Rod McRae
Paintings
Paintings
Moving along, I started this small canvas with a view to following up some of the more ethereal images I've produced recently. I think it starts to represent some sort of trend, but it hasn't consolidated yet. A few more works are needed, and I'm not completely clear just how 'abstract' I want these images to be. This one is veering towards landscape (which I can never seem to escape entirely) but I'm not too unhappy about it. Its not a 'real' landscape, and it has its origin in the process of making it rather than the 'real' world. Is that an 'unreal' world?
This is a small board, and a slight diversion from my larger canvas, but nevertheless it relates closely to it in some aspects.
I'm trying to develop the same feeling and tone but with a distinctly simpler format.
If this works, I'll try a similar image on a larger canvas. I think it just might just work...
I'm still steadily working on this larger painting, and thoroughly enjoying it!
This small painting (240mmx126mm, acrylic on masonite) was cut into three, which opened up several new possibilities.
Various odd things happened in this process. Some of the blocks were scanned, and some were photographed, which produced quite distinct colour variations. Then, when inserting the images, the shape of them determined the overall scale (since the scale is determined by the width of the image filling the column space). So they come out different sizes. Rather than adjusting for these variations, I choose to keep the oddity.
Last shown in this blog on 25 May 2024, this painting has developed quite a lot, but it is still moving forward. Shapes are consolidating, but the tone remains rather forbidding. While not exactly apocalyptic, there is a grimness here that I am loathe to abandon. And yet there are faint glimmers of hope even in the heart of the darkness. It remains to be seen how this will turn out. I am enjoying the journey, which is for me perhaps the most vital aspect.
Here is the original ‘Wolf light’ from the show at Watters in 2008:
That painting started out like this:
but this didn’t really look like it was going anywhere for me. Its hard to say why, but maybe it was just being defined too early.
I’m continuing on with the painting in the last post. I’m not sure that the changes will be that obvious at this stage, because I’m working at quite a detailed level. Still, I’ll put up a photo anyhow:
Version 4
Version 2
The painting above is a small one that I started recently. I worked quite a bit on it yesterday, and it’s come on since the previous iteration (shown below):
Version 1
I know it doesn’t look THAT different, but I’m working on it to get more major structures in place. More work to do today!
Later in the day (below):
Version 3
You have to ignore some of the differences in colour between the photos – the light is so variable that its close to impossible to match the tone and particularly the colour balance of each photo when they are taken at different times of day, in different lighting conditions. All part of the joy and magic of light!
Just started three small paintings, and on all three I put a coloured ground.
This one has moved on to the next stage and begins to have a shape.
At the same time, I've been doing work on small oil paintings, like this one:
Just one of many tablet drawings that are emerging:
I bought a new wacom tablet. I already have one. Two wacoms are better than one.
I find that working on the computer, I often want to use analogue data as an input, usually the background. Then I can work over this ground with drawing tools or paste bits and pieces of other drawings. So I'm still using ink a lot, but also digital drawing equipment.
These ink drawing photos all have larger versions (on clicking them)
I worked on this one a bit with drawing tools on the tablet:
Then, some more ink drawings, and some more manipulations:
And I've also been doing some work on one of the small paintings I've already introduced below. This is Small painting 2 in its current condition. There is more work to do here.
I generally try and post images, of the work I am currently engaged with, rather than writing a lot of text about my thoughts on the matter in hand. The additions that I do write are simply to put a context to the images.
However, I don't always produce something worth
photographing. Often the changes over the course of a day or
so in a particular painting are quite subtle and don't show
up well in photographs.
If I can't see the changes through the photos, I don't
really see how you can.
And yet, these changes can be quite significant to me. Sometimes it is just a strong feeling that I get about the nature of the change and how it will determine the next stage of this adventure of mine. I would like to both try and put these feelings into words (for my own record) and to share them with whoever is reading my website. I used to run a parallel diary for myself, purely about painting and my own thoughts on it. Now I only use this website, so it is a vital part of my process, and I am determined to make it even more important in the future.
This requires a bit of a change in my attitude, and my practice. If it doesn't work for me, I'll switch back to a minimal mode again, but hopefully this will help me move forward in a positive way.
This year has been moving at a fairly slow pace so far, for me as a painter. However, just recently, things have started to speed up a bit. A lot of minor changes in my work practices are contributing to this, and I can now start to see a kind of pattern emerging. This is reinforced for me by the fact that I start to get images of paintings at times outside of my studio going through my head. There is some vagueness there, in terms of the exact form that they take. Rather, it is an atmosphere which infuses them and draws me forward. This is a good sign!
This is the first of those three small paintings, after the first day of oil painting.
I turned it round.
This is a fairly large painting I'm currently working on. It was a (completed) painting called 'Wolf-light' from 2008. I was happy with the way it looked then, but I always wanted to know what it would have been like if I'd continued to work on it. So I am doing that, and here it is now - still some way to go, but looking interesting!
(View the 2008 show which included the original Wolf-light,here)
Small painting 1
Small painting 2
Small painting 3
And I've also been working on these three smaller paintings (above). I started them off using acrylics.
But I am working over them, one at a time, in oil paints. This way, I can match tones with the underpainting in a much more precise fashion. I've painted like this for many years now.
Since I've found a neat way to synchronise my website files with the Fastmail server, which speeds up new entries in the blog no end, I'm going to discontinue the experiment with Ikiwiki, and will dismantle the blog I set up for that purpose.
From now on, it all happens here in this site. :)
But I will also replicate the last couple of posts which I did on the ikiwiki blog here
Possibly temporarily (depending on how the experiment goes), I'm moving my blog to a new ikiwiki blog which is hosted on my own server. Everything else of the website will remain here.
We'll see how it goes. I'm hoping that posting on that format will make it easier for me, and thus I'll be more likely to post regularly.
The new address (for the blog only) is:
https://rodmcrae.fbx.one/ikiwiki/rodmcrae
(Ed. this link no longer goes anywhere. I have discontinued the Ikiwiki blog)
This is slow work, but I'm making progress.
For a small painting - its only 40cm wide and 35cm tall - this painting is packing just about every challenge to me that I've encountered in painting. There is a huge temptation to simplify (and thus bypass some of the stickier points) but something is drawing me towards attempting to resolve each issue, one at a time, even if it makes life very difficult for me!