To Paint From Presence: Reflecting on painting in the presence of a subject (Patreon)

In a new three-part blog series painter Tim Patrick will take us through some of the ideas that underpin his work in a series of illustrated essays, with a particular focus on attitude rather than technical process. You might also want to watch the ETC interview with artists featured in the exhibition This is Where We Meet, curated by Tim HERE. The blogs will be released every Sunday at 10am. 

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Painting is, first, an affirmation of the visible which surrounds us and which continually appears and disappears. Without the disappearing, there would perhaps be no impulse to paint, for then the visible itself would possess the surety (the permanence) which painting strives to find.

- John Berger, The Shape of a Pocket

I want to approach painting for a moment not as the painter, but as the viewer - in coming to a painting and recognising ‘presence’. It’s a mercurial idea, and hard to put a hand around it, but for me, it is something that allows a painting to become more than just an image of a place, and instead, to become a place in paint.

This idea of presence in painting is laid out in the opening quote - that the job of the picture making is to make the disappeared permanent - to capture some quality of the minutes passed in the presence of the subject. This for me, has become integral to my work, that there is something about being with the subject that compels me to paint, and keeps me in pursuit of the image.

This is what I want to focus on in this article - to get to the heart of art making, and of the earnest experience of the world through painting. We can leave behind expectation and craft, that the process of painting has an outcome you can tidy the subject into, and instead enter a realm of the unknown. To paint in the presence of the subject allows it to be explored, to be discovered.

This exploration for me, has manifested itself in interiors - the spaces and rooms we live and move through. Seeing how familiar surrounds are transfigured by a change of light and passage of time is what most compels me to paint; the bed, the living room, the pattern of a curtain, are all aspects of a place that are both familiar and overlooked, and yet when held as the subject of a painting, are transformed and elevated. The Red Room I painted in 2020 is like this - a space where for me, painting is really involved in being there, and staying there.

The Red Room, Oil on Linen, 205x170cm

Why is this idea so special? What is it that I’m driving at? I have to tell it from my perspective - to paint with something enriches your experience of the place - it is a treasure trove of light, shadow, time passing…you are in attendance with the subject, waiting on it, allowing yourself to be led by it. The place yields itself to you over time, as you pursue iteration after iteration of its changing face in ink, paint, colour.…it is not silent, immutable, but active, it continually appears and disappears, as John Berger puts it. By staying with it, you discover more, and it begins to reveal its face to you in observation and memory. It is no longer about simple execution of an image, but instead about transcribing the minutes passed in a place.

I had always equated painting with directly experiencing a subject. There was something about being in the place of your inspiration that felt authentic. I remember summers in Brighton painting in the landscape, coming back and placing the small picture in the studio, and having the uncanny feeling of experiencing it twice - once out in the landscape, and the second in the studio. There was something about the painting as an artefact of a place - a piece of it you capture and bring back… It offers the experience of living there….and the viewer can feel this.

What is it the viewer feels? Can see in the picture? When a painting is made, it is made by a body - the lines and strokes that crystallised the movement of the artist. It is in these movements, the turn of a brush or change of colour, that we can see the reckoning of the painter. In the once liquid traces of the painter’s decisions their presence is made legible to the viewer. Where it transcends verisimilitude and the painting ‘becomes’ the subject. Not the exact image as we might think of today in photographic terms, but in terms of experience. This is presence. A presence translated into paint. It is not just like the subject - but begins to take on some quality of the place.

In the Red Room…I found myself pursuing this story place. Staying in my flat in Hackney whilst my housemate Yu Shan was away, I passed her room so often, seeing through the open door a room bathed in red light from the curtains. Moving from the glow of early morning to the crisp light of day, with shadows cast by the plants in the windows, I began to work quickly to capture the space. Working in inks and oils, the image began to take shape, my movements and strokes measuring the distance between objects; not a measure of accuracy, but of feel. This feel invites other pictures to be made - alternatives, versions, traces of the environment and of time passing. I have often found this in the last year, that no single picture is sufficient, but that it is in the plurality of approaches that makes the whole, and find the presence.

I think fundamentally, this is what drives me in persisting in painting from life - that it gets around styles, approaches, tricks or craft, and surprises even me, as painter. Any anxiety I had over being a ‘contemporary’ painter has dissipated, recognising that, with humility, to paint today is not to command the subject, to tell it how it is, but rather a much gentler approach - to listen, follow, to sit in its presence and let it paint through me. The truth is that there is no ‘way’ to make a painting, there is only encounter - to paint from presence.

- Tim Patrick

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This article the first in a three-part series by painter Tim Patrick. You can watch an interview with Tim here, or follow Tim on Instagram here. You can always use the Patreon Navigator to look back over previous blogs HERE.

>> Read Blog 2: Space as a Stage 

>> Read Blog 3: Space & Paint Today