Finally this series is finished so I can reveal it to you! I’ve not done any large paintings for a while, but I started with this one (although it was finished last) the night that Notre Dame burnt down. Hence the title – the towers are rising into the sky via the ashes and fire. It was always going to be about towers – where I live this symbol is everywhere – but it also became about day and night, hence the left panel is called Towers Rise (Lady Night) and the right Towers Rise (Lady Day) and together they are Towers Rise (Lady Night and Day).
Yes I like my musical references: Cole Porter, Lady Day, but also referring to Notre Dame which in English translates as ‘Our Lady’ – but didn’t want to call it anything exactly like that since Our Lady is religious and also, it became about that but didn’t start that way.
What it should have become is painting #2, which I will post next.
The painting is a new one for me, not tried ‘action painting’ (is there an inaction painting where you don’t move?), using layers of paint and drawing and redrawing and scratching paint off. Or the Markal Paintstiks which in fact I got for this painting and they kind of moved in for good 😉 In some places I used them like a brass-rubbing effect on the raised paint, or with white spirit to create soft effects. No idea how permanent that will be in future…but if it does fade, there are many layers of marks beneath.
Not sure if I prefer the original left panel or the one it became – the Curse of Muddy (or more like Tim Can’t Wait For It To Dry) hit it, and I stopped because I felt I would destroy it.
It’s very detailed – check out the detailed closeups above. or click on the images below, I’ve uploaded these at a larger size so you can zoom in!
Looking now it accidentally became some sort of machine, almost steampunk meets medieval/baroque. Baroquepunk? It almost got called Tower Machine, but that doesn’t fit with the next painting. I paint like that, very much from my subconscious, not sure many people will ‘get’ it, but I do. Arcane meets religious art meets 1950’s abstract meets modern day?
Pollarded trees, towers (Victorian but based on roman or earlier designs), and those ancient symbols you see on buildings which I think is to do with where the fire main is. What was supposed to become my signature – the T and B in the hourglass and the date, but I’m not sure it will, although I like those medieval/renaissance ‘stamp’ style signatures like Albrecht Dürer’s.
And of course my usual ‘white hourglass’ symbol, which while doing this I found out XR (Extinction Rebellion) were using with a circle…I had no idea.
These symbols just appear via drawing, from nowhere, it’s like a sort of automatic writing. I don’t question them when they appear.
I’ve always been happy with the right panel though.
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