I THINK IT'S FINISHED

Unless I see something else that needs changing (and I may) Frames of Reference (formerly known as Prism, formerly known as My DNA ) is done. Here it is along with a close-up of the top left-hand corner where I've painted a version of the whole snapshot of my parents which was the basis for the two central figures.

I believe this painting is about different dimensions of space and time and maybe multiple universes but any and all interpretations are welcome.

Frames of Reference  October 2010  Oil on canvas. 121cm X 91cm

 

 

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PRISM PAINTING IN SLOW PROGRESS

I've been working on it and staring at it so much that I decided to take time off and make a slideshow of some of the stages up to now. There comes a time in every painting, for me anyway, when every part of it is frozen and something radical must be done in order to get the flow going again. That's where I am at the moment but I haven't yet taken any radical steps.

Do you see a black rectangle?  The slideshow will start playing in a minute or two. If it doesn't, you can watch it over at my blip.tv page. Unfortunately, the shape of the video screen doesn't allow for the whole height of the painting to show and the panning effect distorts it even more. Ach! Next time I won't use it. 
For some reason, the music doesn't play over here but it works on the main Blaugustine and at blip.tv.

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CHAOS TURNING INTO DNA

I've temporarily titled the painting My DNA. I thought it would be interesting to record its various states because the end result may be quite different to the beginning and it's a way to preserve the process. 

Everything in the picture is an edited version of things I see around me, including parts of other artworks. Building the composition from these fragments is selectively random: if a shape catches my eye, I'll put it in but not necessarily in the same place. In this process the painting is acquiring an order that looks nothing like my cluttered studio but that you could still recognise if you walked in there.

Central to the design are the figures of my parents, five times removed from reality: I am painting them from an unfinished painting which was based on an old snapshot and they were, of course, more real than that photograph and now they are gone, though their known and unknown history is still alive in me, consciously and unconsciously, as I sit in messy upstairs studio creating an illusion of orderly space with material paints on material canvas. 

In making art what has always intrigued and frustrated me is the conflict between working from life and working from imagination (which is also the conflict between abstraction and representation). I love painting from life, it's incomparably thrilling, but there always comes a point when I feel dominated, subjugated by the real and want it to get out of my way. Then down and down, round and round I go to that old black magic of inner images and concepts and that's exciting too but, oh, there comes a time when I long for the fresh air of face to face contact with the light, the shade, the shape, the space of the three dimensional so-called real world. 

As you can see in state 2, I've introduced a still-life of my palette in the foreground and will paint this as realistically as possible. But it leads into planes and perspectives which do not exist in reality and which arise spontaneously out of of some kind of inner logic. So, while I can't claim to be resolving the conflict, at least it's an attempt to do so. Only black and white thus far but colour is coming.

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PARENTS

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
Philip Larkin

Writing about my mother inevitably brings up thoughts about my parents, my childhood, and all sorts of paths leading in and out of that territory, partly factual, partly selective memory and partly buried emotion. The first line of Larkin's poem is so famous because it's so true. It echoes with everyone, or nearly everyone, who has had parents. Some of the things we are fucked up about do not come from our parents but some do, that's undeniable.

Being a good parent, or a 'good enough' parent, is a talent which doesn't necessarily pop up the minute a baby lands in the arms and the life of a formerly baby-free woman and her mate (if a mate is present). Some people are hopeless at the parenting art, some struggle to learn it and a few - very few, in my opinion - take to it like ducks to water or cats to kittens.

I feel very fortunate to have had the parents I had, not because they were good parents (they were not) but because they were two interesting, complex and marvellous people I got to know very well by virtue of being one of their children. As a child - and sometimes far into adulthood - a Parent is seen only in capital letters. Those letters might spell love or rage or need but they are always capitalised. It takes a lot of growing up to finally accept that Parents are only people, ordinary humans just like us.

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