tripping along on a tangled path…

breath - overview
when you don’t even know you are at the beginning… and then you do…
tripping along on a tangled path…
realisation and glimpses of resolution in the wayward distance…
footnote

Alongside sketchbook working, as I developed thoughts and ideas for “breath”, I began making a whole series of small (18 x 13cm) mixed media and oil paintings on board, which I treated as “breath studies”.

I found these really useful for laying down and trying out marks, textured layering and composition in preparation for the main titled pieces.

Interestingly as my practice progressed, these studies became like punctuation marks or breathing spaces interspersing my paintings.

By the end there were 25 of them.

numbered series of “breath studies”

18 x 13cm

oils and mixed media on wood panel

£75 each

breath particular universal movement gasping whisper shimmering scrieving sky splintering light dark continuum communion edgeless connected interdependence markmaking slipstream wave knowing sharing flying flow breath

breath study 1

breath study 2

breath study 3

breath study 5

breath study 6

breath study 9

breath study 10

breath study 11

breath study 12

breath study 14

breath study 15

breath study 16

breath study 17

breath study 8

breath study 19

breath study 20

breath study 21

breath study 22

breath study 23

breath study 24

breath study 25

filling the vacuum

80 x 80cm

oils and mixed media on wood panel

£1350

detail of "filling the vacuum"

breath fills the vacuum

and in it

life of all and on

This was a painting that I struggled to make sense of.

I just wasn’t making connections between my painted expression and what I was feeling.

But it’s a familiar place to be and I kept on working on it, leaving it alone, considering, letting go.

Breakthroughs come with a certain scratching of tools over surface, revealing fissures between my working fingers for air to rush in and make sense.

sketchbook development for "filling the vacuum"

gashing the air, gasping for change

80 x 80cm

oils and mixed media on wood panel

£1350

detail of "gashing the air, gasping for change"

rive the unseen

and feel the gasped breath

gash the air

drenched in sky

discomfort

then connection

change

This is another painting I had intense struggles with!

Not surprising really.

I was intent on trying to combine a sense of outraged frustration at the political drive to strengthen borders amidst the desperate need for human migration.

There is a tangle here and deep intentional scoring of the surface.

A cry for no separation…

breathing wingbeat air

100 x 100cm

oils and mixed media on wood panel

£1850

detail of "breathing wingbeat air"

stories of flying and transformation

100 x 100cm

oils and mixed media on wood panel

£1850

detail of "stories of flying and transformation"

These two paintings - breathing wingbeat air & stories of flying and transformation - are the biggest of this body of work. There’s always an extra level of excitement when I’m working on bigger panels.

It’s expansive, seeming to stretch beyond the containment of edges.

As I began, working across both paintings, I had no thought that they would be other than part 1 and part 2 of “breathing wingbeat air”. Their composition began in similar ways after all.

Not for the first time my direction slid into tangents as I reflected on my mark making. They started out from the same narrative but the second was moving, extending out beyond that place signposting what would happen next.

I was discovering the stories as I moved on with the painting.

And I love this part of what I do.

Exploring, opening, discovery.

An adventure with both techniques and ideas…

sketchbook developments for "breathing wingbeat air" and "stories of flying and transformation"

and the land was the sky and the sky was the land

23 x 23cm

watercolour collage

£140

no separation

23 x 23cm

watercolour collage

£140

glimpses of memory

23 x 23cm

watercolour collage

£140

These collaged pieces were made in the height of the first Covid lockdown.

I was looking for a way forward, turning to watercolours on a table at home when my studio in Kirkcudbright was off limits for familiar painting in oils.

I found that I loved the movement I could achieve on paper, a different way of mark making more directly taken from sketchbook pages.

I pieced together ideas, exploring techniques I would develop still further later with oil colour and cold wax medium.

It’s still a process I continue to use, punctuating my more dynamic, gestural oil painting.

sketchbook development for the collages

the sky will tell us stories

30 x 30cm

oils and mixed media on wood panel

We can look up and recognise where we belong and at the same time know that this is our shared connection.

I think of the sky overseeing, embodying our histories and supporting all life.

With the addition of distressed cotton scrim, (see also “overcoming shallow”) to the panel with gesso at the initial priming stage, I was able to shape the expression of the piece with a definite textural narrative.

I like to allow paint to gently brush over this texture as a highlight or drag it in clots over crevices.

Decisions are made early then, on where to create shadow and depth, softness and subtlety.