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July 18, 2005
wet on wet
In the beginning is the idea. Then you wait for the feelings to catch up and make sense of the idea. Then you work it. Drawings, photographs, and more drawings.
Then you forget it. You sit around reading, you paint other pictures, you refurbish flats in Leeds. But the idea is still there; you determine to do it. You will do it. But you don’t. You do other work, you take photographs of other things, you draw other heads, you paint other pictures. You take more photographs of your idea.
It is terrifying, it can’t be done. There is nothing there. The idea was stupid. You leave it again. But then one day, as you work over an old panel, you think of the idea and the drawings and the photographs and you think, well whatthehell.
So you dollop a lot of paint out, you break down some big brushes. It’s okay, because it can’t be done. You’re not going to do it, you’re just going to put a bit of paint on in a few places, roughly corresponding to light and dark bits.
Then something happens. It starts to work, the wet paint creates a life of its own and you can’t stop, big brushes small brushes, Transparent Red Oxide, Light Red new colours arrive mysteriously on the palette [not that mysteriously obviously, you squeeze them out of a tube] and add to the mix. And before you know it, fuck me, there’s a painting on the easel.
large head, oil on panel, 1060mm x 1060mm
Posted by john at July 18, 2005 08:18 PM
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