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Over the years I\u2019ve kept mostly away from figure painting. Not sure why. I\u2019ve done images of people in light-hearted work, such as cartoon-style water-colours to record travels. But lately I\u2019ve wanted to summon the human figure onto canvas, and these ones have come out to play.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m still figuring out (yes, Cloudy, that\u2019s a pun) who these people are. I\u2019ve heard fiction writers say they don\u2019t control what their characters do. They put them on the page and wait to see what happens. This feels a bit like that. These figures seemed to arrive of their own accord. The images all started with the figures as sketches, and the rooms they occupy emerged from there.<\/p>\n
Are all characters facets of the author? Maybe. These figures are all women, so that\u2019s a clue perhaps. Another is that they inhabit the kinds of spaces I\u2019ve been painting for years. They seem to possess the bowls and vases and flowers of a hundred still life compositions I\u2019ve done in my life.<\/p>\n
The figures all wanted to be busy. It\u2019s true the seated woman \u2014 who is to me particularly mysterious \u2014 isn\u2019t doing anything. But she has a look of calm readiness about her, as though her work is all recently done, and that something interesting is about to happen in this energetic space she occupies. It\u2019s like she has arranged a still life for me to paint and then sat in the middle of it, as if to say, \u201cHere I am.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Over the years I\u2019ve kept mostly away from figure painting. Not sure why. I\u2019ve done images of people in light-hearted work, such as cartoon-style water-colours to record travels. But lately I\u2019ve wanted to summon the human figure onto canvas, and these ones have come out to play. I\u2019m still figuring out (yes, Cloudy, that\u2019s a … <\/p>\n