Works in Progress

I always have mixed feelings at the start of any new painting: primarily huge excitement and a sense of anticipation as I'm never exactly sure where I'm going to go with it is the main one (I do do the odd bit of thumbnail preparatory sketching at times to play with composition, but not for every painting, so often I start straight with slopping the paint onto the canvas and change things around as I go). Apprehension is always there too though (just what have I let myself in for this time,? is the luck that that had led to some pictures I'm happy with going to run out? who am I kidding? etc etc), the flip side, I imagine, of the thrill of the blank canvas and the pictures in my head.

I haven't settled on any one particular subject matter, material or way of putting the paint onto the canvas, so the safety net (and demands) of an established style tend to heighten the sense of risk and excitement.

Second stage is after the under-painting or ‘first draft’ (a phrase that’s hung around from when I used to write). This is where sometimes it’s really hard to continue: I like what it looks like at this stage and know from experience that I will make it look a lot worse before it comes good again (if it does).

There are some pictures that were at their best in this first stage.

This one, even with its scrubbing out on the left was quite nice at this stage. After I put the sky, clouds and colours in, it gradually slipped into 'disappointing' and will soon be taken off its stretcher bars and rolled up, consigned to a large family of recalcitrants in a corner of the shed.

I do like the loose early stages, tending to work with whatever colours are on the palette and lots of citrus turps, pushing contours around with a big brush and wiping out highlights with old rags. The next two are the ones I started yesterday. The NT Portrait of a Senior Territorian Art Award closing date has been extended till September so I've gotten going on a couple of Dugald (President of the Central Australian Art Society and all round good bloke).

I'm going through a bit of a portrait phase and started the other one below a week or so ago, in the first flush of the school holidays.

The last few are landscapy things (probably the area I feel least comfortable with, but more on that some other time) which I'm almost loath to do more with . . . but I rather think more needs to be done to make them recognisable to anyone other than me . . .