‘People ask why there are so few female artists who succeed. It’s because women are not ready to sacrifice as much as men. Women want a man, they want a family, they want to have children, they want to be loved and to be an artist. And they can’t; it’s impossible.’ Marina Abramovic I love this woman and some (but not all!) of her work. Have a look on YouTube at a short film of when she meets Ulay, her ex partner, again, after so many years, at one of her ‘performances’, it is utterly moving and compelling. What she says in the above quote is pretty much accurate for me. I have struggled most of my life to balance my art with my personal life and after three children and two failed marriages, I finally have the time and energy to be selfish with my art and am getting somewhere at long last. So to this painting. I am grateful to one of my Twitter followers for the title which I love. Regular readers of this blog will know that titles are not my forte, so any help is always gratefully received. Enjoying getting down to the…
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I have been reading about an exhibition in London at the moment of photographs by William Eggleston and very much want to go and see his wonderful works. I read somewhere that he photographs ‘inconsequential moments’ and ‘alluring mundanity’ and that the colours in his photographs ‘practically glow’ . I am a painter, not a photographer, but would like to think I am trying to achieve the same result. I try to capture a moment in time, usually a woman comfortable in her own skin. So to this piece. After the bright colours of my last work ‘Is He With Her Now’ I felt it was time for a quieter painting. Originally the composition had a modern lampshade above the girl’s hair but decided this did not benefit the scene, so it has been painted out. Not sure whether I will keep the very matt black background and may introduce more light to the left of the work with a touch of red from the dress added to the black on the right hand side . Time will tell! If you would like to be kept up to date with what I am up to in the near future,…
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‘Is He With Her Now’ completed. 24 x 18″. 20 July 2016
“A moment of complete happiness never occurs in the creation of a work of art” so said Lucian Freud, and I am not sure I agree with him. There have indeed been many moments with this work when I have been frustrated, angry, anxious, tentative etc etc, but every so often and usually by complete accident, I will put a touch of paint somewhere and the painting will just ‘sing’ and then there is indeed that moment of complete happiness. Or I will end the day thinking something is not working here, only to come in to the studio the next morning and wow, the picture looks great and again then I have that moment of complete happiness. As an artist, you can get so involved in your work and in a particular part of the detail that you can’t see the wood for the trees and get overwhelmed and lose confidence. That is the moment to step away from the painting and go for a walk, have a beer, read a book, whatever suits you, because when you return to the piece, you might just find that elusive dart of complete happiness. My apologies for being absent from Twitter…
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