Boy with Knee Up
 

This is quick one I did to accompany the others to the Blackheath Gallery. It is 20" x 16", oil on canvas.

I like this very much Thomasin. His face just pops out of the canvas. Has the same sculptural quality I admire in your other paintings.

Thank-you, Debra!

That is really nice, I love the palette you've used, it really glows. Another of your angelic son?
Does he sit for you? My eight year old is becoming phobic of cameras and pastels, now refuses to cooperate. Money may have to change hands....

I don't have anyone around to bribe. My models cost me bucks. Drat!

Lovely painting. I love the somewhat gritty background with the smoothness of the skin.

Thanks Margaret. Yes, it is my son. He didn't sit this time (I don't think he can sit still!). It was from a photo.

Thank-you Sharon. I like to brush the texture of the canvas and under-painting as though I were feeling it with a finger - it makes for a lightness and freshness. It's the unfinished stage that keeps the painting breathing.

Oh my gosh, Thomasin, this is wonderful! I'm running out of adjectives. This is such a textural, tactile painting. The way you have contrasted the fresh, alive, smooth, even glossy skin (kneecap included) with the rough background is uniquely your way, and i love it. I also love the way his knee "holds up" the right side of the composition whch would otherwise be dragged down by the sharp diagonal. Where would the composition be without that diagonal stroke that creates movement and spatial depth? The knee makes it work. I really feel the concept behind this.

Thanks so much. Alex!

Thomasin,
Have been away for a while and am just now getting updated on what

Thomasin--

Really fine! Love the atmosphere of it...

Is your technique more additive (piling on) or subtractive (scraping off)? These remind me of abstracts a local guy here paints, with a beautifully pearly and dense surface. When he's done with a piece, there's more paint on the floor than the painting, the surface having been heavily scraped between each layer. Each painting looks as if it weighs a ton, but there's no other way for him to get that accumulated result. Your (oil) paintings have a similar feeling of material "weight."

Can you describe?

Carlos, thank-you very much. Yes, this is a group show at the Blackheath.

Thank-you, too, Tom. Yes I do a lot of scraping off, but I also use a lot of light touches too. The scrapings-off push the paint that is left on the canvas into the gaps between the canvas threads and give an actual physical, sculptural depth to the image. The light scumbled marks bring the paint forward physically and sculpturally, and together this give a great feeling of tactile modelling. So the front of the leg, or the most prominent parts of the cheeks, for example, would be scumbled and brought forward and the underside of the chin, again, for example, might be left in its scraped-off stage, or pushed hard back into the canvas with the paint brush. My paint marks are a combination of the descriptive (the outlines, the colour, the drawing) and the sculptural.

I apologize for missing this post- it's just lovely.

Kudos to you,

Thank-you very much, Chris. I apologize for missing your reply!

The angelic auro of your son comes across really nicely. Now that you have explained your texchnique it sounds very interesting and I would love to see your work in person.

Thanks very much Enzie.

Thomasin, I find that my response to your style is very positive. I really like this a lot. It's not just "ok". It feels really right somehow. Keep doing what you're doing. It's very solid in design quality. It's more figurative than portrait. I think. It's the direction that I will go also.

Thank-you very much, Linda. I work and rework a painting until it does "feel right". I am not completely sure why something does feel right, but I think, for me, it has a lot to do with simplifying things and using stronger and more definite outlines and shapes, and also, with figures, a living personality.

I tend to need to create rather than portray people, so, no, I don't think I am a real portrait painter very often, although I do enjoy painting particular people now and again. This one, for instance.

:bewildere

I just read "Painting Methods of the Impressionists" by Bernard Dunstan. He talks a lot about lines(outlines) and about scraping off paint to leave ghosts and then doing multiple loose corrections. He says they did many thin layers until it was right.
I am most thrilled by a painting that is mostly lines, patches of color, and then as if by magic, parts of it appear real. It's that transformation from flat paint to something 3D that I enjoy most. In order for that to happen, at least part of the painting must be left in an unfinished state and equally important , part of it must have "spot on" reality.
I have just spent yesterday and today tearing out a wall in my studio. I'm hoping to get a new Nikon D200 in January. I'm hoping to actually get to trying some of those lines and scraping soon.

I used to think that of many of today's most notable painters, Burt Silverman had the most individual and idiosyncratic style. Then I saw some Degas paintings at the Met, and much of it was there...the loose areas vs. tighter finish in the same painting, thick and thin paint on the same canvas, the broken remnants of a calligraphic, drawn line, all contributing to a rich and non-literal and very painterly mystery and atmosphere. (He's owned to this influence himself.)

Interesting how traditions are passed along and are transformed by each new practitioner....

I can totally relate to what Linda, Tom, and Thomasin are saying. This conversation expresses what I like most about certain paintings and styles, including yours, Thomasin, Burton Silverman's, and others. Yesterday I was admiring the still life paintings on Ilaria's (forum member's) website and I felt the same way about them. For me there has to be a sense of mystery, a sense of being painted, evidence of being worked on, of the process and the resolution of the process. This resolution is most interesting for me when it is brought to varying degrees of finish in acordance with the focal point and, concurrently, with what the artist is trying to say.

I went to look at Thomasin's webpage and noticed something else that I liked about her work. It 's something I noticed about Burt Silvermans also. In most cases she keeps her values very light. Many times she turns a plane with color or temperature rather than value. What would normally be dark shadow in a photo, becomes a pale blue shadow. This of course is something else that the Impressionists experimented with.

Thanks Linda and Alex, and Tom for your comments.

I find that when I am really in the swing of things the painting's story of light and colour continues into the shadow areas. The shadows are not just supports for the light areas but part of the real content of a piece. It is, at the most enjoyable moments, like following a trail that keeps turning corners so you can't see what's coming next, and feeling very fit and energetic and wanting to walk and walk and walk. I love to see what colours in shadows will do to the three-dimensional form. Painting experimentally is like keeping your mind jumping from viewpoint to viewpoint. I find more and more these days the need to paint to build up ego or self-image is being taken over by the fun of trying things out.

Thomasin,

It is such a treat to have you among us. I think you are one of the really great painters of our time. I wish to cross the pond and see your originals one day. You have endowed another "quick" painting with enormous energy and power and sophisticated love. Congratulations, and thanks for your contributions to the rich dialog here.

Garth

Thanks very much, Garth! (although I am sure you must have been drinking something illegal when writing that). Even so, it is really lovely to receive those comments from you, and so nice that you are back participating in the forum again.