I’m currently going through a bit of a ‘stuck’ phase where I can’t get down on canvas what I envisage in my mind. I always want to move on and make better paintings. I’m never really satisfied with doing something that I’ve done before. Maybe I try too hard and want to achieve too much too quickly. At times like this, I find that I have to keep going, to work through it, and more often than not it does result in something positive, a new discovery, a stepping-stone to who knows where. Persistence is the key. As my favourite poet George Mackay Brown wrote: “There’s no retreat. The path mounts higher and every summit fringed with fire.”
However, here is a painting I did finish last week. It’s the latest of my woodland derived paintings and my biggest so far. I like the texture on the trees, the vertical rhythm, and the fluidity of the paint. Someone has commented on its Klimt-esque qualities which pleases me. Klimt is an artist whose work I’ve always been drawn to, maybe TOO decorative at times, but I do love his dream-like, abstracted trees and landscape paintings.
Mark H Wilson
Tangle Wood 2
Acrylic on Box Canvas
100cm x 70cm
Gustav Klimt
Beech Forest
Talking of large paintings, my biggest painting on canvas EVER measured 8’x4’ which I did at Art College many, many years ago. It was a big blue abstract based on the lettering and images from discarded canned food labels. Abstract Expressionism was all the rage at our college at the time, but I was a big fan of Pop Art, so I sort of combined the two. I remember it got accepted for the Open Art exhibition at the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull and I recall getting a few disparaging looks and comments carrying it through the streets of Hull for selection day.
Finally, to celebrate the arrival of Spring on this lovely sunny day, I’ll finish with this painting of mine called “Spring”.
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