Visit to Penbryn, 7th-9th May

Sound drawings
Sunny, windy day on Sunday. Sat on beach with my back to the cliffs. Few people on beach, a family with a green and yellow plastic kite but mostly empty and peaceful.
Closed my eyes and tried to draw only from the sounds of the sea but it was hard.

It was hard to distinguish between the sounds I could hear and the sensation of being warmed by the sun or chilled by the breeze. I didn't look at the sea once. I think the top one is most interesting because it gives a new perspective on the beach: the orangey-yellow is not the sand but is me, feeling warm. The green is the sudden chilly breeze. Not using my eyes meant that it was really hard to lose the sense of "me"ness in the pictures as physical sensation is all. A bit like Lanyon's sense of self in his glider paintings? In the third drawing I only concentrated on sound, and it's turned out looking like the sea! The black is the initial surge and crash, and the pencil squiggles represent the trickling after-sounds.
Lanyonesque sketches
Did some figurative drawings, trying to capture the vigour and energy of Lanyon's Porthleven sketches:

Spring flowers on cliffs, sky, bay looking over to Aberporth.
And now for Lanyon...

Can't find my favourite Porthleven sketches online. However, I think my drawings are starting to feel freer, more fluid. Wish I'd caught Lanyon's Tate exhibition in January.
Painting on the beach
Carried all my paints, jars, big paper, brushes, rags etc down to the beach, illegally parked in turning point. Rolled out paper, weighted with pebbles. Used sea water and shells, pebbles to paint with. Just painted instinctively, not thinking of anything in particular. Wind blew clouds of sand over paint so I just mixed it in, along with any flecks of seaweed, bits of twigs. Started to rain, so project was curtailed and wet acrylic, sandy pictures got a second soaking! Ran with wet pictures, jars, brushes, etc etc back to car! Interesting exercise but results iffy!

They look a lot better on this blog than in reality! Even, dare I say, with similarities to Lanyon's painting, "Headwind":

Painting from film footage of "Windy Day" sculpture

Back in the calm of my caravan, painted whilst listening to the sound of my paper/felt sculpture being buffeted by the wind.

And this is the result:

I call it "Vortex". Have grown to quite like this one. It does seem to sum up my experience on the beach on Sunday. Sunny, happy, being buffeted by the wind, enjoying the spring skies...
I think all those sketches in the morning, and the attempt to paint in situ, and flying and filming the paper/felt sculptures, have been preparation for this piece, so even though it was painted indoors, it still soaks up the "essence of place". Maybe.

Peter Lanyon's "gliding" paintings

Have just discovered the paintings Lanyon did after getting his glider pilot's license. They are extra poignant as he died in a gliding accident whilst still in his forties, but his different perspective on the seascape from a glider, and his interaction with the wind and the air have that essence of freedom and immersion with nature that I'm trying to capture.

Thermal, 1960

This painting is one of a series of works that were partly inspired by Lanyon's experience of gliding. Lanyon began gliding in 1959 and the sensation of flight added new dimensions to his landscapepainting. He gained a much stronger feeling for the elements. He later explained: 'The air is a very definite world of activity as complex and demanding as the sea.. The thermal itself is a current of hot air rising and eventually condensing into cloud. It is invisible and can only be apprehended by an instrument such as a glider.. The basic source of all soaring flight is the thermal'.

http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=8374

Zennor Storm, 1958

 He painted places or, as here, the experience of being in a particular place in certain conditions. So, he used his paint to evoke the experience of being in a storm near the Cornish village of Zennor, which sits between the high moorland and the sea-cliffs. 

http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999961&workid=8379&searchid=10440

Rosewall, 1960

A "dynamic vortex"http://www.spectator.co.uk/arts-and-culture/featured/6370178/part_3/taking-to-the-skies-.thtml

Solo Flight

"By untethering himself from the earth to fly above it, he discovered a new way of understanding terrestrial features and their interaction with the ever-changing sea and ambient light.” Simon Allen.

Lanyon's perspectives

It is impossible for me to make a painting which has no reference to the powerful environment in which I live.’

‘Paint represents experience and makes it actual.’

Lanyon described landscape painting as 'a true ambition like the mountaineer who cannot see a mountain without wishing to climb it or a glider pilot who cannot see the clouds without feeling the lift inside them. These things take us into places where our trial is with forces greater than ourselves, where skill and training and courage combine to make us transcend our ordinary lives.'

Gliding gave him the chance 'to experience my county from outside returning to land rather than emerging from inside.'

Turner, Snow Storm, 1842

Struck by the similarity between Lanyon's "vortex" paintings and those of Turner. Both artists "step inside "nature to paint; in both, the subjective view of the artist is everything. Elemental!

Barbara Hepworth, interviewed about Lanyon's death, described him as 'a unique spirit - a spirit that was perhaps airborne.' http://some-landscapes.blogspot.com/2010/05/soaring-flight.html

‘

Drawing for Orpheus, 1960

Not relevant to gliding, but I found this drawing on-line and loved it. The loose vigorous quality is very expressive; also the nude subject matter is somehow merged with landscape. In the same way, I found drawing from life to have many similar qualities and lines to landscape drawing.

To conclude, another trip to the sea is needed, this time alone, sans famille (!) and lots of drawing of clouds, sea, cliffs, kites, boats...

I feel I've got stuck in a rut with my sculptures now and need some expressive mark-making, maybe from different perspectives, like the cliff-top.

Peter Lanyon

Saw Peter Lanyon paintings in the entrance to Tate St Ives. Also loved his exhibition at Tate Britain which I saw last summer. Another Cornish artist whose bright abstract paintings and curved sculptures remind me of the sea and escapism.

Soaring Flight

St Michael's Mount

Wreck

Lost Mine

Levant Mine Ruins

Cloud

Porthmeor

You can almost feel the sea breeze coming out of these pictures - fresh, exhuberant, invigorating. Love the sea colours, the sense of air and movement. Makes me want to get out my paints! Love the continuous line in his pencil sketches - quick and energetic. All this I want to capture!

Peter Lanyon:
'The sea then became something which was down towards my feet, less towards the side of my feet, less perhaps in front of me as it was as I looked from the beach. I then walked over the Western Hill, and the gale struck me straight on. It was very cold too, though it was June. I lay down and looked over the edge and watched the sea coming in, striking on the shore and on to the rocks there, and breaking off and going away out to sea again, and I came back over the Western Hill, inwards, southerly, and down under the lea and the shelter, and there I sat down in the grass Ð long grass with a lot of remains of sea pinks, and the grass browning slightly due to a certain amount of sunshine. The sun began to come out at that time and the grass blew and the sea and the sky became bluer.'

Mmmmm...

A visit to Tate St Ives

Mon 2nd May


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-reviews/8325175/Simon-Starling-Recent-History-Tate-St-Ives-reviewsimon.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/feb/23/simon-starling-tate-st-ives-review

Saw the Simon Starling  exhibition. At first, nothing seemed further from what I'm doing, but then there's his choice of media: sculpture, film, slide shows, photography. And behind the seemingly stark, sterile exhibits (two marble blocks hanging from yellow belts, a series of 5 identical platinum prints of ore mining, a wooden replica of a gallery in the Orkneys), lies a fascination with transformation and scale.


Inventar Nr. 8573 (Man Ray) 2006, is a slide projection that performs and documents a similar material excavation - this time at a microscopic level - on a photograph by Man Ray. The camera slowly zooms in on the photograph until it moves into the very surface of the print itself, finally revealing the individual silver particles that make up the image.


This slide show zoomed into the photograph a fraction at a time, in an almost hypnotic way, until we were seeing the very particles which made up the matter of the photograph - these being organic and seaweedy and utterly transformed. This is an extreme form of pushing the boundaries with scale. But whereas my photographs "stop" when the image is aesthetically balanced and pleasing (at least to me!), Starling never stops; he relentlessly pushes on, zooming into the very heart of matter itself. 


From this...

To this.

Also, to fully engage with his work, you needed to read up on him and understand the conceptual process. As my friend Vicky said, it is difficult to "connect" with his exhibits. With Starling, it seems thought and process is everything; with my work, it is all about emotional response. However, how can we ever be sure of creating a particular response in the viewer? Really art is about obsession and a self-gratifying journey!

Views of Tate St Ives - the best thing about the gallery!!

Flying in the Wind

More pictures of Capturing the Wind
                                             

All of these photographs make me feel uplifted and happy.
Three sheets to the wind
Throw caution to the wind
Blowin' in the wind
Whistle down the wind
Put the wind in your sails
A fair wind
In language, "wind" has connotations of "letting go", leaving things to chance, freedom and even rebellion (Dylan). This slightly naughty, boisterous mood is what I want to capture with my film footage.

Sunday 17th April

Have become obsessed with kites!

Spinning kites on Long Island. Really weird and abstract. Are they blades of grass in the foreground? Lots of sky. Beautiful shapes and colours. Sense of freedom and exhileration. Looks like a painting although it's a photo.

Slightly sinister mood here. Lots of ghosts drifting overland. Great for my "Sea Spirit"! Moody.

Although digital, the extracted shapes of the kite's movement is lovely, flowing. Gives me ideas for sketches. Can I draw movement? All the lines and forms of the beach are suggestive of this - rock fissures, water marks on sand, waves, seaweed, shell whorls...

And here it is, even in the sky.

An idea for possible wind sculpture/ sea spirit. Using long lengths of ribbon or organza to twist and trail in the air.  Reminds me of the twitching zig-zag movement of organza in stream video - a caught twig jerks and wriggles in the water current. Here it is again:

                                                           

I could try to mimic this movement in the wind.

Dark and moody. Alone. Being solitary, but in a good way, is one of the main reasons I go to Penbryn Beach.
There's a sense of the spiritual, of being at one with nature and..something else?...

Friday 15th April

Spent all morning practising uploading video clips to You Tube. Here's some:

Top two are most successful. I think from my videos something that is important is "elements" - being on the beach is literally about being exposed to the elements - wind, air, weather - so my sculptures need to interact with elements to work. The movement needs to be all around, inside and through, with the play of light being important. 

Managed to burn Final Cut Pro footage onto DVD today - took all afternoon! Will put onto You Tube after Easter. Need to go back to beach(!) and capture the wind in my new sculpture, which is made only of felt.  Handmade paper looks awkward and ugly in video; only good in stills.