Some pictures from beautiful Devon earlier this month...So much for Tiger Spirit and adventure! That post seems eons ago. We've been on lockdown due to Coronavirus for a week and it feels like a month already.
I was in Devon just before the government announced we needed to stay home and had to rush back early, however I'm so lucky to have seen the sea days before the restrictions hit. Since then I've barely been out. Tiger is grounded, caged, pacing the territory warily. Restrictions were what I was trying to get out of, but I'm healthy and safe, and being a hermit is not so much of a test for me. It was an anxious week prior to Devon, amidst the panic stricken Great Toilet Roll Crisis of 2020. I allowed myself to get dragged into the usual family drama, but as this situation has hit us all hard I'm trying to give myself allowances for that hefty slip up and burning an internal fuse. I've been getting myself back into balance since. Needless to say painting proved a casualty. Above: Full artwork and cropped selections – still deliberating whether to reach for the scalpel! Who would have thought the idea of white space could be so controversial?
Designers out there will know exactly what I’m talking about. Having been a graphic designer most of my life I’ve regularly faced the comment or instruction to fill any white space I'd allowed for, in what was to me a practice in balance. White space is absolutely necessary, not an opportunity for something else to replace or fill it. In music it is the vital gaps between notes and space between beats; if sound was relentless it would lose its feel. I bring this up because my work does not (or hasn’t so far) fitted the edge-to-edge ‘tradition’. Separately I’ve been considering whether or not to wield the scalpel and do a few cropped abstracts from one large painting. Reason for cropping: I like specific detail across it, closing in on that might emphasise it rather than lose it over the whole... |
Artist blog Archives
December 2020
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