One thing the pandemic has done for artists is that we’ve had to re-think the way that we get our work into the hands of those who would like to own it.
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It’s been a strange time for everyone for so long now. My life has been largely unchanged by the pandemic. The life of a painter is fairly solitudinous most of the time, and I’ve cultivated a quite sedate and minimal existence in general.
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As we all have, I’ve been listening to the news this past week. As I paint, I have on NPR and sometimes the BBC and am taking in the news on Black Lives Matter, and now to a lesser extent Covid-19. Here we are living in this moment that is going to be written into history as a major event and hopefully one that marks real change.
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I’ve been painting steadily the last couple of months, and I thought it would be interesting to see what the work I’ve made in this time of quarantine would look like in a grouping.
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We spent most of November in Rome, Italy in an apartment near the Campo de’Fiori. Many days we brought home bouquets of flowers, and in the afternoons, after looking at art all morning, I would take some time with the flowers. I did pencil sketches, and some water colour sketches. And I took a number of photographs for reference that I hope to use in a series of paintings of flowers from Campo de’Fiori.
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I’ve been working on my current series of floral still lifes for a year and a half now. They’re distinct from what I’ve painted before in a few ways. I’m finding a lot of different shapes and colours and this has come about because I’m using a grid method. For those of you who have followed my work for some time, you know that I’ve always used a grid. I used to spend a few days drawing the image out on the canvas, and then paint the areas of my drawing.
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I’m participating in Art Live at Canada House Gallery in Banff on August 17, from 10am to 4 pm. If you’re in or around Banff at that time, please drop in to watch me paint, and to chat about art.
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The beauty of painting is you’re giving a sensation parallel to life, describing something in paint which gives a different feeling than reality, yet paradoxically enhances the viewer’s experience of the world.
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I’ve been back at the easel for a couple days now after two weeks in Rome which we spent looking at art. As I mentioned in an Instagram post, it’s important as an artist to see great work in person, to learn from it, and aspire to it. It’s very centring and puts it all in perspective.
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Thirty five years ago, when I started painting still life, my biggest influences were painters such as David Hockney and Eric Fischl who are not even known so much for still life. I liked their style and contemporary approach.
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I spent 30 years painting still life and I started pursuing other subject matter a few years ago. I’ve been waiting to have something new to say about flowers.
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I believe in things that exist. When I paint a table of objects or a flower, they exist in light. So when I paint a magazine, it already exists. My looking at it, noting it, scrutinizing it, changes it. This has always been my subject. I don’t invent, I look. Things are transformed by looking.
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