Henriette is always discernable by her black beehive hairstyle which pre-dates Amy "Wijnhuis", by quite some time. This little scribble from last year (oil on paper 30 x 40) looks like an excercise in using up whatever was left on my palette and I think it had better be the last yellow nude I ever make as I can't think what possessed me to make her such a billious colour. All the same I thought to post it because, simplistic as it is, it's an affectionate and enthusiastic little piece. Tomorrow its the print studio and the call of the acid bath again...
I have been told by one of my criticallest critics that my work suggests I have issues about model sympathy. "You need to suffer as a model yourself", says he, "to understand how to empathise with the model working for you". Well here is a strange picture - very very quickly made. I can be detected in the background right, looking pretty menacing I would say, and not too sympathetic at all. I admit I was probably thinking less about the model's discomfort than how I was going to get all that down in such a short time. But the pose was her own choice. I have since tried modelling for a colleague and found it an interesting experience having the boot on the other foot.. I am not sure how I would rate my colleague's model sympathy but gratifyingly the result was sold almost immediately .... 
I am just back from Cyprus catching up with my friends' work and enjoying temperatures touching 30 degrees and a warm sea. I made some sketches of Agnieszhka and her dog and cat who posed more co-operatively than some models i can think of. Never work with children and animals? Not this time. I will begin those paintings this week. In the meantime the very last of the chalk nudes on torn painting series which Sharon bought from my last exhibition. She kindly made me this photograph...
That woman on her planet again. (Chalk on acylic on torn paper. approx 35 x 20, 2006)An infinite sky, a voluptuous body, warmth and solitude, in an arid but not featureless landscape. The nude inhabiting the space - in more ways than one.
As you were.. we are back in the erotic.. This painting's Turkish name - Baygin - means something like fainting.. and since I made it three or four years ago when I was living in Cyprus and learning Turkish that is no doubt where the Turkish concept comes from. (A2, mixed media on paper 2003) As an antidote to the roses of yesterday, and while my next roses paintng is giving me hell, I offer this strange work which is probably a lovemaking scene. You may well wonder why I don't know for sure but then I was only the person painting it through whom it flowed. As with many works from that period I am also not too sure how I made it (charcoal, white acrylic, ink...) but the feeling was right and a womanly passion comes over, I hope. 
A tiny painting of roses (24 x 30, oil on canvas, 14/10/07) which were a sweet gift from a friend. As once before, (see July 4th) I thought to preserve their memory two ways: by painting them and by hanging them up to dry. This activity is a good way to wait for the tulips, which feature significantly in my new subject for the winter months. I will make line drawings also, a totally different way of looking at them.
Well, I am finding it quite difficult to convey volume purely through line but I can see the point that is being made to me that working through the mass can cover a multitude of sins. So I will continue for a while like this until I am sure that my eye has stopped lying to my hand. Tomorrow a good female model, as good as this much appreciated male one.
I seem never to have posted this and, oh dear, it is not such a good photo, but let us say it is a kind of sculptor's study without the sculpture.. I did a number of them at the time.. I went autour de la statue with the pencil and sketched the models and then they became this painting (60 x 50 oil on canvas) which has running down through the middle a kind of sentiment that may express the couple.. in greek, but my translation of the poet Seferis's original would be : "Just a little longer, we will see the almond trees blossom, the marble gleam in the sun, the sea breaking into waves... just a little longer.. we will rise a little higher..
Here's a nude study I made yesterday with a male model for a change. (50 x 70 mixed media on paper). I am afraid he thought the pose was torture, poor chap. (45 mins) I think it shows that I have been largely been drawing females as I feel I feminised him a bit, (maybe the pretty sheet doesn't help) and it has inspired a worry that I am losing my grip on the male anatomy. Oh dear, possibly an unfortunate way of putting it but you know what I mean. Really must do something about this. Could willing male models please form an orderly queue? Usual hourly rates apply.
An abstract ink painting no more than 15 cms square which is pretty obviously derived from a group of figures.. I rarely make these dreamy abstractions but when I do they are genuine abstracts in that they start off as a 'real' image, usually of figures, and then are abstracted out and away and often back again.. to restate the figures after a process of transformation... or you could forget all that and just look at it. Its merely a sensual little dream in a sensual medium. This particular ink leaps ecstatically on contact with water and becomes all sorts of colours.. you have to chase it to bring it where you want it and accidental elements are always present to work with and against.
A drawing I made on Friday (7/09/07, 50 x 70 charcoal on paper) when over-enthusiasm at the gym earlier meant my shoulder would not permit working at the easel. I sat so I did not have to raise my arm but as a result had no "recule". I liked working in that position though. Maybe the front foot is too small and God knows where the right arm is - guess I could not see it - but it was an hour of good absorption. Sorry about the photo - one day I will get my husband to teach me about white balances.
Very large brown paper from the Limassol factory again .. a drawing from the same sort of time as the previous post when I was trying to make something very big in an hour. (Chalk on brown paper, 100 x 130, 2006) Maybe i am a closet scene painter. ... It is unmistakeably Khosia, facially a very good likeness, and that is me in a mirror in the background, obviously contemplating something other than the model's foreground arm to which I really ought to have been devoting more time.
Our life room has a rhythm of working towards a longish (one hour) pose at the end of the session. I wondered how far I could get with a stick of charcoal in an hour if I worked big - well this is brown paper stuck onto a huge canvas, (130 x 150 cms, charcoal and chalk, 2006) which is great cardio-vascular excercise if you are going to cover it in an hour .. you need a rather statuesque model for this kind of thing. And you need to make a zillion, trillion decisions in that time.. unfortunately they won't all be the right ones, but it is certainly a challenge. In my limited experience (about 750 hours) I have never seen anyone work this big in the life room - Go on.. spend paper .. would you really rather have a tree than this? Yes, so would I, but this was cast offs from a factory in Limassol so at least my drawing was a better idea than chucking it on the tip. Call it a stay of execution....
Well it is just a pastel coloured embrace.. a sketch .. a glimpse.. the woman is the focus. Maybe she is imagining the man. I put it here because I just want to show it before the purchaser takes it away. A moment in reality or dream.
A small, quick, monoprint capturing a moment. Surprised in the act, maybe... I have just been in Venice looking at Tracey Emin and Tintoretto. As well as the sheer bravura and emotional power of the works there is something so exciting about seeing almost the whole output of an artist whose work is mainly in his home town of Venice and fixed in its various locations... as for Tracey Emin her UK pavillion at the Biennale was very moving. She included a large series of very "less-is-more" little monoprints in blue on pages torn from notebooks. Exactly the technique I am using in this picture from 2005 which is based on a scribble by Gericault who made some life sketches very like this, presumably in a brothel, unless he had some very adventurous models. As with the ink drawing I posted a few days ago the man is like a convict hiding from the tv cameras, wanting to repel the artist, maybe fearing identification - "remove that sketch book, this is private..."
One of my earliest drawings from the Rijswijk studio, (58 x 74 cms chalk pastel on paper) a litttle over a year ago .. i was fascinated by all the paraphenalia on the table in the foreground which is nowadays usually occupied by Alberto's painting materials so i don't have it in my frame. Frits though, is always right there, in front of the table, making an oil portrait in the second half of the session., where I captured him in this drawing. I am not reflected this time - it is a third-party artist model relationship .. Frits looking intently at Henriette. It belongs to that time when I was first so captivated by the immensity of the studio space and way it is bathed in light.
Djoa: (68 x 83 cms. Chalk pastel on paper) This is one of the pastel drawings I exhibited in my open studio on Friday. Djoa falls into poses of such ecstatic abandonment. Alberto enhanced the sensuality by placing it in a pale pink passe-partout and quite a large frame. Felix, the purchaser, was really unsure about that but I really think it worked with the golden yellow in an audacious way. Sometimes these sketches of a few minutes can take on an almost monumental quality - it comes from having a very good model.
My Open Studio was last night and this image comes from preparing the installation I made about the role of life studies in our work. We don't usually exhibit this kind of work but it has some value and I think occasionally we should - if we can find a good way to achieve it. Meanwhile I also exhibited about 55 framed paintings in my studio and along the corridors... it was great to have nearly 100 people come and share the work and enjoy an atmosphere that they created. Jan-Willems brought me a huge bunch of slightly tinged pale pink roses so they will be the subject of the next rose painting.. not that the human figure will be abandoned as the next two posts will show.
These flowers are still alive and I am still enjoying them. (40 x 30cms, oil on canvas). I told the friend who gave them to me that I longed to paint them. It is a total departure from my usual subject .. but yes, that is the point - it may indeed become a total departure from my usual subject. Since I have a whole exhibition to mount right now, and I just feel I want to run away, I have eloped with a subject that has a virginal quality for me - there is so much deflowering of these flowers for me to do. When I see a human figure I think I should know by now where to start ... but with roses I know I have everything to learn. There is one picture by Morandi and one picture by Asik Mene that I keep in my mind. Otherwise only the flowers themselves can teach me. From time to time you are going to find out what they imparted.
Such an indolent creature! Unlike in the previous post, this very quick study is pretty big - 100 x 130cms, I think - and in chalk on heavy brown paper. When I have my open studio in ten days time I am going to take the opportunity to show some of these studies that are just our scales and arpeggios but have value despite never ending up behind glass .. sometimes I feel the weight of those burgeoning portfolios and want to let them out as envoys from that region of our process...
Sometimes you just have a one-minute pose, ruby ink and a dash of bleach....
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