Colour and rain

I can't help feeling the irony of painting a series of panoramic views of the hills and ranges that ring Albury Wodonga in this green, green time. The landscape at the moment is just so beautiful in a lush, green way. It's so easy on the eye.
The trip up the Olympic Highway is spectacular with the lush growth and the wonderful canola yellow. Usually the yellow of the crop is a bright patch in a drearier dry landscape and in the drought years it was the only colour, apart from the blue of the rainless sky, in a very very dry and dead vista.
So now I am painting the hills of Wodonga and am trying to get the intensity of the grassy patches, the olives and brightness of the well drenched trees and the far off blue of the distant ranges.
It does feel a bit weird. Two years ago for the Hume Wodonga Art Prize I painted the hills south west
of Wodonga and the painting was yellow ochre and gold and umber.

Yellow Afternoon 2011

Weather Changing I, II 2011

Anyway for this upcoming exhibition I will be 'in the momen't and just attempt to solve the problems at hand.

Apart from evoking the sense of distance, keeping the work loose and dynamic yet keeping a degree of measurement the palette will change with each session in the studio.

 Working quickly before work need to broaden out the scale and knock back the surface.

 Better scale to show a city nestled withing the hills.

Shaking up the whole surface with a warm ochre wash.

Starting number 2, learning from the first to be simpler.

 

 Light and dark and that green.

Knocking back the saturation.

Keeping loose and adding information is the challenge. The start of a painting is fun and exciting. Then the fun becomes something to hold onto - best to walk away at times. I like working for an hour or two then letting the things dry and coming back later.

Early Spring sunshine and warm weather

In this part of the world it is warm and sunny, incredible spring weather. Not long ago thermals were an essential wardrobe item.

Yesterday afternoon spent beside Hume Weir, now at 99% capacity. So full with the countryside so green it's unbelievable. Intensely emerald green grass is just beautiful and the green sets off the gum leaves really well.

In Albury the magnolias are fully out, blossom everywhere, daffodils and bulbs too. The perfume of the wild growing freesias on the nature corridor from Nail Can to the river is exquisite.

Re painting - after the second session on the first work it seems that my day in the sunny green landscape has affected the palette. Early days yet but getting a better sense of the sweeping vista from Eastern Hill back to Wodonga.

Happy Winterhappy 4-6pm Saturday August 24

Winterhappy opened yesterday with many friends attending. The show consisted of wooden assemblages by Susie Losch, black walnut dyed paper constructions by Nan Hoysted, oil paintings by Mary-Rose Riley, mixed media works by Portia Janson and my six oil paintings.

 L-R Portia, MJ, Dorothy from GIGS, Mary-Rose, Nan and Susie. It was a great afternoon with a big crowd of friends to help celebrate the show.

Back into the studio this afternoon to get on with the work for the exhibition The Experiment which is to open October 7 at Arts Space Wodonga.
When I start new paintings I always work with acrylics initially. It has been a few weeks since I have studied the photographs of the hills surrounding Albury and Wodonga. I did a few graphite sketches to get away from the photographic image and to loosen up.

This sketch is looking north towards Red Light Hill and Table Top beyond. Between my position and the distant hill lies the airport, Lavington and Springdale Heights, a big slice of Albury.

This sketch was made from another composite panorama looking south from Eastern Hill over South Albury to Huon Hill and Wodonga showing the gentle ring of hills to the south west of the city.

This is a big canvas and I like to work flat at first but also work it vertically so I can get back.

This is the first stage of the painting. Previous to this session I had coated the 1.8 x 60 cm canvas with a mixture of talc, glue and gesso to roughen up the surface and give some extra tooth. This is what I did to the 40 canvases for the series of trees. The original photo is from Eastern Hill taken late on a winter's afternoon. The foreground has much contrast between the long shadows and the pale grasses and shafts of sunlight. Then the middle ground is a long way off which then recedes a few kilometres to a broad view of the city of Wodonga and hills. The curving foreground acts to unite the vast breadth of the view and will be good. Much work is to be done but I want to keep an energy and freshness. the panoramas will need to sit happily with the 40 small works featuring the trees.

Final session on the skies

Last opportunity to play with the little canvases.
Although the oil paint takes so long to dry and the installation is next week I've enjoyed using the oils again.

Sunday Sunny Sunday

Gearing up for afternoon in the studio. Made it for a few hours yesterday. I used to feel hard done by only managing one day per week in the studio compared to a previous life years before but managed to turn that 'poor me' thinking around and realise how fortunate I am to even have one uninterrupted  day to get heaps of work done.
It is very good to have a separate space to work in no matter how old and crappy. I think there is some sort of relationship between the 'new beautness' of a studio and the amount of work done in it. I've studied and then taught in many old ex army huts that served well as very productive and creative spaces. I have known people to have studios built for them only to never ever use the space as a studio because it wasn't to get dirty...ridiculous.The studios at my work place are now 15 years old. They are used on a daily basis and still look good because of the philosophy of leaving the space better than when you found it. Sort of like the National Park adage - take your mess with you and leave it as you have found it.
So for fear of realising I am procrastinating I will show the one work from yesterday.

It is always nerve wracking for me to go from the quickness and lightness of using acrylics to oils. It's been a method since art school to start to paint with acrylics because of the directness, the ease of working with colour in acrylic form, cleaning up with water, the ease of mixing - everything about acrylics I love.
I have never tended to start a work with oils because of the need to use solvent to get a work happening all over quite quickly. The water based oils are terrific and I'd say they will improve. I am happy using them and can combine them with straight oil paints as long as the proportion of waterbased oil is higher than the solvent based paint. I keep the analogy of an egg mayonnaise in mind.
But when I transfer to oils with these very small paintings because of the density and weight of oil colour I have to be confident because one needs to do the whole thing and bury what is already there in order to push the work.
The work above is the first session with the oils, I'm establishing the zones of tone and colour and there is much more to do.

Limbered up on the other five canvases this afternoon and can see how stiff I was with the first work. Now I can wait until the oil paint dries - in this weather it will be at least 4 or 5 days before I could put paint on the top again and will need to do it with fingers or a spatula rather than drag a brush across the surface.

 Am following the sense of direction as per the actual sky I saw but as with any painting the paint is far more important to me than any silly sense of accuracy. The sunrise each morning is unique, we've all witnessed the sky in its magnificent mode whether morning or evening. These little paintings are literal enough. So I'm enjoying the accidental effects of tone and colour with late additions and reworking.

The sense of movement is very grand in this one.

These aren't finished. This image will have references to the ground in the foreground. Also colour is something to exploit in paint. I am using heavy viscous oil paint to capture a sense of the celebratory early morning light show - possibly counter intelligent but a great process.

If each of the little paintings has a different mood then I will be pleased.

This composition will have more detail in the foreground and a sense of looking across to other hills.

This will be loosened, the dollop of warm orange near the mauve shape has helped.
The blue in the foreground will be buried under more dramatic darker tones. At dawn everything is backlit by the sky so the trick is to suggest detail within a narrow band of dark cold colour.

Sunday - studio and the Sex Pistols

Great viewing this afternoon on iview - the film on the Sex Pistols, The Filth and the Fury. Hard to believe it's nearly 40 years since that band got together under the Machiavellian Malcolm McLaren.
When I'm doing work that's not incredibly taxing I keep company with ABC - the radio and when I can work and watch - iview. The realisation that Punk started so long ago is incredible I was 20.
Now watching their story and hearing them on original tape and since as older individuals it's just amazing that they lasted so long. There was a natural split between the 'original' three and Johnny Rotten who then became close to the new 'John' Sid Vicious. The other huge mistrust was between Rotten and the band and McLaren - such a lack of connection there. This is really worth watching if you were around in the mid to late 70's. Still great to watch no matter when you were around because I reckon that punk sound has had a huge influence on music since, and fashion.


Anyway this afternoon I did some drawings to get the images into my head.

 I use oil pastel because it's very direct, very flexible, you can work in layers - I think of oil pastel and dry chalk pastel as pigment first and particular characteristics second. I love soft oil pastel when you work in layers, colour into colour - when it gets muddy then just scrape away the excess.

I like to see the physical movement in the work.

These are just thumbnails but I am dealing with proportions and pattern

Amazing how general these look but all grist for the mill!

 Funny how this one without any strong sense of base is my problem at the moment.

Second Session

Saturday afternoon studio time. Thinking of structure and the individual compositions. Have photos to refer to but need to be a bit more familiar with the six images and then play with paint.
Painted a second layer with acrylic calming down the colour and aiming to get the main structure.

 

Straight acrylic - thicker than first layer - calmer colours, more contrast.

 

The horizon reference helps read the whole image

 

The colour of light will be the main challenge which is another reason why breaks between studio time is good for problem solving.

 

Foreground features can be added later. To get a sense of space the sequence of the layers and tones of colour is crucial.

Also paint application can show difference in zones to help read the work.

The process I follow is based on a pattern of studio time every few days. I use size 12 bristle brushes, Matisse paint - I have tubes and pots. I like to use old paint and old brushes. I like to use lots of paint using brush, spatula and fingers, acrylics 'flatten' when the moisture dries. I will move onto oil paint next time after some coloured drawings to get the composition sorted.