Kim Onslow
I am presently working on a series of landscape paintings, looking at skies; particularly blue, cloudless skies. I have been looking at the perspectives of a landscape, where a particular aspect gives blocks of colour, providing what might be called an abstract view.
Methods and materials.
I have begun by experimenting with size and materials, using linen and cotton duck canvases and panels. I am also using different grounds and paints.
Sky - I have used a distemper ground on linen canvas, and oil paint over this.
Sky II, below, - a distemper ground on cotton duck canvas and oil paint.
Distemper Ground (Coloured Ground).
Raw pigment bound by rabbit skin glue.
Rabbit skin crystals to cold water should be approximately 1:12 or 1:14 mix.
Warm up the glue and add the pigment. (You can test the saturation of the mixture, by brushing it on old pieces of canvas. If you add too much pigment, the glue will not be able to bind it, and will come off in the dry state).
Add a drop of glycerine.
Apply by brushing well into the canvas. Always stir the solution each time you load the brush as the pigment tends to settle.
Development of artwork
Printing
Using a plate - a piece of transparent plastic - put this over the sketch/work, and using metal pointed tools, and sand paper, trace over the image with a carbide scribe (etching needle), for instance. Squeeze out some ink onto the table, and using a small sponge, move it about. take the ink and cover the plate
Soak some paper first, and put this on the wall, and use a squeegy to remove excess paper. Then put it under paper, and roll on top of it to remove more water.
Put a piece of paper, marked with the size of the plate, and the paper, beneath transparent sheet on press. Put the plate on top of this, Put the plate on top of this, with the ink upwards Place paper on top, and lastly a sheet of tracing paper. Put blankets over this, and then roll the press, to just before the end of the table..
A series of small scale landscape paintings of Cliddesden in Hampshire, using oil paint on linen and wood, and primed with gesso. The ground is acrylic paint in a mixture of raw umber and white. The work also includes photographs and digital prints.
The Montagne Sainte-Victoire is a mountain in southern France, overlooking Aix-en-Provence. It became the subject of a number of Cézanne's paintings.
In these paintings, Cézanne often sketched the railway bridge on the Aix-Marseille line at the Arc River Valley in the center on the right side of the picture. Especially, in Mont Sainte-Victoire and the Viaduct of the Arc River Valley (1885–1887), he depicted a moving train on this bridge.
Only half a year after the opening of the Aix-Marseille line on October 15, 1877, in a letter to Émile Zola dated April 14, 1878, Cézanne praised the Mont Sainte-Victoire, which he viewed from the train while passing through the railway bridge at Arc River Valley, as a “beau motif (beautiful motif)” and, in about that same year, he began the series wherein he tropicalized this mountain.
These paintings belong to Post-Impressionism. Cézanne is skilled at analysis: he uses geometry to describe nature, and uses different colours to represent the depth of objects.
Impressionism was developed by Claude Monet and other Paris-based artists from the early 1860s. (Though the process of painting on the spot can be said to have been pioneered in Britain by John Constable in around 1813–17 through his desire to paint nature in a realistic way).
Instead of painting in a studio, the impressionists found that they could capture the momentary and transient effects of sunlight by working quickly, in front of their subjects, in the open air (en plein air) rather than in a studio. This resulted in a greater awareness of light and colour and the shifting pattern of the natural scene. Brushwork became rapid and broken into separate dabs in order to render the fleeting quality of light.
I have included the following, because it relates to the practice of visiting or returning to the same subject or place, as Paul Cezanne did with Mont Sainte Victoire, in France, over a number of years. It also relates to the work which I have been doing around a place called Cliddesden in Hampshire. The second paragraph in particular, reminds me about 'capturing the moment and transient effects of sunlight..., in the open air rather than in a studio. This resulted in greater awareness of light and colour and the shifting pattern of the natural scene. Brushwork became rapid and broken into separate dabs in order to render the fleeting light.' This is something which I have wrestled with, and wish to think about, in terms of working practices, and of course the difficulties encountered, in terms of restrictions of size and scale, and weather conditions etc.
Clouds at Sunset. 2017. Oil paint and charcoal on canvas. 2m X 1.50m.
I have used thin glazes, with oil paint and a satin glazing medium to achieve this, and I have also used impasto.
Cliddesden at Sunset. 2017. Panel. Pencil, graphite pencil, pen and ink, coloured pencil, photographs, photocopies, card, watercolour, gouache and white and 'Sky' blue emulsion painted walls.
This has followed on from the blue sky panel work, by looking at the skies at sunset in the same place. The small drawings/painting cards, were cut from (an expensive) sketchbook. It has been a wrench to remove them from the book, but by the same token, I suppose that it makes everything less precious. The sketches have been elevated to finished works, and presented so, and there is no reason why they should not be seen as such. The blue painted panel is the same size as the painting, Clouds at Sunset, which links or connects the two.
David Barret, who is an editor of an art magazine, and has given a seminar on art criticism at Wimbledon College of Arts, gave a critique of work at Lewisham Arts House. He said of my work, that it was a deep intake of breath, rather than a sharp one (title), and that the pencil grid on the walls echoed the lines of the windows in the room. He also said that the photocopies were low grade, and that it was a trick,- something which the photographer Wolfgang Tillmans had used, but that in the end, it still worked.