Time is passing with aesthetic aplomb over here with the autumn colours beginning to reveal difference in the once locally greened perimeter. I feel genuinely lucky to live here and ever boyed to record these scenes best I can manage. My latest effort is this classic looking harvest scene (save the figures) which I took from the Bergby field opposite the house. I have painted this field on many occasions and now have perhaps fifteen studies on hand, depicting various seasons which I would like to exhibit as a collection at some happy juncture. Mostly SAS works.
For this view I walked up the lane towards Bergby Skola then cut off left to the field opposite which this year is wheat. The subject is the cut wheat which, not yet claimed, lays weightlessly upon the stiff stalks. I was in a haste to catch this one before old Petterson arrived to complete the job, which could be at any time. I had in fact given up hope of snatching the view at all today as earlier we had torrential rain and no mistake; it looked for all the world like it was set in. Well it wasn't and just after mat the sun broke through and thanks to a quick rearranging of the nighttime schedule I dashed out for it.
A low angle for which I sat on my folding stool and small size eight on the easel. I had it down in some ninety minutes plus a ten minute recess to shelter from a cloud burst. The small scale of this one brought light relief from the larger work tackled recently which, I now realise, require such concentration and directness that perhaps a jot of pleasure is forfeited. In other words I rather enjoyed this one.
Beginning with the sparsest of sketches I marked in general positions of tree line, house and the far field, all of which I had to fit into the upper third. The lower two thirds for the wheat field and the left side of that occupied by the bounty of wheat.
A sequential affair and all rather effortless actually. Did it just come together? Am I benefiting from contact with the originals in London?1 Or is it the reduction of scale? The latter of these choices I think as everything becomes so much more manageable and quick, I mean to cover a size twenty, let alone a thirty in this time would I know result in something a little too illustrative. In tricks. So maybe it is quite simple; the reduced size provides more time because each salvo covers more of the canvas meaning that realisation is never in doubt and consequently one has that extra poise, the larger sizes meanwhile, tackled through our gospel of speed,2 become a battle for realisation itself.
Well Van Gogh had all day for his studies, he often refers to hours and hours of work under the sun or battling the mistral or reference is made to working all morning and returning for lunch before working through the afternoon. Well lucky him, painting must be a very different with all that time I suspect but alas it is not so for us but we have done well to know this distinction between approaches and to know what we can hope to achieve realistically. I still feel like the full steam ahead approach is the most authentic, pure expression, the most powerful and energetic but we will perhaps hit a ceiling in terms of variety of marks and of course those delicate details which elevate the dutchman. To burst through and progress with the high speed method one would require real conscious dedication to achieving contrast in mark, line and shape and for that to happen with no trace of the concentration, well that is the trick. That must come I fancy only from repetition and practice and a great deal of honest reflection between canvases, and perhaps some more preparation. You know young Giggsy3 puts his prowess on the football field over the years down to his meticulous pre match preparation. His quest to leave no stone unturned, to not cut any corners in preparation ensures that when it is time to play he is free to express himself.
Well that is a matter of time both in the sense that we do not have enough and consequently it will take more of it to make progress. On to more concrete matters and the news that for the past week I have been continuing work on publishing my Torpoint Art Service residency which I undertook a few years back, beginning in late 2012 I believe. The residency dragged on more or less until our move to Bergby and I was always of a mind to put out a publication but delayed because I did not want to reengage with the TAS on account of how it all ended.3 You see it was necessary to reach out to check permissions but as it transpired I was not able to make contact and in my eagerness to begin my Stockholm Art Service campaign I suppose the book idea went onto the spoil heap. But now I am well on the way to having a manuscript ready for publication thanks in large part to a company called The Amazon which in addition to the retailing of books and fancies also offers a publication service which is rather unique it seems to me. Put simply it makes it possible to publish ones own work to the necessary standard, at a reasonable price and in a way that eradicates the need to think in terms of the 'print run' as The Amazon offers a 'print on demand' service that means that only when a book is ordered is a copy printed - 'on demand'. Well they certainly did not need to send somebody out to explain the advantages to me and weak as I am I set aside the article I had read on the evils of The Amazon and their treatment of their warehouse orderly's and made straight for ladan4 to locate my Torpoint Art Service papers and set about the task of laying out a book. Now graphic layout I know nothing of but I took as my template young Smiths nice little book on Cezanne5 which is eight point five inches square. I muddled through with the help of some self publishing gurus that I sucked out of the you tube who I must say did a great deal to demystify the subject of trim sizes, margins and bleeds.
So in perhaps another week it will be ready and we shall embark on the next steps. I only hope that it does not turn out too expensive, not that I expect a windfall from this but I do dare to imagine that someone may like to have a read of it and a high price will certainly make the punters think twice over such an unvouched for and idiosyncratic offering. Lord knows what the 'target audience would be? Ah yes, the 'target audience'. You know it is questions like that and a hundred others that an established publisher asks of the humble author and expect detailed and brilliant answers. I shopped the Torpoint Art Service around the art publishers like an Alyscamps6 tart and received only a form that seemed more like a business plan in return and that only from a few. Well, for one such as myself no juice is worth that squeeze and I would much rather step out on my own to join the rag tag army of self publishers, and look here, the more one thinks on it the more it makes sense. For example, should I ever manage an actual exhibition of the Torpoint Art Service (that is how the work should best be seen after all) then I could use the book as catalogue. I can purchase copies from The Amazon for which I will receive my own money back as royalty plus the option to sell them again at exhibition. Its business!
With your permission then I would like to put together this seasons Dignity Scholarship into a ready manuscript, perhaps for a Christmas release.7 Of course I must finish my residency first and as autumn is approaching the seasons end will be upon us regardless of how many pictures have not yet been realised. When does the season officially finish anyway?8
I would like to attack the harvest but time is short. Also there is a fantastic disaster metaphor of a tree stump I have discovered on a recce just north of Norrtälje which I feel fits the times and would perhaps make a fitting end to the season. The tree has been torn down by a violent storm and the remaining stump twatted with an axe by the look of it.
Yours,
John
PS
Excuse my meagre description of the actual Doing in these last posts, there just seems to be so much going on around it. I would love to just simply describe the paintings but that, like with so much exhibited creativity, leaves too much unsaid.
1 John recently visited the Van Gogh in Britain exhibition. See Work 37.
2 See Work 28.
3 The project finished acrimoniously with John upset by the strictness of the residency agreement which began to impinge on the work.
4 The barn.
5 Interpreting Cezanne by Paul Smith.
6 The Alychamps - a street in Arles frequented by prostitutes or 'night walkers'.
7 It really is not necessary to ask permission.
8 October