Continuing the ‘Scotland Series’ and Autumnal inspiration.

This week began with a walk to Swanpool headland for some inspiration colour-wise: my work centres around the natural, earthy browns and oranges which are rather abundant now that Autumn has properly set in. I took photographs of leaves, ferns and gorse which were all at varying stages of turning to brown, as well as completing some sketches at the headland. I will potentially try to incorporate some sketch-like work into some of my paintings in the future to add some structure and line to them in a similar way to the marks I made on ‘Kerrera 1’, but to a greater extent.

Some of the photographs and sketches from my walk to Swanpool headland (more photos on my gallery page).

I intend to add a fifth piece to the Scotland paintings, a third Kerrera piece using more of the charcoal powder, however I will apply it in a much more random, expressive way over all/most of the canvas and without a frottage backdrop. This will hopefully create a layered, visually textured piece with many differing tones of grey throughout the work. I would ideally like to add charcoal powder to the canvas loosely, then allow heavy rain to influence the placing and pattern of the charcoal outcome. However, I cannot do this without another trip to the Isle of Kerrera as using the Scottish charcoal with the rain/weather from Falmouth I will lose the authenticity the piece contains due to its strong ties to its original location. To combat this I will aim to create another similar piece but based on a Cornish location that I am able to revisit when it is raining to attempt this feat.

I have been working on my fourth Scotland piece, ‘Oban 2’, a second piece using just pigment and not frottage. The outcome of this piece is rather washed out and soft, appearing almost like the underpainting for an oil paint piece. I am currently undecided on whether this is a positive or negative outcome – it is definitely very different from my other rock paintings, giving off a rather serene mood as apposed to the busier, bolder ‘Oban 1’. I don’t really have much choice in the matter of adding to this piece however as I have now run out of my Oban pigments, so I will re-evaluate this piece with a fresh view in next week’s journal entry.

'Oban 2'

In response to last week’s feedback to look into scale, I undertook some research into artist Jill O’Bryan, who has created a series named ‘Ground Drawings’. ‘Ground Drawings’ are large scale frottage works where O’Bryan will lie down on top of the paper whilst creating charcoal frottage of the rock surface beneath, which may be concrete in a city or a rocky surface in the desert of New Mexico. The reasoning behind her laying on top of the work on the ground is to be able to physically feel the earth that she is working with beneath her whole body, making this a much more connected experience. Though these are solely frottage drawings, they are done on a reasonably large scale (144 x 80 inches) meaning that when displayed in a gallery setting they almost consume the viewer, making the landscape she has traced an overwhelming presence.

Jill O'Bryan working on a Ground Drawing

Gallery view of Jill O'Bryan's Ground Drawings

I have also been revisiting the work of the female Land Artist Michelle Stuart both in preparation for my essay and for inspiration for my studio work, whose works shares many similarities to both the work of Jill O’Bryan and myself. Some of Stuart’s work also involves frottage. A piece I am particularly interested by is ‘Niagara River Gorge Path Relocated’ (1975) where Stuart created a long scroll of frottage nearby to where the Niagara River used to flow, her scroll a representation of the waterfall. As is imaginable, this piece was immense in length (460 feet), which is where I have drawn inspiration from. I may use this method to create a scroll-like piece myself, tracing a small part of the walk I take to the destination where I make a piece of work.

Niagara River Gorge Path Relocated (Michelle Stuart, 1975)

An informal critique with one of my peers sparked the idea to work into my natural pigment paintings with many layers, to both represent the strata layers of rock sediment in the landscape and also to add more depth and detail to them as in the past I have worked on a painting in one sitting instead of it being an ongoing process.

I have used this idea with ‘Kerrera 2’, working back into it to add more layers to the landscape, something that has been potentially more difficult to convey with one coat of paint as the piece is painted in a single charcoal pigment. Already, with just a second layer I am seeing much more depth of field, something very key to this piece as the landscape when disguised with mist was reduced to just monochrome layers. I will attempt this idea of layering my paintings again on a piece using rock pigment paint, though it will be a Cornwall-based piece as I will need larger volumes of pigment to work with and I have now sadly run out of my Oban rock powder.

'Kerrera 2' worked into (above)

'Kerrera 2' before this week's additions for comparison

I did manage to stretch my Oban pigments to work back into ‘Oban 1’ slightly, as I wanted to bring emphasis away from the centre. However looking at the piece with its additional paint, I feel the edges now have potentially too much prominence, particularly the darker tones on the right of the piece which pull attention away from the rest of the canvas. On this piece there are potentially too many separate marks, making the canvas seem rather overcrowded, though I am not sure that blending the colours more softly works either. Again, to gain a clearer view on this work I will begin work on some new pieces and come back to this piece for a fresh evaluation.

'Oban 1' wokred into (above)

'Oban 1 before this week's additions for comparison