Making creative use of old paintings.

Many artists say that the thing that most scares them is a blank, white canvas. I agree, it is certainly intimidating wondering how you’re going to extract a great work of art out of such a flat surface. Well – why not try this – take an old painting that you couldn’t resolve, or didn’t sell. read my article, opening colours and begin!
In my case it is cadmium orange. I squeeze a generous amount of it onto the canvas, spread the paint around like butter on toast and simply let rip. sometimes, figures or animals emerge out of the mess. I just let things happen, not imposing my will on the work, just relaxing and letting it happen. I call this way of working, “consciously unconscious”- it is a sort of instinctive approach and this is when I feel that I am “truly in the moment” as it were. In this state I am sometimes completely unaware of time passing, how hungry I am. It is a glorious state to be in. I sometimes need a bit of help from my musical muses, Mozart, Bach, Vivaldi – generally the Baroque composers work well to create this alpha brain wave state that is best fitted for focus and concentration. Gradually I begin to see definite shapes and forms emerging from the paint.
I have found that in my case the same forms will begin to reveal themselves – they are usually winged creatures- angels, Pegasus-type horses. I am always pleased and a little surprised – like being visited by old friends. if they appear I know that the painting is going to go well. These angelic forms do not last to the end of the painting – they beg to be painted out quite early on in the proceedings as if they don’t want to claim credit. So I oblige and with a somewhat crude stroke of the brush they are simply rendered invisible- just like that- swish – gone! I am often sad to see them go but I realise their task is done- they have come as guides, nothing more, nothing less – they are often replaced by animal symbols and images which are nonetheless powerful. It is always the same creatures that grace the canvas at this point – buck, horses, giraffes, the occasional elephant. I seldom see lions or small rodents. Less often there will be cats or dogs, but most often it is wildlife – I see these as signs or archetypal imagery which will lead me to the eventual core-meaning of the painting. At this point it is a bit like what I imagine an archeologist’s work to involve – digging for truth. What to discard and what to keep are crucial decisions.
it is at this point in the painting that I may reach a difficult time- I sometimes become despondent, feelings of inadequacy assail me – I think I have no talent, I can’t express what I feel inside – all these things. Here is where I have a great support in my family – my husband and two boys cheer me up with silly jokes . I present them with the painting and ask them what they see in it. We often end up rolling on the floor with the ridiculous answers they give and the absolutely crazy imagery they make up. Now I have the courage to clarify the imagery, have a look at the ideas they have come up with and work with some of them.

At one time I was working on a painting which I eventually called, “The Wedding”. (see picture inserted) The initial inspiration for this painting came from the news that a dear friend of mine was getting married for the first time at the age of 46. I immediately began a painting in her honour.
I painted the happy couple sliding down a “foefie slide” over a river. While I was painting I saw in an unresolved area in the middle of the painting a pair of giraffes with their necks intertwined. At the time I was listening to the radio. There was a discussion going on about how Louis Eiffel, the designer of the Eiffel Tower in Paris had gotten his inspiration. Believe it or not, it was from the form of a giraffe he had seen while on a tour to Africa! That was it! I painted in the giraffes, one blue, one classic African – turned their legs into the struts of the Eiffel tower and resolved the problem. They became a symbol of the love between my friend and her fiancee. I realised that I had inadvertently painted the man a darker shade than the woman. In South Africa they would be termed a “mixed couple” – I emphasised this, letting it be a symbol of unity between dark and light, black and white, European and African. In Africa especially North Africa there is a lot of French influence – I thought it was apt that I reflect that in my painting – the marriage between the European and the African..
Various other images appeared to place the painting in its context – Table Mountain in the background. A small city began to take shape at the foot of the Tower- even a Bergie appeared beneath the bridge with an empty wine bottle next to him! A wheatfield appeared – a symbol of wealth and prosperity. The radio announcer was talking about the parlous state of western Province Politics – the infighting amongst the political parties – I painted a circus in the wheatfield with the animals looking on in perplexed amazement.
I found I had a lot of trouble with the foreground – it was a vast blue area. Now I began to work a little more consciously – realising that to maintain a degree of interest I would have to create a strong contrast with the wheatfield. I painted the area a deep purple, then adding some cool ultramarine blue. I realised that it could be the sea, so I worked more with that idea, adding fishes and a dolphin- like shape.
This painting was great fun to create – giving me as much pleasure as I hoped the viewer would get. I entered it into the South African Society of Artist’s annual exhibition where it was accepted. My greatest compliment came from a ninety-year old lady who told me it was the best painting she had seen on show and she had gotten great joy from looking at it.
The next year it was sold to a German lady in Munich. I hope she is enjoying it to this day!

Painting after 40

How easy is it to start a painting career after 40?
For a start you are not at the cutting edge of the Young art world. You tend to be regarded, by virtue of your age alone, as “one of those Sunday painters” that exhibits on the side of the road or at Craft markets.

Teenagers beginning a career in fine art in that esteemed institution, Michaelis School of Art in Cape Town may laugh at the notion of spending a whole day painting a table of fruit or doing a “plein air” workshop in a vineyard – how boring!!! So much better to have kinky ideas – “cool conceptuals” – and then fool people into believing that they are truly original. Take for example the winner of last year’s Michaelis graduates who put up a room full of white canvases and called his exhibit, “Camouflage” – on closer inspection the canvases had been painted on before he had covered them with white paint. What conclusion can one draw from that – as a 40+ year old I rather think the paintings were so bad that he had to paint over them with white paint! Imagine if a 40year-old were to have an exhibition of white canvases….

So, why start a career at all after the age of 40? Especially in Art. If you are, like me, sensitive to the beauty of form in nature, and the amazing colours of the landscape in South Africa , its people and wildlife, and your whole life you have wished to express that in some way then you may well consider picking up a paint brush in your middle years after your children are safely in school and you have a morning to yourself.

That is what I did. What started out as a 3 -hour Tuesday morning art class with other mothers like myself, has over the years become an abiding passion and challenge. Every day I ask the same questions – why does the paint not behave the way it does in my head. Every day I battle with the same issues – perspective, composition, colour. Every painting seems like a new beginning and every day I realise how little I know and how much there is still to learn. I do not have the arrogance and energy of youth on my side, but I have gained patience which is perhaps in my favour as a new learner.

As a member of the South African Society of Artists I have to suffer the indignity of every year standing in a queue of 300 or so other hopeful “Sunday Painters” and hope that my 3 submissions will be accepted into their prestigious annual exhibition which takes place at Kirstenbosch Gardens in October. The quality of work at these events is generally of a very high standard, if somewhat “old-fashioned” in concept. Yes, it consists of Landscapes. Still life, Portrait and Life studies – all the old tried and tested formula. Very little abstract work is ever chosen by the panel of judges which are usually highly respected artists or lecturers in the Art field gathered from the various Art Institutions in the greater Cape Town Area.

Certainly no white canvases would ever be tolerated.

So again – where does that leave us as 40year-old beginners. We are not at the cutting edge, but we have a sense of worth, of natural beauty- we appreciate reality and what that means- we appreciate the value of the environment, we have a finer understanding of things due to experience. Perhaps we are not architects of cool ideas or what is “relevant” in today’s environment – our vision is perhaps tainted by reality or perhaps even sharpened by a pair of glasses – but that is a subject of another debate.

What matters is that we know the meaning of failure, but also the meaning of “pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again” – in short, we don’t give up easily, we tend not to care too much about what other people think or we say “to hell with it, I’ll do it anyway.” And we do it because, generally, we love it. And, unlike a 17 year-old, we have a deeper understanding of what that means.