Space as a Stage: a story telling device (Patreon)

In my last article I dealt with the experience of painting in the presence of the subject. Here, I want to focus on painting which is based on imagination - which translates space into a stage to support the subject. Like before, it’s a slippy topic, and the examples I give are ones which are pertinent to me and the comparisons at times, over simplified, but I hope it’ll go some way to help explore this idea.

Firstly, I want to consider the question of space in painting entirely - imagine standing in your room and looking some objects on the table. You may wish to paint a scene of this, to paint it from your perspective. But what if you wanted to tell us more about the scene - what it was like to stand there, who was next door, what was going on outside whilst you were standing there. You might even want to paint yourself looking at the table. It is now a picture about a place, not just of it. The question is, how do we use space to incorporate all the elements we may want to include? This is the magic of painting, that space can be manipulated to support an idea, and gravity is optional.

If we look at Giotto painting in the 1300’s, we can see an idea of space that is about communication. Space here is not as we would recognise it in a photograph - it is not ‘realistic’ in the sense of optically how we might encounter a scene. The drama isn’t created by dramatic perspective or theatrical lighting. It is more of a schematic for a play - a theatre piece where we are led to understand all the components of the story in relation to each other; the angel through the window, St Anne hearing the news, and the woman outside listening in. He also zooms out further to show us the building in the landscape, crested by the celestial blue of the sky - a sign to the viewer that we should never forget that the universe at large encircles the drama of the subject, and the world he depicts should be seen in relation to this.

Annunciation to St Anne by Giotto, c.1304 - c.1306, 200 x 185 cm © Public Domain

Moving to the present, contemporary painter Caroline Walker’s use of space invites a cinematic perspective that drives the drama - her use of space, unlike Giotto’s, firmly set in the world of the optical. The woman in the painting, Tahr, is painted as though we are voyeurs to the space - caught pausing between activity in a room functional, not glamorous, there is the sense that this is drawn from someone’s lived reality - the drama emanating from our knowledge that this is true-to-life. Space here, firmly grounded in reality, is a first person drama, in which we are present, though the subject is unaware.

Tarh, 10.30am, Southall by Caroline Walker, Oil on linen, 174 x 200cm, 2017 © Caroline Walker

In Walker, the paint is fluid, slick - there is a sense that these are marks which are elegant summations of a photographic moment - a fleeting quality. They do not pause, or monumentalise a subject, but have a wet-on-wet quality that suggests a painter who sees and paints in response to their sight. The space here has a quality of witnessing.

John Singer Sargent, Watercolour on paper, c1886 © Public Domain

To expand this idea further, take Sargent’s Roses c1886 and Van Gogh’s Oleanders flowers. Sargent painting is of the flowers as we see them - about the light on that day at a specific time in a certain place. The way the paint is put down is brief, spontaneous - decisions made as a consequence of looking. The space created is an optical one. If we look at the Van Gogh however, it has a quality of not just being of the flowers but about them also. The contours are certain, the background consistent - it is not a product of marks dashed off to construct an optical impression of the flowers, but instead the language is one of communicating the idea of flowers. The space is a stage to talk about flowers on a table.

Vincent Van Gogh, Oleanders, Oil on canvas, 60.3 x 73.7 cm, 1888 © Public Domain

Take Paula Rego’s painting The Family, and we are brought to a space not dissimilar to Caroline Walker, an interior, though with a very different handling of paint and use of space. The language of paint is more monumental, more certain - it is not the product of looking, but rather of telling - building an imagined world with definite, discreet forms which are to be read - legibility is key here.

Paula Rego, The Family, Oil on canvas, 1988 © Paula Rego Fair Use

Much of my life in painting has been caught between various ways of using space to stage an image - where my being with my subject and that optical impression is crucial to the painting, and yet the desire to construct, to use a language more monumental and certain like Paula Rego has been a pull. Yet of late, the notion of space as a stage has begun to take on a different dimension for me.

In the painting Leaving the flat painted in 2020 - the space is one of observation, where being there is integral to the process. Starting from life in the flat, I reworked the image in the studio, pasting on new pieces of canvas over the old. The space was now a stage for not just human drama, but for a story that talked about time passing... the plate, the chair, the girl, all repainting on fresh canvas in different lights - giving the image new dimensions of observation, and telling a more multifaceted story. One where the narrative is not one necessarily of characters and action, but rather of light and time passing; not just its image, what it felt to live in the space.

Tim Patrick, Leaving The Flat,  Oil on Linen, 205x170cm, 2020 ©Tim Patrick

There is no right or wrong in the space used in painting - there is only a plurality and a feel - what we desire to paint leads the language, and in leaning into the process, we can come to an understanding of how we experience the world. The stage is not just the one depicted in painting, but the painting itself beckons, and asks you to step up and take your part.

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This article the second 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.

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