'Penzance 15' 45x50cms

 MON 1 MARCH

I recently returned to my 'Penzance' series in 'The Painting Process 4'. The making of the new paintings was recorded on 8 half-hr videos, filmed by my daughter Faye, and posted on YouTube, available to subscribers. These are still available to view for a subscriber fee of £50. Please email info@ashleyhanson.co.uk and we will send you the links.

Three very different paintings emerged which I'm looking forward to showing together in my exhibition at the Crypt Gallery in St.Ives 29 May - 4 June. There is a wildness and freedom in PZ 15, with colour/water flowing through multiple entrances and exits around the canvas.  

detail

A candy-striped beginning before a harbour-shape is forced into the painting, first in line (1) then with poured and smeared liquid-paint. Not happy with the shapes, which seemed to follow the edges of the canvas too uniformly, the painting is transformed by turning it around and allowing the viridian/rose mixes to spread around the canvas before bringing in a new softer shape with rounded corners (4). In the finale, the droopy green was lifted towards the top-right corner, supported by a vibrant orange stripe.

'PENZANCE 14'

 'Penzance 14'  50x60cms

The sharpness of the house-shaped innner harbour leads the eye to the harbour entrance...

 
detail

 The harbour entrance, both a barrier and an entrance: paint brushed and cut, poured and smeared...

Finding a shape in Indian Yellow (1). this harbour-painting somehow morphed into an exotic interior (3), before being rescued by working from a new dynamic drawing (4)

 'PENZANCE 13'

MON 15 FEB

After a few tinkerings, questions answered, the painting is done, the last act a barely-there horizontal edge of turquoise across the large pink-shape. A tough calI but I decided that the windows in the church in the version below were a distraction, disrupting the flow of colour and the sublime tension of whether the pink paralellogram touches the tower...

5

Love this detail - could be a painting in itself. So does the pink-shape touch?

detail

Four stages of the painting, continuing with the triangular composition that I explored in my recent interpretation of Cezanne's 'The Large Bathers', but here, more dynamic. 

For a long time, the drawing was stronger than the painting, but now the painting gives so much more.