Interpreting the Landscape in Acrylic and Collage

We're heading 'up North' tomorrow to Malham Tarn Field Centre, Ian to do a course on History in the Landscape and I'm doing a painting course with artist Katherine Holmes. In sorting out my art materials, I came across the paintings I did on a course with her at Malham in Spring 2005 which started me off on the route of painting with acrylics on fabrics . It was my first experience of experimenting with various acrylic media so as with anything you're new to , there was an element of frustration that the results didn't necessarily match up to the fun of the process. Looking at them with fresh eyes , there's parts of them that I rather like and give me ideas for how to progress this week. This one is the smallest at 1/4 imperial. While I like the textures (acrylic media scratched into and painted over) it really needs to be bigger to carry it off
Elements of this are interesting, I enjoyed the combination of torn paper collage and pastels and working larger at 1/2 imperial was less constraining.
These 2 details of an 1/2 imperial painting of the rockface at Gordale Scar are the most interesting . I started the painting in situ - nothing beats direct observation. The left hand side of the painting (not shown) doesn't work that well - I think I was probably trying too hard to do a 'landscape' painting when what I was drawn to was the abstract shapes and colours. I think over the last 3 years through working with acrylics on fabric I've got better at abstraction - perhaps as there is less emphasis on making a picture.

In a way, this drawing is probably the best thing I did. I normally skim over the drawing stage to dive into colour but something about working with an ink brush pen on watercolour paper and drawing what was just in front of me absorbed me. I was sitting on the edge of a path drawing the other side of the valley and only gave up when rain stopped play!


Painting equipment 2005 (including the kitchen sink or equivalent)