I will set up a separate section of my blog to highlight additional paintings that I have completed whilst working through ‘Studio Practice’. These are often an idea or an image that I have found that I want to try and draw or paint. However I will start this blog with a painting that I had completed during Part Two that I wasn’t happy with. It is a painting of a sunken tree. I was drawn to the image whilst out walking. I took a photograph of it and committed myself to reproducing it in paint. I returned to it during Part Three and having made some improvements to the painting I felt that it fitted in with the brief for Exercise 1.3. The topic is as much about the reflective property of water as it is about the tree.
The background , its colour and image is a creation made up in the studio. In earlier versions of the painting I had dispensed with a horizon line which made the painting look flat and lacking depth. The addition of the horizon line and the blurred, misty background brings the whole composition together.
The second painting in this series exploring reflections is a more formal representational painting. It is a self portrait painting using a mirror against a window. The view through window, the objects on the table and windowsill along with the background behind myself. I have described the image in a literal manner. The self portrait whilst representing a likeness does make me look sombre with a vacant expression. Perhaps this is a reflection on the time that it was painted, during Lockdown. I feel that the painting works as a composition, maybe it lacks interest to the left side. I was tempted to add some plants but decided to leave these out to emphasis the empty feeling of Lockdown.
Painting 3 is a study in the reflective qualities of water. The painting is taken from a section of a photograph where I was looking into the water and seeing the refection of the grasses and reeds. I feel that this is important to point out as when I showed this painting it was commented that it wasn’t obvious what it was or what it was supposed to represent. To me it was obvious but then I knew of the source material and how I had arrived at the image. Despite this I feel that it works as a painting.
Painting four, the last in this series, is another exercise in trying to depict the reflective qualities of water. This painting, a Fenland landscape, attempts to capture how the reflections amplify the size and scale of the landscape. In hindsight I made the greys slightly too dark which has taken some of the life out of what I wanted to convey and made the painting more gloomy than I had intended.
As I mentioned in Blog One on this exercise the Fenland landscape, its atmosphere, the water, the reflections in the water are all aspects that I want to explore further in my work. It is amongst the confusion of ideas that I will focus in on a topic for my parallel project.
Before I started work on my painting for Assignment Three I completed a further two quick studies examining the topic of reflections in water.
…and the second one
In summary I am happy with the outcome of this Exercise and the differing ways that I have approached the topic of mirrors and reflections. I suspect, that it is a subject I will continue to return to often as I find the topic offers endless fascination. It forces me to look carefully and consider what I’m looking at.
Mark Taylor 'Studio Practice' 