Three Drawings

Welcome to my first blog. As I’m not sure what to write about yet, or how to write about it, I've decided to tell it as it is this morning. I came into my little studio at about 8am, which is quite late for me, with 7am starts being more usual. But it is very dark and dreary outside and I felt like sitting down in front of the tv news with a second cup of coffee. 

I’ve got three oil paintings on the go, but they are a bit too wet to work on so once upstairs I began some drawings in an A3 pad, which is quite a regular habit with me between paintings. I thought I could record how they developed over the next few days, so after about an hour and a half working quite quickly I had these three layered drawings which you can click on if you want to see more detail.

The first two, one with red and orange, the other green, I'll probably work on tomorrow morning, but I began reworking the third drawing there and then because it was horrible and I hated the colours and marks that had somehow got onto the paper. After a while the drawing looked much healthier so I took another photo. I'll work on it again tomorrow probably.

At this point I'd like to explain that I have been working in a non-figurative way recently, wanting to be free of all constraints and to be as inventive as possible. I wanted to find out just how creative I could be at last, after several years painting figuratively, albeit in a semi-abstract way, but still under the tyranny of the object. I started exploring these new feelings in series of A3 drawings beginning about six months ago. I realised pretty soon that the drawings were quite meaningful to me, and so recently my paintings have also become very abstract. The three January drawings reflect these current ideas where I have no agendas, no desire to imitate; no vanishing points, no vases, no fruit, no flowers, no landscape etc., and no literary or literal associations. This may turn out badly of course, but it's fun, and very exciting just the same. 

And just a thought. I came across this famous statement of Picasso's about 60 years ago and never fully understood it until recently:

"I do not seek, I find."