Inspirations

Earnsdale, near Darwen, originally uploaded by David Pott.

This was a watercolour sketch completed on site last month. Its impossible to get a ‘finished’ painting when outside. Nature just changes so quickly, the clouds are constantly changing and, on this occasion, the sun was setting so quickly that anything more complicated would have needed photographic reference.

Steve (2), originally uploaded by David Pott.

Drawn on cartridge paper with a compressed charcoal pencil. Lots of broad crosshatching helps to keep the shadows luminous and preserve the feeling of reflected light from the background and floor.

I made a conscious effort to use a combination of juicy dark lines (for example, to emphasise the inner fold of the back of the knee and any areas that were moving into shadow). I wanted to contrast these areas with ‘lost’ edges, usually corresponding with highlights, for example on the top edges of his arms.

Watching the TV after School

Here’s a page from one of my sketchbooks. Its so difficult to get catch children sitting still. Sometime you have to catch them during one the rare times of day when they are (relatively) still and quiet.

My sketchbooks are full of very quick and usually unfinished sketches like this. I do feel very jealous of people whose sketchbooks are full of mini-masterpeices on each page. I never seem to have the time to complete my sketches and as a result my sketchbooks are full of half-finished drawings and unidentifiable squiggles.

Winter Hill Clouds

I’ve been told many times that, on a clear day, you can see the Isle of Man from the top of Winter Hill. I had begun to wonder if that wasn’t just an urban myth, passed from generation to generation of ramblers.

Now along comes www.viewfinderpanoramas.org - a useful site that contains computer generated panoramas  of views from many mountains around the world, with a special bias towards UK panoramas

Here’s the panorama it generated of the view from Winter Hill. And yes, you can theoretically see the Isle of Man in perfect conditions.

If you’ve ever seen the Isle of Man from Winter Hill, will you let me know? Better still if you can send me a photo!

Two things I found very interesting today:

1) An advert by London Transport to demonstrate how easy it is to distract our attention from something big. Don’t let me spoil it, see the ad on YouTube (see the link below).

2) A copy of the BBC’s Horizon programme discussing the parallel universe theory - a theory that might explain the origin of the universe and the nature of matter.

Both the advert and the new theory touch on how we perceive the world. In the case of the advert, we learn how little we actually notice and how easily we are distracted. With the parallel universe theory, we learn that perhaps all we see is but a small slice of a much bigger whole.

As an artist, I find this interesting because perceptions (my perceptions and your perceptions) vary so much. When painting, I want to hide certain realities from the viewer and exaggerate others.

So to learn how easily fooled the brain is, and then discover how little our perceptions of reality match up to the real world, inspires me to believe that art might just be more valid than our own perceptions.

Here’s the BBC program about parallel universes:

and here’s the London Transport advert:

Rhys Harding emailed me a few days ago with a few questions. I answered them as best I could!

What are the major influences in your work?

The landscape (and seascapes) plus portraits and the human form have been the most inspirational subjects for me. In more abstract ways: light (shining through leaves, or from behind stormclouds), colour (from sunsets, or moorland grasses in winter), textures (clouds, hills, grass, mud).

Are there any other artists you have looked up to in your career or when you were younger?

Picasso. For pushing the boundaries of art, for his creative energy and for his technical skill (people forget that he was an incredible draughtsman and could make paint do anything he wanted).

Ivon Hitchens. A relatively unknown English painter whose simple, direct paintings of landscapes I try to emulate.

Matisse. Just for his line and colour, but what lines and what colour!

David Hockney. I can learn so much about painting and drawing by study his work…

Constable. His small sketches, painted outside in front of his subject are so fresh and lively.

Degas. I love the way he used photography to inspire new compositions.

Richard Long. For his understanding of the landscape.

Lucien Freud. Painting the nude is an incredible skill, and to have his focus, over so many years has enabled him to create a ‘body’ (sorry about the pun) of work that helps me see the human form in new ways.

Liam Spencer (a local Manchester artist). Because he’s local and because he captures the way the light reflects on rain-wet streets so well.

Which medium do you most like to work with and why?

Oil or acrylic on canvas or hardboard. I try not be be too concerned about the medium.

What is the favourite piece of your own work?

Usually my own favourites are ones that no-one else likes. I’m really pleased with http://www.davidpott.co.uk/images/WinterHillAndBelmont.jpg but no-one ever buys it! My favourites are usually paintings where I feel I’ve created the painting I set out to paint. Very often when I paint, my initial vision isn’t quite matched by the final painting. When the final painting does match the initial vision, then that’s great.

Where is your favourite place to paint and why?

I feel most at home painting the Pennines.

How long on average do you spend on one of your paintings?

I usually spend about a month from starting a painting to finishing it, though I will have two or three painting ‘on the go’ at any one time. If you add up the actual hours painting involved in one of my paintings, perhaps 5 to 10 hours. I seem to spend a lot of time gazing out of the window, listening to music or the radio, or just looking at the painting in progress. To me, daydreaming like this is just part of the creative process. I used to feel bad about it, until I realised that pictures have to form at their own rate.

Do you find your paintings a challenge or does it come naturally?

If I don’t paint for any period of time I become very irritable but having said that, I find it very difficult to shut out the distractions of everyday life and start to paint. Once started, I’m too easily distracted by other things. So I guess I’m not a naturally creative person - I do have to force myself to stand in front of the canvas sometimes, but I always feel very rewarded when I do.

Do you enjoy what you do?

See above!

Did you always want to be an artist?

My father is an artist, so I was always given access to paint, paper and encouragement. At school I wanted to be many things (an astronaut, an astronomer, a physicist). I ended up working in IT, but slowly the artist came to the fore.

Do you learn something form each piece you create?

Yes. That’s what makes it so great. You never, ever stop being surprised by the visual world.

Have your experiences an artist changed you as a person?

Being an artist helps you see the world with fresh eyes every day. I think I’m much more receptive to beauty, and much more capable of finding aesthetically pleasing aspects in otherwise mundane objects.

I’m in the middle of a painting of part of the moorlands near my home in Lancashire. The moorland landscape is deceptively complex. On first glance it is almost minimal in its simplicity: hills, grasses, heather and sky. On closer investigation you can see the marks of human habitation and usage through thousands of years. Bronze age cairns and barrows, ancient paths and trackways, more recent stone quarries, coal mines and isolated farmsteads are all visible when you take the time to look and to learn the history of this landscape.

On a practical, artistic, level painting the moors allows an artist to experiment with landscapes that are so elemental as to be virtually abstract. Textures of grass, contours of hills, wild racing clouds and the scratching of crumbled walls, sheep paths and old excavations allow for bold brush strokes and expertimentation. Colours are muted, but rich reds and ochres add depth and vibrancy. Softness is provided by the ocean-like expanses of grasses.

Sometimes, I create a painting that just isn’t quite right. Sometimes I know straightaway why a painting isn’t right, sometimes it takes months before I realise, sometimes I never find out! Here’s a painting that I finished earlier this year but never felt was quite finished:

Its been in my studio since I finished it and last week it caught my eye. And as I looked at it I just knew extact what was wrong with it. So I repainted the foreground in a warmer, darker shade. Now the sense of distance between the foreground and the reservoir is just right and I’m finally happy with the painting. Here’s the new version:

Now the painting has a visual impact and integrity, and, importantly, it accurately reflects the the original mood of the painting. It’s my original vision of the real, original scene. And that’s the most important thing for an artist. I hope you like it too.

I’ve been spending some time on the Lancashire coast at Lytham St Annes. The horizons are broad and dramatic. The distance from the dunes to the sea can be nearly a mile at certain times of the day, and to walk out into the vast flatness of that landscape is to feel very insignificant and small. The light was so bright and pure the scene seemed almost to vibrate. The girls are my twin daughters.

When painting this kind of landscape I find it almost essential to include a few figures within the composition, to give that sense of human smallness, otherwise the human eye has no visual clues to give reality to the scale of scene.

Think of an artist and you’ll often end up thinking of a specific place. Think of Constable, and you’ll have a mental image of Suffolk countryside, think of Monet and you’ll get a mental picture of Giverny, or think of Cezanne and a you’ll think of Provence. Whether we realize it or not, many artists are unalterably associated with a specific place.

So here’s my list of British artists with their mental associations of artist = place. Its not scientific, and not in any particular order, and some of the associations might not even be factually correct, but they how I perceive the artist:

Augustus John = Tenby, South Wales
Stanley Spencer = Cookham
LS Lowry = Salford
Patrick Heron = St Ives
David Hockney = Los Angeles or Bradford
A Heaton Cooper, W Heaton Cooper = Lake District
Christopher Wood = Cornwall
Leon Kossof = London
John Sell Cotman = East Anglia
Samuel Palmer = Shoreham