I had a great day on Saturday with the group of dedicated and enthusiastic students at the Drawing Horses workshop. We began by using charcoal very freely, and everyone, including some people who had never felt comfortable with or even tried drawing, did some splendid work. I then did a short demo explaining the principles behind my book “Draw Horses in 15 Minutes” and the rest of day was spent building on these two approaches. I am looking forward to more classes next year. Watch this website for further information over the winter.
Whitespace Gallery, 76, East Crosscauseway, Edinburgh EH8 8HQ
22nd to 27th September, 2018 12pm to 5pm
Private view Friday, 21st September, 2018
The Green Thought
This exhibition has been my project for the summer and I have been working on it since May. I decided to be bold and make three large canvases, sized 1200 x 900 mm, for the space in Whitespace Gallery, Edinburgh. The idea gradually came to me on train journeys, first on a trip to Newcastle to see the David Bomberg exhibition, and then on a day out to Dundee to see the Duncan of Jordanstone degree show.
Ares in the woods Photograph
Detail charcoal drawing
Detail charcoal study
Where it started
I had spent the first few months of the year “dissecting” a complicated photograph sent to me by a customer. The picture was of a spotted horse in a twiggy winter woodland. I tackled this by gridding the photo into 64 squares and finding the miraculous unexpected abstractions within each thumbnail. The train journeys gave me the chance to look at the 50 million shades of green that existed in the landscape, near and far, and which would transform my twiggy drawings in paintings.
Dark trees Oil painting 1200 x 900 mm
From the train to Dundee Oil painting 1200 x 900
The Plum Tree Oil Painting 800 x 500 mm
How I did it
I selected three photos and gradually worked across each of them to create the three large paintings. In each case, there were moments when I despaired and lost track of how the compositon was going to work. I masked off all but the crucial areas so that I could observe more clearly and prevent my mind interfering and confusing me. The result was that I achieved three coherent paintings. I did the same in the smaller paintings of the plum tree leaves.
My plan was to build on the exhibition by adding larger versions of the charcoal thumbnail drawings, which are beautiful in themselves, but which, I found, did not translate to a larger scale of 800 x 800 mm without me taking a completely different approach. It could be that I did not have time to create very detailed drawings on this scale, which are at least as challenging as making a painting, or it could be that after this intense period of rigour and scrutiny it is time to have a play.
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“The horse that a master miniaturist has drawn tens of thousands of times eventually comes close to God’s vision of a horse, and the artist knows this through experience and deep in his soul. The horse that his hand draws quickly from memory is rendered with talent, great effort, and insight, and it is a horse that approaches Allah’s horse. However the ear that is drawn before the hand has accumulated any knowledge, before the artist has weighed and considered what it is doing … will always be a flaw” p. 405 My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
ALL TOO HUMAN TATE BRITAIN APRIL 20 A PERSONAL ACCOUNT
Walter Richard Sickert La Hollandaise c. 1906
Stanley Spencer Patricia Preece 1933
This exhibition was a perspective on British figurative art over the past 100 years, the focus being on painters who worked with the human figure as their main subject. Featured artists included Sickert (1860-1942), Stanley Spencer (1891-1959), William Coldstream (1908-1987)and David Bomberg (1890-1957) from the earlier part of the century, to the post war generation (Francis Bacon (1909-1992), Lucian Freud (1922-2011), R. B.Kitaj (1932-2007), Frank Auerbach (b. 1931), Leon Kossoff (b. 1926), Paula Rego (b. 1935) and F. N. Souza (1924-2002). Contemporary artists on show included Cecily Brown (b. 1969), Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (b. 1977) and Jenny Saville (b. 1970)
William Coldstream Portrait of Walter A Brandt 1962-3
Euan Uglow Georgia 1973
This show was a revelation to me. I attended the Ruskin School of Drawing in Oxford at a period when it was dominated by the Coldstream emphasis on precise linear drawing from observation. Excellent training, no doubt, but contrary to my temperament, particularly at that time when art was my only means of expression. I became distressed and frustrated at the lack of ability to express myself in this environment. Artists who shared such an experience at the Slade School, for example, include Patrick Heron and David Bomberg himself.
David Bomberg Ronda Valley (detail) 1954
Leon Kossoff Self Portrait 11 1972
Dorothy Mead Reclining Figure 1954
Frank Auerbach Looking Towards Mornington Crescent Station, Night 1972-3
This exhibition showed that the Coldstream approach was dominant in England, but by no means definitive. Taboos were broken by David Bomberg himself who focussed on the “spirit of the mass” and subjective experience. Many artists such as Auerbach, Kossoff and Mead were indebted to Bomberg’s classes at Borough Polytechnic.
Lucian Freud Two Plants 1977-80
Lucian Freud David and Eli 2003-4
Lucian Freud worked from intense observation but eventually transcended the extreme objectivity of the Coldstream school in his sensuous handling of paint and unflinching scrutiny and humanity of his subjects.
Francis Bacon Portrait of Isabel Rawsthorne 1966
Francis Bacon Triptych (detail) 1974-77
Another taboo was crossed and ignored by the self taught maestro, Francis Bacon, who distorted the figure in extreme ways and used photographic sources to express a deep sense of angst and pain at the human existence. The Goan artist Souza painted in a symbolic and non-representational way.
Paula Rego The Family 1988
R.B. Kitaj To Live in Peace (The Singers) 1973-4
In the modernist aesthetic of the Coldstream school, formal abstract qualities of line, shape and colour were considered most important. “Illustration” and “narrative” was frowned upon as somehow inferior, yet Kitaj and Paula Rego painted human social dynamics and stories as their subject matter.
Cecily Brown Teenage Wildlife 2003
Jenny Saville Reverse (detail) 2002-3
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye Coterie of Questions 2015
Younger figurative painters included Cecily Brown, Jenny Saville and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
It was not until very recently that I returned to working from the life model in my attempt to improve my painting and knowledge of anatomy. I did this because I wanted to develop my equestrian art and there is little on offer in that department. I found myself still working in the traditional way that I had been taught. David Bomberg termed this ideology the “hand and eye disease”, and although some artists transcended it (Lucian Freud being a prime example), many became limited by it.
It was only because of my need to express deeper feeling and different ways of working that I have recently encountered teachers and artists who think in another way. Alan McGowan, Martin Campos and Pauline Agnew come to mind. I was amazed that the early studies had remained so powerful in my life and that I had been unable until now to work in another way, in spite of an inner energy in myself that forced me to circumnavigate this ideology. Only by working freely with colour on fabric (well outside the artistic canon) had I been able to work naturally.
The world has greatly changed especially over the past 50 years. In Britain we have a more liberal and prosperous life. Homosexuality is legalised, women are far more equal in expectation and reality. The bitterness of gay artists such as Bacon is expressed as a scream of pain and frustration in his work, but the art world of the time was also full of misogyny which made it difficult for a woman to progress. Fashions in art also come and go. For years figurative art was neglected and unregarded, while abstraction and conceptualism became the way to work. Even Lucian Freud was unable to sell his work for years, but he kept going in his metier. There are signs that the human body and human experience is becoming acknowledged again as a form of art and figurative art.
This was a marvellous and complex show, and I appreciate the curators for bringing together such diverse approaches to making art. Apologies for the artists I have omitted. The Tate catalogue “All Too Human” is excellent, with full illustrations and several interesting articles about this period.
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Preparations for the Class (detail) Degas (about 1877) pastel on paper
Jockeys in the rain (detail) Degas (1883) Pastel on tracing paper
Degas and his use of pastels National Gallery London
This was a fascinating exhibition of Degas drawings, which showed how working methods change with fashion and with available materials. During the second half of the 19th century, new dyes became available which were used for paper and pigment. These materials were quickly adopted by artists and altered the way they worked. This exhibition focused on Degas and his use of pastels.
Degas always started his work with charcoal drawings, but although at first he was a master in the traditional use of pastel, with a single layer of chalk, carefully blended and left unfixed, plus a few highlights (“Preparations“), gradually he became much more experimental, building layers of pastel with fixative until the surface was firm and translucent. On this surface he could then draw more texture and detail, often with rough scribbly strokes, unlike the traditional blending, and with brilliant colour (“Jockeys“)
Dancers on a bench (detail) Degas (about 1898) Pastel on tracing paper
Woman in a tub (detail) Degas (1896-1901) Pastel on paper
Eventually Degas began to draw with charcoal on tracing paper. The transparent paper allowed him to play with his drawings, to reverse them, take monoprints from them and to create multiple images, and to experiment with composition. It was a free starting point. He would then fix the charcoal drawings and have them mounted on a rougher textured board to create a stronger drawing base which also gave more tooth to the tracing paper. At the same time he often asked for the mounter to add more sheets of tracing paper to the original so that the whole drawing space was extended. On this he would work with pastels to create the whole layered surface, often covering the original charcoal completely. Final brilliant detail was added in relief by dipping the sticks of pastel into water to liquefy them and leaving the marks unfixed.
I was amazed and inspired by how unconventional and innovative Degas was, over 100 years ago, also so interested to learn just how his work looks how it does. These are (apparently) simple processes which I can and will try. I like the idea of creating multiple images and also experimenting with pastel in new ways. I later went to Tate Britain (“All too Human” exhibition) and discovered that pastel is the preferred medium of Paula Rego. There is an excellent catalogue accompanying the Degas exhibition: Drawn in Colour – published by the National Gallery. Thanks to Catherine Froy for telling me about this show.
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There is nothing like an exhibition brief for developing ideas. It is the fulcrum for focussing on what one’s real energy and interests currently are. For this exhibition “Wild Spaces” at the Whitehouse Gallery, Kircudbright, in south-west Scotland, I started with a large drawing of “Ares”, a Knabstrup horse. These are a particular Danish breed, established 200 years ago, and known for their spectacular speckled coats, as well as their talent for dressage and showjumping. I liked the original photo because the horse was photographed in a winter woodland which acted as a kind of dramatic camouflage.
But where to go from this big charcoal work of the horse with the black markings? I tried abstracting the main shapes of the drawing, but realised that I needed to go deeper (more of which later). I also remembered a lithographic print made around 2012, and returned to this for inspiration for some playful black and white drawings/paintings on canvas. The first time I had felt so free with paint. Eureka! I built on that spontaneous foundation with acrylic paint and charcoal, always working very freely.
At the same time, by way of this exhibition brief, I was practising my knowledge and skill of using oil paint in a traditional way to explore the form and colour of the horse, and decided to use a dramatic photograph as source materials. In contrast to the “flash” drawings above this was laborious and took a period of months to develop. I did a lot of basic drawing, alongside other oil studies of horses, in particular their heads, to make sure I could translate the anatomy into paint, however loosely. This was the meticulous side of my practice.
Gradually these two aspects came together as I became more confident about painting horses in a content. I began to bring together the freedom of the Wild Spaces work with the tight analysis of the studies. In the process I realised that I was interested and inspired by horses in their own social groups. I began a series of oil paintings on this theme, imperfect and exploratory, but thrilling for me to be able to introduce colour into my passionate depictions of the horse.
And what about the large Knapstrub drawing of “Ares”? How to work with that? The only way for me to truly honour this, with all its contrasts and textures, was to take it small section at a time, slow and deliberate. Here is (the beginning of) where my exhibition brief took me!
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In July 2017 I visited northern Scotland for a course entitled Horse, Sense and Soul at Findhorn Foundationled by Pam BillingeandLindsay Fovargue. As always with Findhorn, the course was of the highest quality and the group committed and interesting people from all over the world. This was about 8 months ago, and in the mysterious way associated with experience, learning and Findhorn in particular, only now am I beginning to consciously assimilate the message of the week.
This message was about the value of just being – emotionally open and prepared to tune into our inner being. For that is where we communicate with horses, heart to heart and without intention or expectation. Their herd world, essential to survival, depends on acute awareness of subtle movements and energies that is usually lost on us humans. We depend greatly on oral language to communicate and forget to acknowledge that we are animals with the same faculties as other creatures.
We also tend to dominate animals, especially domestic species. However much we love and respect them, we are responsible for them, and also benefit from them, either as companions or workers. That puts us in a more powerful position. Horses have been pivotal to our development as a species, and there is a huge and rich associated culture of history, skill and habit. Only in the twentieth century did we become independent of the horse as a means of transport, as is beautifully described by Ulrich Raulff in his book, “Farewell to the Horse”.
This history, combined with the deep emotions such as fear, love and passion aroused by the power and beauty of the horse make it difficult to step outside the traditional wisdom and leave our controlling egos behind. Instead we need to learn to respect the horse for its qualities as a unique spiritual being which has much to teach us.
This was a difficult lesson for me last summer at the “Horse, Sense and Soul” workshop in Findhorn. I have become aware that horses are a strong emotional trigger for me and that there is also a lot of fear in my relationship with them. These emotions are expressed in my equestrian art but I would like to explore a new kind of art which celebrates and respects the informal nature of the horse, particularly in its relation within the herd, and which reflects a new harmony in myself.
For another and more critical viewpoint on this topic, click here
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Working from the heart can be a difficult leap of faith when one is on a learning curve. At the end of 2017, after a year of studying, including social media marketing and goal setting, I began to feel like an automaton, or, more topically, a robot. I was feeling exhausted and soul-less. Focus, clarity and discipline are great and necessary, and I had a wonderful year in many ways, but there is more mystery to life and its unexpected developments than we can predict.
I was also studying how to make my website work better for me. I have had a website for many years but the current one is more complex and has much more scope. That too involves a steep learning curve. As for social media, I was a novice. But how that has changed! I am still a novice but I appreciate the personal and social advantages of these platforms and I am beginning to understand the opportunities for promoting myself as an artist. The feedback and sharing on social media is fabulous. The point is that it needs to be genuine. If the post has authentic feeling that transmits even over the web, almost with the immediacy of a phone conversation.
After months of strenuous effort in the tech department, it was therefore a great relief to discover quite by chance (in an airport) Ali Smith’s “Autumn” a wonderfully fluid and poetic book about the relationship between an old man and a gifted child and the sharing of his rich and creative life and his love (as a young man) of an extraordinary woman artist in the 1960s. I myself began to soften and regain a belief in intuition and chance, which are so important in creative work.
Monty Don reminded me of the importance of working from the heart again when I found (another airport discovery) his latest book about gardening, “Down to Earth”. He says: “gardens have to come first from the heart or they will never reach the head”… If you are not “pleasing yourself first and foremost or you run the risk of pleasing nobody”. I have found too when making my art work that people have an acute sense of truth, and know what really comes from the inner self and heart. Strategy, focus and goals are undoubtedly helpful, but passion and belief and even uncertainty have to come first.
YoYo Ma, the cellist who created the Silk Road Ensemble, also says “I make everything natural and true from the heart”. .. and … “ Art is when we arrive back where we started and see this place as for the first time”. Yo Yo Ma travels the world with his group of passionate musicians from different countries, often using a ancient instruments and traditional techniques.
By another miraculous chance, I picked up the discussion “Only Artists” on Radio 4 between Toyah Wilcox and Alice Lowe last week. Wilcox and Lowe agree that (often contrary to received wisdom) for them the instinctive voice is the right one, of far more value than the intellectual or technical. Though I would cautiously claim that the rational always has its value. Artists also often have a natural spirit of adventure and curiosity which is with them all their life. Wilcox speaks about working with Sir Laurence Olivier and observing his extraordinary curiosity and willingness to experiment for his entire life. For the artist, she claims, “work is why I am born”, there is no need to justify it.
I loved the moment when she and Lowe discussed those mysterious moment of spontaneous “super-consciousness” when creativity occurs in a flash with brilliant and conclusive success.. “you’ve nailed it”. But, as I wrote in a previous blog, these moments are really the outcome of much experience and work and processing of ideas, even perhaps the carried-over experience of previous lives, who knows. No wonder high profile artists are under pressure to reclaim that state of mind and do so via chemicals of various kinds, including alcohol, and/or via the their relationships.
This blog, “Working from the Heart” is at present a collection of associated ideas and snippets, which await the magic moment of superconscious synthesis!
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During my life as an artist, a passion for the act of drawing and painting has led me through a long winding road of psychological twists and turns, emotional bumps in the road, some unexpected diversions and very many challenges. I have always been searching for a place where I felt both freely expressive and technically reasonably competent. Both components are essential. Without feeling and expression, art for me is meaningless. Without knowledge, which means both skill and ideas, it is impossible to develop. It has taken me many years to find this place and I am of course still learning and still discovering my voice and my language. I have always tried to match my work to a genuine feeling of passion. At one period I found expression in the free flowing application of dye to fabric, and I was a successful crafts-person for many years. I still enjoy the feel and intimacy of fabric and the under-the-radar voice of fashion and clothing. I thank my inspiration from other fabric painters such as the amazing Carole Waller and Kaffe Fassett.
I knew that textiles were not the only medium for me, however. I originally started as an artist on paper and wanted to have that level of control that is achievable with charcoal, pencil or pen, but not with the looser brushstrokes I used in dye painting. I began searching for a way to develop my designs and started to explore drawing and painting. I attended Glasgow School of Art as a full time student in the Painting School for 4 years in my quest to learn more. The focus here was on contemporary art practice and history, so I had to learn a completely new way of thinking. I am very grateful for this and the quality of the experience at Glasgow.
I then returned to textile practice and translated some of my conceptual ideas about space and architecture into cloth (see above). I had now achieved one goal of how to develop my work intellectually, but I was still restricted to working with dye. I pushed this as far as I could by creating abstract paintings with thickened dye rather than paint. I wanted to explore the cultural limitations and expectations around textile art.
But one winter’s day around 2008 I decided to reach out to a local artists’ community at Dunfermline Printmakers. This opened up a whole new world for me. The unexpected textural qualities of print, whether in etching, dry-point or stone lithography, had the same random element as textile work, but with added control and the the fact that I was working on PAPER. An entire new existence and form of expression that happily contained ideas rather than purely a sensual hit. The Edinburgh Printmakers Studio continues to be an inspiration.
Several years and a few exhibitions along the line, I discovered that actually I preferred just doing the drawings and if necessary reproducing them in giclee form rather than creating original prints. My horse drawings of this time were a glorious explosion of passion and energy which had been stored up since I was a small child, and were also a celebration of having recently owned and loved horses for many years. Success ensued, including commissions and awards, and in particular the commission to write a book about drawing horses “Draw Horses in 15 Minutes”. I love to write, I love everything equestrian, and I love to draw, so I took on this challenge and the book has been a success.
In the process, however, I started to discover gaps in my knowledge. How much anatomy did I actually know? Did I really understand about tone and colour? So much of what I did was intuitive, and once again I realised that I needed to dig a bit deeper in order to take another step forward. Another journey ensured, starting with a human anatomy course at the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford with celebrated artist and anatomist, Sarah Simblet, in July 2015. Very inspiring, and I have followed up with numerous anatomy and drawing and painting classes, both human and equine-related, with celebrated artists and experts such as Edinburgh-based artist, Alan McGowan.
In January 2015 my next step in my life as an artist began when I started to teach myself painting. Thanks to Iain Simpson for his step by step introduction and invaluable references in the Open College of Art texts. I was gradually learning this new medium, but still could not relate it to the energy and certainty of the textile work. Then in 2016 I heard about an Irish art teacher, Pauline Agnew, who teaches on line courses. Pauline truly reaches the parts that no other teachers do, and together with her input and that of Philadelphian artist Martin Campos, painting has started to feel like a natural form of expression of me which combines colour, texture and feeling and also precision – and which is a satisfying arena in which to explore drawing and the incredible properties of colour. One of my aims was to create equestrian paintings. I have reached “Go” with increasing confidence in painting the horse’s form and anatomy in colour.
One of my aims over the past two years was to create equestrian paintings. I have now reached “Go” with increasing confidence in painting the horse’s form and anatomy in colour. This is a traditional approach for me but I have great satisfaction in working in oil paint with increased understanding about what makes an image work.
That is not to say that I have abandoned drawing (of course) or working on cloth. For me there is still something incredibly liberating about the pots of brilliant liquid dye and the welcoming texture of wool, silk or cotton. Plus the fact that fabric exists in a different and in some ways a freer place than painting. But I am thrilled with the joyful experience of making visual statements about what I love in paint, and with my life as an artist to date.
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A great trip to Venice in October to catch the 2017 Venice Biennale in the Giardini and the Arsenale. The Giardini is a long established exhibition site and many countries have a permanent pavilion here. There is also a major site for selected artists in the Giardini. The Arsenale (“arsenal”) is the old dock area of Venice, and a further exhibition featuring selected artists is staged in the spectacular long building once used for rope making. The year the exhibition was curated by Christine Macel, curator of the Pompidou Centre, Paris. The focus was on community and communication.
I liked the fact that in the Venice Biennale 2017 the human body was acknowledged as medium of expression. The extraordinary anatomical constructs of Piny are one example. The stitched and padded “skins” by Touloub is another. Marwan paints huge distorted portraits and Firenze’s semi abstracts show the human figure in a specific space. Eileen Quinian photographs her own body and creates abstract and fragmented images. Zec’s installation in a nearby church was a moving example of how traditional figurative art can be very relevant today. Tracey Moffat in the Australian Pavilion has an installation of 10 large photographs entitled “Body Remembers”. A woman returns to an isolated ruined house in the Australian outback. The title is inspired by the poem “Body, remember” (1918) by Greek poet Cavafy – “an exhortation to remember the power of desire and passions to do with forbidden love”.
Many of the exhibits focused on hand made work, such as Lanceta and Walther, who respectively work with weaving and stitching as forms of expression. Other makers such as Mark Bradford, in USA pavilion, made his huge pieces mainly from the papers used in hair salons to dye and tint hair. Bradford worked as a hair stylist before becoming an artist.
