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- Ashley Hanson
I recently hosted the 'Purple' Workshop at the fabulous Queens Park Arts Centre in Aylesbury. This was the latest in a long line of 'Freedom in Painting' workshops around the country over the past 10 years, where a group of curious artists get together to investigate a niche of painting, responding to different genres, artists or colours over 2 days. The theme is often sourced in something happening in my own work or something seen, or, in this case, a theme suggested by the artists themselves.
Egon Schiele & Helen Frankenthaler
We began, as always, with a talk about the history of purple in painting, from its regal origins to the Purple explosion in the mid-nineteenth century and looking at purple in the work of the Impressionists, Klimpt & Schiele, Chagall, Georgia O'Keefe, Helen Frankenthaler Mark Rothko and contemporary artists. Purple is a brave colour to use: it's in nature of course, but can be extravagant, moody, exotic, nostalgic, spitriual. The artists were asked in advance to consider the question 'Why purple?' and bring in studies and ideas to develop into purple paintings.
Exercise 1: looking for contrast in purple - temperature, tone and transparency
A curiosity of purple is that a majority of ready made purples/violets are transparent colours as are most of the blues and reds used to mix strong purples. Our first exercise followed a colour-mixing demonstration: working on paper and outwards from a small central block of contrasting colour, the artists were asked to find/mix/apply purples looking for contrast in temperature, tone and transparency. The mystery of purple began to emerge! (above)
Exercise 2 - responding to words in purple Di Oldfield
The second exercise was more challenging. Working on a small canvas, the artists were asked to interpret a set of words into purple. Some of the artists worked in a methodical way, like Diane Oldfield above, others worked more expressively in their interpretations.
Just like society in the late nineteenth-century, after the discovery of Cobalt Violet, after the exercises 'Purplemania' gripped the room! The artists then began their purple paintings working from their own subject or developing the exercises further into painting. Each artist worked their own way in their exploration of purple, some working on a few pieces, others sticking to one or two. During the workshop there were further demonstations and individual tuition with all the artists. We ended the workshop, as always, with a group critique. I must congratulate the artists for working hard under extreme conditions - two of the hottest days of the year! What emerged was a fantastic set of paintings demonstrationg the mystery, extravagance and mystery of purple. Hats off to the artists!
Great to see the artists continuing their paintings back home (see Anna Badar below - more depth and energy - and myself!). I'm looking forward to hosting a 'Sandra Blow' in workshop in Aylesbury next year.
Early and final Version of Anna Badar's 'Trebawith Moon'
Joanna Brownridge paintings
'Porthleven 102 (PURPLE - Dark Steps, Yellow Pier)' 35x45cms Ashley Hanson
'Thank you for a wonderful two day workshop- I was really inspired to continue with the theme of purple when I got back home'. KAREN MARTIN
'Thanks so much for the Purple course. I found it really interesting and learned about integrating purple into my work'. HAZEL CRAWFORD
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SAT 4 JULY
A celebration of purple (and its yellow complimentary). A tilting, rocking harbour tethered to... something. A point of tension, a holding, controlling line, preventing a falling harbour...
Another point of tension with the almost touching violet and yellow discs: will they, won't they, repelling like two positive magnets. This pairing of colours is acute: a three colour yellow and deep violet made from Ultramarine and Magenta.
Simplification, revealing the essential. The left of the harbour drawn by a new purple, the four piers a powerful central cluster, each with their individuality and difference.
I had to look again at the painting this way again - landscape - as a ship/boat/windsock, a more whimsical painting! I had a great chat about the 2 versions with my son, Ollie, who perceptively pointed out that the line that draws the left side of the harbour is a strength in the version above and a weakness as a 'boat' below. We were both fascinated by the tension between the two discs, the potential energy, the discussion leading to protons and electrons and nuclear physics. Thank-you for enlightening me Ollie!
The drawback as an 'image'- boat- is that the scale is fixed whereas as a vertical harbour the scale is indeterminate and unwordly, thus more evasive and interesting. A curiosity though: once you see it this way, you see the version above in a different light, another layer of interest. Harbour or boat, from the side or from above? All good fun - delicious ambiguities.
'Boat'
Beginnings: an idea about the Ship Inn ' Ship Inn a Ship'! (below) Too specific too soon, but the whites made a great base for majestic transparent violets, the ship becoming my harbour. Chaos (left above) but with the three harbour basins established. Simpler and more ordered on the right, purple expanding, yellow shrinking.
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'Revisit, rethink, rework, resolve...'
SUN 28 JUNE
A couple of tweaks today. A thin line rising above the bottom edge that cements the orientation. A stronger triangle on the left, echoed by the tiny open triangle bottom right, A new leaning yellow stripe on the right which makes the large yellow rectangle even stronger. A wristy ultramarine curve across the top - love the curl! - adding movement and vitality to the painting, contrasting the dominant verticality. Painting decisions...
We're done. Now the painting realises that ambition of presence, autonomy and surprise, provoking intrigue, questions: 'What am I looking at?' Blue expressive curve or the wind? Why yellow, why pink? Where am I? Place or a painter's space? 'Image' - piers and buildings and harbour-shape ambiguous and implied by scale and colour incident, subservient to the painting. Abstract or figurative or 'In Between'?
detail
(A)
THURS 18 JUNE
My new favourite! (A). Love the way the harbour sits on the bottom edge and the prominence of the yellow profile that describes the right side of the harbour. I think the yellows are more intriguing spatially as verticals, the painting reading less obviously as landscape, with the tiny sliver of blue bringing depth. There is an exciting range of scale of marks in this piece, the yellows framing an intensity of small but powerful marks.
I'm enjoying the dialogue between the large bright yellow upright rectangle and the yellow block on the left - they are the same yellow. (B) was rejected because I read the yellows at the top as buildings and they shrink the scale of the harbour.
(B)
(C)
WED 17 JUNE p.m.
'Porthleven 67 (The In Between)' that I've gone back to but can't decide which way up! Below, it's called ' Long Pier', above, 'Chimney'. I'm enjoying the lean and movement in 'Long Pier' but perhaps 'Chimney' is more surprising, the harbour more intimate and protected, pivoted on the bright yellow block/chimney, which acts a stop in 'Long Pier'. The blues up the side in 'Chimney' hopefully stop it being a tasteful landscape!
(D)
WED 17 JUNE
This is getting exciting! Each possibility has its qualities and weaknesses. in the portrait orientation above, I love the angled orange line but confused by the two shapes top left and feel I should take the yellows to the top.
The story of a painting:
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FRI 12 JUNE
At long last, a homage to both Matisse's 'The Red Studio' (1911) and Peter Lanyon's 'Porthleven' (1952) in the same painting - undoubtedly the two most influential paintings on my journey as an artist. The studio is the Old Lifeboat House in Porthleven, where many of the works in the series were made, and is painted in Venetian Red, the key red in Matisse's 'Red Studio'.
I have tried several times before to have a 'Red Studio' in a Porthleven painting but without success. Here, there is a rightness about the presence of the studio, how and where it sits in the painting, bringing control, precision and context, serenity amongst the movement, a visual stop, preventing the eye from sliding out of the painting in the bottom-right corner. I like the 'pose' of the harbour.
Speedy blues across the reds squeeze and frame the harbour. These are some of my best reds. I'm enjoying the procession of curves in the three sections of the harbour and the colour surprise of rarely used Ultramarine and hot greens as foils for the reds. It's also a rare 'viewpoint', from the Ship Inn side of the harbour. The painting of 2009 (1) gave me a composition and a palette and a startpoint. The painting now fits my ideal: a visual simplicity that is also a complexity, a conclusion of experience, exploration and imagination. We're done.
The painting, incredibly, began in 2009, during a Residency at Canford School (1) but I was never convinced by the drawing or the orientation, or never fixed it. The painting was lively but sketchy and raw: my paintings rarely survive the first stages.
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'The object of art is not to reproduce reality but to create a reality of the same intensity' Alberto Giacometti
WED 3 JUNE
Harbour revealed by framing yellows and a hanging sensuous purple.
Piers are implied by angled-lines and by small blocks of colour, sitting exquisitely on the critical horizontal, established by the telegraph pole in the original idea. Edges are rich and varied, crisp, ragged and soft, formed by brush and knife, cuts and pours, histories revealed. I see my subject, I sense my subject but the painting is found by ideas and analysis, intuition and risk, residues and rethinks. By embellishments and by taking away; a painting dictated by colour, until truth is revealed.
Revealed is the past, 'Reveal' is the present, the act of looking, absorbing, questioning, the things colour does to the retina...
In the 'House & Garden' beginning (1) - inspired by a startling blue horizontal stripe in Port Isaac and an urge to paint green - I felt restricted by the grid. The space opened up in (2) and the cartoon tree was refined but I saw more exciting freedoms and possibilities as a 'portrait' landscape (3). New yellows and a diminished blue and purple revealed an inner space (4).
(2)
(1)