A New Continent
Larger paper, fewer marks, limited palette
It took a lot of work to get to where I wanted to be with this series
I didn’t’ just come home from my travels and reproduce my experience. Because I deliberately didn’t take photos I had to process a feeling: what was my first visual take-away? how did I feel about the landscape? what were the predominant colours? This idea first came to me when I was in the Hudson valley at “Olana” (https://www.olana.org/history/churchs-world/) built by Frederick Edwin Church(https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/chur/hd_chur.htm ) an American Landscape Artist. It is an amazing folly of a house on a hill overlooking the spectacular valley below. I got to thinking- these artists of yesteryear had no cameras and yet they produced awesome huge representational works of incredible detail, by using observation, feeling, and I daresay some intense sketching. So I resisted the urge to snap away and focused on being more mindful of the spaces I was in -I had no sketch book with me so I really had to trust that I would absorb and remember things
When I returned to the UK I wanted to convey space, hotter colour, expansion, the unknown, wilderness (there be bears, snakes, cats, strange bugs).To begin with I chose my palette-limited: An orange watercolour wash, black, some intense English Red mixed with wall glaze ( Which I talked about in my previous Blog) grey and a pale muted subtle grey- green. I needed to do bigger moves, fewer bolder marks and keep more of the paper uncovered to convey that sense of space. I was struck by the perpendicular nature of the American winter trees, and the bigger skies. For years I have been working in the cosy compact rounder softer English landscape, and I was quite happy working small and contained, especially whilst I was going through grief and feeling quite fragile.
To begin with I did many sketches, first getting the palette to my liking. Establishing this first meant I didn’t have to think about it again-all I had to concentrate on was making my moves bigger -as you can see in the picture below of the sketches- I introduced a yellow that was too garish, so I got rid of that!
I also decided that many of these earlier sketches were too contained and actually too complex- simplicity was what I was aiming for -and that takes courage and trust-I needed to let loose and step out of the zone I am used to
bigger paper for bigger marks
I pinned up much bigger paper on the wall-6 pieces. I also limited my process and decided each application of colour or tool had to be a maximum of 2 moves which forced me to be bolder and only employ the elements that remained in my memory-the thin lines of the winter trees, the red-orange leaves on the forest floor from the Fall, the rubbly muted grey rocks littering the hillsides
limited palette and tools to make fewer marks and simpler shapes-an awl for scoring the paper, a wax candle for resist effects, orange watercolour, chalk pencil, lead pencil, roller with English red, orange oil pastel, black paint and screen-print scraper, mouse grey, and stencil sheet.
Doing lots of small sketches and experiments means I can take lots of risks and not worry about the outcome of anything-and out of that came some work I am very pleased with. Believe me, it didn’t just fall onto the canvas because I am hugely talented-it came from hard work and perseverance and a desire to chase that feeling of a landscape because that is ultimately my deep understanding of it .
