I’ve decided to blog a little more about what I’m working on in the studio on a monthly basis, or try to, because at the minute I only use it for blogging about upcoming shows and it’s been a little idle and inconsistent so it’s just to have it more active.
For the past year I wanted to try painting with glazes and working up from a grisaille base but I hadn’t the chance so with the break in exhibitions I’m taking the next few months to try it out. I’ve been playing about with it since early January, it’s slow and I’m not really sure what I’m doing but I’m happy with the results so far even though I only have 1 glaze down. The majority of the work has gone into the grayscale part of the work but it’s easier to match the paint after it’s gone dry meaning there’s no real pressure to rush through it.
I had originally sketched out a fairly large image but decided to break it down to smaller pieces because I didn’t see the point of spending a finished piece time frame working on something that might go wrong, so it’s mostly small 4” x 4” paintings. I have several drawn out, some to work with gray dead layers, some with green umbers and some with raw umbers.
I have had to go away from this indirect painting attempt for a little while but it’s for a good reason, back in late January I got an email from an artist called Dimitris Pikros about submitting work for a show in the the Crypt Gallery in London. The show will be made up of artists from countries where Lafcadio Hearn lived. He eventually moved to Japan where he assumed the name Yakumo Koizumi. I’m going to blog more about Lafcadio Hearn closer to the time of the show because he lived an incredibly interesting life and it’s unfortunate that he’s not better known here in Ireland.
To start things off I went down to the Lafcadio Hearn Gardens in Tramore, Waterford to get some photographs and from there I hope to work on a painting a little bigger than the last few years’ work. At present I can’t really say much more because I’m arranging the images and will hopefully get sketching in the next few days and I’ll be posting images of the work as it’s developing on social media. In between editing in Photoshop and trying to sort out the statement to with the piece I’ve been reading some of the stories written by Hearn.
