The Punts and Stunts of the C… *cough* err yes, here is a nautical themed selection of recent watercolours from sailing boats to barges. First is ‘Two, Four, Ait’, a quick watercolour so named because of the symmetry (two boats, two trees) and it’s situated right by Raven’s Ait, an island or eyot in the River Thames. I wasn’t planning to paint the boats but they popped into view so they got featured.
Second is a view of the barges on the river, which might not be totally finished as one of the barges moved by the time I got back to complete it. But it’s a regular along the river, it will be back (they have to move regularly as the free moorings only last a few days). The Green Ghost barge is special as it didn’t move far and thus appears twice in the picture – a glitch in the Matrix it’s Schrödinger’s barge two places at once!
Third is a late gatecrasher to the party… No boats but a view of the river and St Raphael’s which I started in January (!) and finished in May. I have been carrying around the drawing for months and finally ended up back there. Quite interesting to go from bare trees to full spring (well summer, but writing this on the bus in the rain there is little sign of that) and how things move.
As something I read recently from an artist, a quote John showed me, he said that artists create a composite view of time, including many views and changes into one whole painting. This is very true, so something that looks very real can bd in fact a composite or a surreal sort of fake.
Or indeed it can reveal a wider truth (yeah I know ‘truth’ starts with T for Trouble but bear with me) or the essential bones of the subject that people don’t see rushing past looking at their shiny toys or living in a click-happy microsecond world. In fact it’s something that is hard to do well in photography, the thing that artists do naturally, harmonising different times and changes into one whole.
Or indeed like the cubists, exploding those moments ilinto fragments of shattered time, as with my A Level work.
/lecture over!
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