Space and Paint Today: who’s doing what today and how are they doing it differently (Patreon)

“In the realm of the visible all epochs coexist and are fraternal, whether separated by centuries or millennia. And when the painted image is not a copy but the result of a dialogue, the painted thing speaks if we listen.”

- John Berger, The Shape of a Pocket

Where is painting now and how do we see things differently? What shapes the artist’s experience of paint and depicting space today? We live in an era in which our representation of the visual is subject to new influences. In these articles I’ve focused on a representational approach to painting space - this is my interest and an approach I feel most confident to speak about. I want in this last article to pause for a minute and look at this aspect of painting space in the light of different approaches and influences used today.

What presses on the artist and their work? So much of my own painting has been motivated by the depiction of space and depth - that story of light I wrote of before. When I am printmaking, as in Home II below, the image I create are less based on the literal. They are more about simplification and take on a more poetic significance in regards to the use of colour and form; beyond representing it’s thingness. This fascinates me, so here I want to spend time looking at the ways in which the spirit of painting space is different today, and how the language of painting - it’s plurality, our engagement with a culture of screens, images, film and photography - alongside the knowledge and access to artists from all cultures and times, has shaped the point of satisfaction for artists, and the exploration of paint itself. This will not be an article of setting up dichotomies or dramatic comparisons, but of inquiry, looking to several of my peers and their approach to painting and representing space today.

Tim Patrick, Home II,  Monotype on paper, 21x29cm

So many of the artists I love celebrate the duplicity of the medium - that sweet spot between image and material, at once image and paint. Joana Galego’s work is poised at this threshold - where the meaning is in the materiality of the image - it’s poetic power not bounded to the significance of the image alone, but to the use of paint to communicate…In Go Gentle, there is a record of searching in the work, of layers and strokes which coalesce to give to the viewer, not just a painting, but a concrete record of the artist’s presence in front of the canvas. The picture is a witness to a memory, and simultaneously a witness and response to the paint on the surface also - making a space at once visual and material. Working from memory and life, the space in the paintings respond to a narrative purpose - to the four corners of the canvas and the search within it. Go Gentle, demonstrates this duality - the artifice of drawing and the wholesomeness of the real, depicted world.

Joana Galego, Go Gentle, Oil on canvas, 170x154cm

Eleanor Watson’s work in contrast, seeks an ethereal significance in the found image - spaces where the absence of depicted figures does not exclude the human presence, but rather infers it. The poetic power of the paintings based firmly in a world of the optical, whereby a process of reduction of the image reveals its significance. In The Doors No Longer Hang True, the plates and bowls are held at the point of the disintegration, the table receding not just into space, but into the materiality of the paint itself. Her images are held at the threshold of painting, not a process of coalescing marks but of elegant simplification - a search to find the essential; the root of the image’s meaning. Eleanor has described her work before as a form of escapism; consummately optical and with that beautifully inferred human presence, we are brought to these found spaces, escaping with her.

Eleanor Watson, The Doors No Longer Hang True, Oil on canvas, 100x80cm

In Michael Chance’s work, the voices are pluralistic - the space in his work oscillating between illusory depth to graphic and illustrative, sometimes within one painting. In the view of his studio below, his paintings are at times full of solidity and concrete objects - there is a certitude of forms described with heavy contours - the language alluding to the significance between objects.. Working from life, from imagination, drawings and film, Michael’s variety in his work is not chameleonic - it does not change out of uncertainty of approach, but rather from a place of knowing - of consciously seeking an approach that befits a subject. His drawings, The End of Farm Lane and portrait in Interior bookend this diversity of approach - the artist today is awash with language, and can speak in what voice they choose...

Michael Chance, Studio shot

Michael Chance, The End of Farm Lane Oil on canvas, 27.2x21.1cm

Michael Chance, Interior Oil on canvas, 40x50cm

We can perhaps infer from these three painters, that there is an active search in their work, one which does not feel constricted by style or school. Painted space exists in a realm which is neither strictly observational nor illustrative - with Joanna and Michael, that ‘thingness’ I referred to, seeks forms which communicate - draughtsman which solidifies their ideas, and the painted space is one particular to picture making. Eleanor’s brings us to a world familiar and optical, though transfigured by an eloquent reduction of the image to its poetic pieces. 

Whilst there is an over-simplification in presenting just three artists, I feel that by their example we can read into them an openness, surprise, and spirit of being led by the material that underpins their work and approach - allowing oneself to engage with a dialogue with the subject and the work. Across these three articles, and in this case, my three painter friends, it is apparent to me that painted space is in constant flux between the material and image - and that it’s for me, lies in listening to that dialogue. Painting, in any form is found, not demonstrated - in all the work, there is an element of surprise which the artist has to be open to - has to have a poise of receptiveness in order to receive what the subject wants to be. It is far less about what we want to paint, and how the subject wants to be painted through us. As John Berger puts it:

"This is why the image has to be full - not of resemblance but of searching. All tricks wear thin. Only what comes unasked has a hope."

- John Berger, The Shape of a Pocket

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This article is the their and final of 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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