Sending a text

Recently finished painting

If you have visited this blog before you may have noted the slow but steady evolution that this image has undertaken before arriving at a finally finished state. 

The original drawing is a sketch I did at the life drawing group which I occasionally attend here at the local university and was done in one of the ten minutes sessions so the drawing itself possesses all the qualities and weaknesses one can expect when some thing is drawn so quickly, however from the first I felt that I could do something with this. 

Above: Original sketch.

 For me the interesting thing about this paintings progress has been that I had no set direction I was going to take it. Firstly I prepared a panel, the size of which closely matches the ideal proportions of the golden rectangle. Then I grounded it with a gold acrylic paint then with a layer of crackle medium over which I put a titanium white to created the lovely textured surface I like to work on. I transferred the drawing on to the panel and then I sat it somewhere I could often look at it and so for months and months I would just look and think. I must have painted and repainted the piece in my mind a dozen times. 

Above: Work in progress.

The original model for the drawing is by good fortune a friend of mine and I arranged that she come model for the painting when the time came. In this work I wanted not only use different textures and techniques to create a painting with an interesting physical presences but to gasp the zone between sketchy suggestion and areas of quite resolved painting. I wanted to use these resolved passages to guide the eye though the composition in a snaking fashion. So there are areas like the top portion of the hips and the batik in the left corner that were painted with particular care and with emphasis on detail which then disappear quite quickly and the transferred drawing emerges again to fill the gaps. However because I am a bastard I wanted to interrupt the easy flow with which the viewers eye moves along the body and subtly I hope to make the viewer uncomfortably aware that perhaps they are intruding on a private moment. I decided I wanted to paint a translucent curtain across the upper portion of the body but as you can imagine there was a massive risk I could succeed in completely ruining the work so I hesitated.  

In the end I decided I would do it and I won't easily forget that day, it was painted the day my dear Grandmother passed away back in my home town. Once I had done that I put the painting aside and and started to think again because there was going to be a need for adjustments and I felt it wasn't quite right.

    

Above: Finished artwork 'Sending a text.' Oil on panel, 

25 x 45.5cm

Finally I resolved to cover the veil with a dot pattern that changed in the concentration of the dots to give the impression of the folds in the curtain.  I love dots they are a perfect decorative device to break up a surface and fine dots over a strong colour become brilliantly dynamic, you only have to look at the skilful use made of dots in Australian indigenous art of the western desert in particular but all so Western artists as diverse Botticelli and Domenico Bigordi Detto Il Ghirlandaio to Klimt and Picasso and Matisse. I then put the work aside again and spent more time looking at it. It then became a process of making tiny adjustments whenever I gave my self permission. The last difficult thing to do was to add the blue light of the mobile telephone that the girl is curled up looking at. It had to be just right or the whole picture would be ruined. It was a matter of how strong the colour should be in the end I did it in two goes, two light washes of thinned oils. Now it is time to vanish the painting and this shall not only enrich the luminous oil colours but pull together the different textures to make the painting surface just that tiny bit more coherent.

Above: Detail 'Sending a text.' 

Whilst I have spoken quite bit about how it was painted I suppose it is time now to discuss what is the concept behind the imagery. Without wanting to impose upon the audience I will say that it is intended to be a quiet painting that when taken at a glance is just pretty, but prettiness in people and art can be deceptive and the narrative of the painting is quite ambiguous, the title announces that she is sending a text, and here she is; nude and there no indication about her emotional state, that is for the audience! I suppose if I were to distill this already slim explanation in to an artists statement I would say the ambiguous narrative of this painting is my investigation in to subtly disconcerting beauty.