This has been a tough week of work and travel. I have had very little time for course related activities but have managed to complete the exercise: Plotting space through composition and structure.
I have not managed to sketch every day but have made another of my movement meditation drawings in my personal sketchbook.
While travelling I have been reading "What are you looking at? : 150 years of modern art in the blink of an eye" by Will Gompertz.
This book might be considered a bit lightweight for a student on a degree level course. Gompertz has worked as media director at the Tate and as art director at the BBC. This media background comes through in his style of writing. It is fast moving and uses modern language and colloquialisms which would appeal to a young audience with little knowledge of modern art. This makes it an engaging an easy read which I am enjoying as a travel companion. I haven't learnt very much so far but it has revisited some of the reading I've already done in a fun and more memorable way. I'm about half way through the book so far so will report back when I've finished it.
Another book I've been looking at this week is "Kurt Jackson: A New Genre of Landscape Painting" which is a compilation of essays on Jackson by various authors. I happened across this book when browsing in the bookshop at Tate Britain. I was immediately grabbed by the colourful landscapes and the expressive mark making that the artist employs. The essays give some insight into the artist's way of working. He has a very strong work ethic, painting or sketching from dawn to dusk every weekday. He is also an environmentalist (with a degree in zoology) so he immerses himself in the environment and knows a lot about the natural world he tries to represent. Ultimately, I found the essays less interesting than the images. The artist works in mixed media using watercolour, paint and collage. In some of his large scale works there are large objects attached to the canvas such as a fisherman's waterproof or a fishing net. This is an exaggerated way of differentiating the foreground detail from the middle and background. Some of the sketchbook work represented in the book is quite charming and very very simple. This has served as a reminder of my wish to try to simplify my sketching more.
Click here for an image from another book "Kurt Jackson Sketchbooks".
Porth has collage in the foreground as does Catch the Light (seen here on the BBC 'your paintings' website). On other paintings he includes materials taken from the environment in which he painted such as sand or pebbles or leaves. In his sketchbook he will smear pigment from the leaf of a tree he has been drawing across the page. The titles of his paintings are often long and descriptive including the time of day, light, sounds he can hear and his frame of mind. Titles such as 'Dexbeer, Dusk Time for a Pint' or 'it feels like the beginning of autumn' or 'Back to Kardamili after 27 years away, searing heat, screaming cicadas, olive grove 2005' add to the impression of the artist in his environment. He also uses text on his canvases "Do you ever wonder what's out there?" asks a monumental and bleak seascape. There are aspects of Jackson's work that I really like . In particular the expressive mark making and bold use of colour as well as the inclusion of parts of his environment in his paintings through use of collage.
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