Written musings on making art and the results. Life in the slow lane
Green as Grass
Green is the dominant colour in the garden against which flower blossom glow, but the daisies, scattered in the long grasses hold their own in this beauty contest, the gold of the Archimedean spiral at their centres sitting among white petals that often turn to pink darkening to red at their tips. They have grown tall in competition with the grasses, thriving in competition, and the grasses themselves have started to become identifiable as they mature to generate seed heads. The biggest shock seems to me to be the inability of the dandelions to compete in this new muscular grassland.
Blue 2 Infinity
I started to look at definitions of ‘Blue’ in writing the previous blog on the colour. My 1954 dictionary (a thick tome I grew up using after dad bought the dictionary and the 8 volume ‘Book of Knowledge’ from a door-to-door salesman) states “Ancient colour words are...
Blue
“In visual perception a colour is almost never seen as it really is – as it physically is. This fact makes colour the most relative medium in art” “In order to use colour effectively it is necessary to recognise that colour deceives continually” “It should be learned...
Apple Blossom Time
The super-rich may buy islands but for most some personal mobility was a blessing – but also a curse as children moved further away from parents and family support mechanisms broke down. The ‘nuclear family’ as a concept seems to be under threat. A younger generation now needs to redefine family and nationality, bearing in mind that the behaviour of Russians shows that national characteristics remain immutable. Or maybe the value of their individuality will rise, driven by porn, bestial like. above love and family to consume all notions of society.
Knock Knockin’
Mama, take this badge off of me I can't use it anymore It's gettin' dark, too dark to see I feel I'm knockin' on heaven's door Bob Dylan Several of us on Twitter and Facebook keep a daily visual diary of the changing months. I take mine from the same spot...
March March
"March March to my own drum, March march to my own drum Hey hey I’m an army of one Oh i‘m an army of one Tell the ol’ boys in the white bread lobby What they can and can’t do with their bodies Temperatures are rising, cities are sinkin’ Ah cut the shit" Dixie Chicks...
A Bit of a Blow
Its quieter now. We are I guess, some 400 yards from the beach, and the persistent thunder, a little like traffic noise, has gone. The sun is shining, and the weathermen and women can stop panicking until the next stiff breeze comes along. My admiration for those who...
Fisherman’s Tackle
The last of this set (but not the end of the series) worked the net more loosely . There is a conflict between my desire to tread that line between reality and abstraction that gives me a problem with taking this larger, and the canvas may well end up being destroyed.
Loss of Innocence
The world is in a permanent flux as technologies change the way we live and work, communicate, and manage our interpersonal relationships. The loss of innocence has accelerated generation by generation, but the increased availability of information and knowledge has generally led to people living in ‘silos’. What do I mean by this? Let me illustrate.
Making a Painting Video
My latest in the 'Making a Painting' series on my YouTube channel can be seen on my YouTube channel https://youtu.be/TJPOOLZvXIc It features what will be the third and fourth on the 'Fishermans Tackle' obsession as showed in the Cuckmere show in the Barn on Seaford...
Morning
Downstairs I collect the camera and then realise I can still see the stars brightly – the Plough is low in the sky as is the sun when it is around, throwing its long shadows. I decide to delay, and instead I clean the kitchen and make an early coffee. I watch the horizon slowly lighten and spot a light, bright, moving along the top of the Down. A dog walker with a torch perhaps? The morning weather image can wait until there is a bit more light, the really dark mornings are messing with the imagery making it as one observer noted, a blue period for morning photos. At least this morning it’s not raining, and it is surprisingly warm at 8 degrees, despite the clear sky which normally in December would denote a frost.
Doorway into Dreams
In my last piece To See or Not to See I talked about photography. It was of course the driver behind much of the change in artistic perception, from Muybridge to commercial soap adverts (Bubbles), all building and subtly altering the way people see or use their...
To See or Not to See
This is an image made by merging from one day on Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn into a composite photo of the year 2020. A bit like an acid trip, it shows how the imagination can be more powerful that any drug – and as addictive
Trusting or Rusting?
For over eighteen months I have been working from images of my local sea defences, fascinated by the complexities of colour and texture generated by their decay. Sheet metal supposedly protecting the concrete structure that in turn protects a sewer treatment outfall,...
An Artist’s Statement
I first started using a camera ‘as a lad’ and sold my first photograph to an American collector when I was 17, back when images were recorded on film and had to be printed out on paper. I still print the images I use on paper, but now as giclée’s at A2 or A3 on art papers. The camera I used has a large sensor which allows me to enormously enlarge images. This enables me to focus in on small sections and blow them up to examine the textures and colour in a way that I can’t do on an electronic screen.
Art Wave 21
Coming soon is the Art Wave 21 festival for which I will be putting up a little more of a show in the studio, details below: Location 083 • Trust in Rust 2 Headland Avenue, Seaford BN25 4PY Off Southdown Road, 4th house on the right Patrick Goff has been absorbed in...
Under and Overpainting
For almost a year I have worked through the paintings on paper and canvas (drawings and canvases?) producing 14 canvases and some 60+ works on paper. Immersed in the process I have changed my techniques and the way I use paint. Strangely I think the initial impulse...
BRotS Canvas
The beginning of the process
Colour Conundrums
Changing light changes perceived colour and then it is exaggerated in post image processing. Here sea-fret filtered sunlight altered how colour was ‘seen’ both by may eyes but also by teh algorithms in teh camera itself – never forget what you get is filtered electronically according to the aesthetics of the technicians employed by the camera manufacturer. Nothing new here as those who remember the different colour caste that cam with using Fuji or Kodak films/slides
Chocolate Teapot
The canvases of the Cuckmere metal now sit with early studies of the Splash Point metal, and alongside Bergen Harbour, something of a breakthrough piece spurred on by knowledgeable criticism – not the moronic ‘forlorn frustrated sexuality’ critique I had from the Guardian many years ago but a knowledgeable questioning from my peers who also studied at Bath Academy Corsham, my old ‘alma mater’. Their educated and sophisticated appreciation of each other’s work has borne fruit in my case with a positive loosening and change of direction in what I have been doing.
The Old man of the Mountain
. Everything is badly planned here. New housing is proposed but children’s schools are already at capacity and children will be sent over the Downs on roads that often block and isolate the town. There is not enough surgery capacity to cope and the surgeries are themselves are in buildings that need revision – so bad that one practice has publicly threatened to move out of town.
The BRotS paintings on paper
Click here to see a GIF of BRotS Images that are available from the gallery. All are on A1 sized 300gsm paper primed with 3 coats of gesso ground. Acrylic paint, some with oil pastel additions, mostly glazed with a matt glaze. Images are all sized at 27 inches...
Such is Life
I only have one soul, but maybe 9 lives. As a child of two I was rushed to the RAF casualty station in Aden when another child split my lip open throwing a clockwork train at me. At six years old RAF surgeons operated to clear a twisted bowel maybe (who knows)...