, this blog gives a glimpse of the processes surrounding my work as a painter. All manner of things might be reflected on, and in many ways the blog functions as a kind of online notebook. I won't be able to respond to all comments within the blog itself so for any extended comments, questions or reflections I suggest sending me an email (to the address on the left) and I will be happy to reply!

End of Autumn...Francis Ponge

A naked chestnut tree that I saw this afternoon on a walk in Zalla.

It has been one of the wettest autumns I can remember. Everyday it rains. I miss the sunlight. And nothing moves me more than those sharp sunny days of autumn with a light full of contrast and clarity. I am posting here The end of autumn by Francis Ponge. He knew how to approach the things of this world, disecting them and opening them up into new configurations, making us see things afresh:

The End Of Autumn

All of autumn, in the end, is nothing but a cold infusion. Dead leaves of every sort steep in the rain. No fermentation, no production of alcohol: we’ll have to wait until spring to judge the effects of a cold compress on a wooden leg.
Sorting the ballots is a disorderly procedure. All the doors of the polling place slam open and shut. Throw it out! Throw it all out! Nature rips up her manuscripts, demolishes her bookshelves furiously clubs down her last fruit.
Then she abruptly gets up from her work table. She suddenly seems immense: hatless, head in the fog. Swinging her arms, she rapturously breathes in the icy, intellectually clarifying wind. Days are short, night falls fast; there’s no time for comedy.
The earth, in the stratosphere with the other heavenly bodies, looks serious again. The lit up part is narrower, encroached on by valleys of shadow. Its shoes, like tramp’s, soak up water and make music.
In this frog-farm, this salubrious amphibiguity, everything regains strength, leaps from stone to stone, changes pasture. Streams proliferate.
This is what’s called a good clean-up, with no respect for convention! Dressed or naked, soaked to the marrow.
And it doesn’t dry up right away, it goes on and on. Three months of salutary reflection with no bathrobe, or loofah, no vascular reaction. But its sturdy constitution resists.
So, when the little buds begin to jut out, they know what they’re doing, what it’s all about. That’s why they come out so cautiously, red-faced, benumbed, they know what lies ahead.
But thereby hangs another tale, perhaps from the black rule, though it smells different, I’ll now use to draw the line under this one.

Translated from French by C.K. Williams in Francis Ponge – Selected Poems.

Esta mañana...

Territories XVIII

Territories XVII (Spinoza), 2008, oil on linen, 80x70cm

In process - territories (pink)

In process - esta mañana

Things seen - Corot

I first saw paintings by Corot when I was still a student in London. The silver light and lightness of touch always make an impression on me. More recently I have been looking at his drawings. Here are a couple...a lesson in economy of means (but what scale they have!):




Sketch book (1857), landscape with tall trees with a horseman, a figure reading amidst trees and a sketch of a head.






Landscape with a figure near a tree, pen & brown ink, 20.6x16cm, circa 1852.

Dispersal

I have spent the last few days acquiring new stretchers, linen & materials and preparing things for new paintings. Work already underway - images to follow soon. Meanwhile here's a painting from last year that I have been looking at again: Dispersal 2007, Oil, Enamel & Acrylic on Linen, 80 x 63 cm.

Things seen - Richard Gorman

Richard Gorman uses a very reduced yet suggestive vocabulary to create subtly playful paintings. Certain forms are constantly explored and reworked through minor changes in the configurations. Here are two images he sent me today, Overlapper 1 & 2, 2008, both oil on linen, 80cm x 80cm.

Ayer, medio día: en proceso...

Bethany drawing VII

Back in 2004 I spent a couple of very productive months doing a residency at the Albers Foundation in Connecticut. The works on paper produced there marked a turning point and I'm still harvesting the fruits of that stay in one way or another. Here is one of the drawings I made there: Bethany drawing VII, 2004, coloured pencil & graphite on paper, 46x38cm.

Oker III

Sorting through my digital archive again today. Came across this image of a painting I made last year and haven't seen for a good while "Oker III, 2007, oil on canvas, 50x45cm (it's currently consigned to Rubicon Gallery in Dublin). It never ceases to amaze me how important it is to hide works away for a time. When seen afresh it is then one knows if they are really completed or not.
I'm very pleased with this one.

Things seen - Milton Avery

Green sea, 1958, oil on canvas, 18x24"



Blue bay and dunes, 1961, oil on canvas, 40x50"

The consolation

The concert accordion. Joseph Petric. The Baroque: Rameau, Padre Antonio Soler and J.S. Bach. Countless times I have listened to these recordings. They are a marvel…a consolation. The accordion – its sound world is delicate and complex: the sound from an anonymous street corner somewhere in Paris or Buenos Aires yet like the organ can express a wide range of tonal depths (more intimately perhaps). Petric’s recording of Luciano Berio’s Sequenza XIII for accordion is a particular favourite, what journeys take place in that piece. Just the other day I read this in E.M. Cioran’s Notebooks 1957-1972:

“25 December - The sign that I like a fragment of music, that it addresses that which is deepest in me, is the desire I feel when I hear it, to turn out the light, if it is night or to close the shutters if it is day. As if I were listening in a tomb. I usually listen to Bach in this way. Bach, over the years, my most faithful companion”

From NYC

A younger artist I got to know recently, Fernando Villena , sent me this image he took the other day of St. Patrick's cathedral in New York (look at the colour of that sky). Fernando currently lives and works between New York & Bilbao.

In process

In no time at all...with very little intervention, this painting already has a lot to offer...