A short meditation on painting

I began this post after rethinking the way the use of a website as a kind of journal affects the approaches an artist might take to their work. By clarifying what is going on in a painting, or in painting practice generally, the web’s extraordinary facilities allow one to compare, contrast and reconsider the process of art making through writing and site design quite apart from the actual paint on support experience.

I completed an oil sketch of the painting above on board initially, in a workshop with Robyn Collier, renowned contemporary realist painter, with the intention of turning it into a much larger-scale oil, in line with my usual techniques (see my page on this subject). Normally if I was working from a plein air scene, or a photograph I had taken, I would start with the acrylic sketch. But in the workshop we worked in oils from a photo supplied by Robyn. I was so unhappy with it that I later painted the same view again very quickly in acrylic on paper. I decided the acrylic sketch was in fact much better especially when comparing the two on an early version of this post.

But then I went back to the original picture, and substantially repainted it using the same shapes and palette but following a looser approach. I put this one on line too and then took it down again. It was good but very different. Why?

I felt completely confused and bamboozled. Should I do a larger picture in acrylic? Or a much smaller one? I have recently shown a small 9 inch x five inch picture on plywood in the Waverley Art 9×5 show. I liked doing that a lot.

Now I don’t know where to go with this picture. Maybe just try one or two different new versions, and then leave that problematic valley alone?

Visit Robyn’s website: robyncollier.com.au

She is working much more on seascapes and underwater paintings now, and runs occasional workshops in amazing places. Thanks for your workshops, Robyn, always a worthwhile challenge.

Author: annettehamilton82

After life as an anthropologist, including years of fieldwork in remote Australia and Southeast Asia, I am now working on painting, photography, art and cinema and publishing fiction, memoir and children's stories. I spend most of my time in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney and at a house on the Hawkesbury River, where my family has lived since 1923. View all posts by annettehamilton82