I know that there are many regular viewers of this site so seeing as I’ve been a bit qiuet for a few weeks I’ thought I’d check in with you.
I’ve been working pretty furiously on the ‘Flood’ paintings and this series I think is drawing to a close. I’m just trying to finish up the last (& biggest) one of these and as ever the end of the process is the most elusive thing. It’s getting there though.
I’m looking forward to the next group of paintings which I want to be of and from the Deer Park. I can’t say exactly as I’ve not been in there yet!
L
Sketch for Dewent River Torrent (30x30cm)
In a project like this where you are focusing on a particular place, it is easy to become involved in the very local aspects of what you are doing, so much so that you can forget to take note of the bigger picture. This is especially true at Chatsworth where I have remarked before, there is a painting everywhere you look. Big as it is, it’s still seductive to think of the manicured gardens and carefully landscaped parklands as separate from the world at large.
So in the first weeks I began to think about narrowing my area of study and began to concentrate on how water is used and presented at Chatsworth. This seemed a good way of always having a central focus and theme no matter what any individual painting may be about. This is great for the project but does it have any wider relevance? Maybe not.
I was thinking about this while all the flooding was happening around the country. The village where I live suffered quite badly and certain families here are still recovering weeks later. I started to think about what I was doing and if there was some way I could reflect this in my work. These were important events affecting the lives of people I know and here I am swanning about at Chatsworth, painting.
Now, my paintings are not overtly political or conceptual, in some ways they’re quite traditional -landscape, oil paint on canvas- but I like to think that they do have meaning and on a good day, that meaning goes beyond being just pictures of things. So without wanting to sound pompous (but quite possibly failing) what is the function of art? Mine in particular. I don’t want to step too far outside of the project or to impose trite meanings upon it but if I can’t comment in however small ways about the impact of the environment on our lives then I’m not sure it has a function.
Pondering this, I was over there shortly after the heavy rain and walking by the Derwent River that flows through the estate. The river was higher and more swollen than I had ever seen it and thundering over the weir in a deluge of noise. I stood possibly slightly too close to the edge watching the smooth green black river on one side of the weir become a raging torrent on the other. I thought that if I fell in there, I would be swept away with no hope of swimming against it and either drown or be smashed on the rocky river bed. This was an embodiment of the awesome power of the natural world. Beautiful and fascinating, we can tame it in many ways but in the end it will always have the upper hand and a power over life and death which we are powerless against.
The first of these can be seen here….
‘Derwent River Torrent’ On the Edge
58×58cm
oil on watercolour paper
There is a series of larger scale works on paper in progress. These are textural and energetic paintings in oil.
The first of these can be seen here….
Painted just after the recent heavy rain, the subject for ‘Derwent River Torrent’ 58×58cm is the weir on the river that runs through the Chatsworth Estate which was running faster and more furiously than I have ever seen it.
Although it may seem like it’s gone a bit quiet recently with not many new works appearing but this is only because I’m trying to complete a couple of large scale canvases in the studio. I want to get these done as soon as I can so that they can be displayed in the Conservative over the summer. They’re taking a bit longer that I thought but then that’s always the way. I thought they were finished last week but then looking back over some of the work I’d done on site I decided that they needed a bit of a further push.
Hopefully I’ll have them complete and photographed but the end of the week. (i say hopefully)
L
There’s quite a few new paintings now on the site and I have a couple of strong ideas as to the direction of this first phase of the project. As you will probably gather from the work, I’ve become quite fascinated with the way the water is so fundimental to the experience of visiting Chatsworth. I’m following the flow of the water down through the estate from its main source in the lakes above the house to its entry to the Derwent River that winds through the park.
The use of water is not just decorative but it’s also functional in that it still powers an electric generator (originally one of the first of it’s kind). However what I find most interesting is the way that the movement of water seems to brings the place to life.
In the studio I’m working on a large scale ‘version’ of the Sowter Stone diptych and hope to have it completed in the next couple of weeks. Then I can move down the hill, I might even make it as far as the river.
L
Sowter Stone Pool / Sowter Stone Falls 40×80 cm diptych