Praeterita

A few years ago, when I started teaching reduction linocut classes in the summer, I researched different artists who used this medium, and came across the work of Tom Killion. He makes beautiful multicoloured reduction linocuts in the Japanese style, of views of the Pacific coastline. They are remarkable examples of the process. I remember reading that he lived in the bay area, but I didn't know how closely he was associated with the area where we are staying this weekend. When we were in the bookstore in nearby Mill Valley yesterday, I saw a book of his prints of Mount Tamalpais -- which I can see from the window of our hotel! Here is one of his views of the mountain. It's worth checking out his work on his website .

I am in California with Patty for four days, accompanying her to a reading a book signing in Marin County, just over the Golden Gate bridge from San Francisco. Apart from the fact that I keep calling it 'Frisco, which Patty finds very annoying, I think she's glad that I am here. Actually, I know she's glad. We had a great time last night in Sausalito, at Studio 333 and its Why There Are Words reading series. There were six readers, all of them very accomplished writers. But I think Patty sold the most books at the end. Tapas at a nice restaurant/bar beforehand. Strolling outside in the night afterwards, the indigo shapes of the darkened mountains visible darkly against a sky of visible stars.  Today, we drove the short distance to Mill Valley, one of those older northern California communities of brick and wood buildings organized around a square -- like Sonoma, most famously. It has a loose, informal feel, which on closer inspection you realise can only be sustaine...

I've only been back to the studio once since the last post, during which I mixed paints, poured pools of acrylic onto a plastic sheet and left them to dry, started a few things but didn't like them, and came to what I think is a conclusion on the piece that has featured in the last few posts: Actually, now that I look at it, I realise that I still want to add one more thing to that black circle on the upper left: a grey shape, to clarify that area one last time.  And I also now see echoes of the work of Yves Tanguy, a Surrealist painter, whose work I never used to like. And yet some of those dots and lines seem to have crept in. The trouble is I never know if I'm doing anything that has meaning, or whether I'm just adding stuff to fill in the space and to keep myself from being bored. Which is better: to try and make everything have an explicable meaning, or just to push blindly forward and hope for the best? Or something else?

During the last studio session, I did something loose and bold with the picture that used to look like this: After adding acrylic grey paint, squeezed out of a nozzle-dispenser, it now looks like this: I hope I didn't spoil it. What I need to do is to mount it on a panel or canvas, bring it home, put it on a wall, and live with it for a few weeks to see.

Part 21 of  an interview series in which I invite artists to respond to six questions about art, process, and creativity   (previous interviews:  1 ,  2 ,  3 ,  4 ,  5 ,  6 ,  7 ,  8 ,  9 ,  10 ,  11 ,  12 ,   13 ,   14 ,  15 ,  16 ,  17 ,  18 ,  19 , 20 ).   The subject this time is painter Andrew Crane , whose work I've been enjoying via Google Plus for a while now. His paintings have echoes of the mark-making of Antoni Tapies, while still recognizably part of Andrew's own visual language. He lives in Northumberland, in the UK, which coincidentally is where I was born. 4e6 - Red step paint and graphite on hemp paper, 420 x 297mm Philip Hartigan : What medium do you chiefly use, and why?  Andrew Crane : Mmmm…tricky question. I'm a bit gregarious when it comes to media, especially if there's a hardware store nearby. Right now I'm using varnish with step pa...

When I was walking around the Dallas Museum of Art last week, I saw a small section in a bigger gallery that had one of the best things on show (see photo, above). The space was only about 10 feet wide and less than 20 feet long, basically just three walls, but it was displaying African masks and sculpture together with some of the western artists who were influenced by that, such as Picasso. Pride of place was one of Picasso’s first Cubist pictures, flanked by a grouping of masks, and a photo showing Picasso in his Bateau Lavoir studio surrounded by his own mask collection. All it takes to make a strong exhibition, sometimes, is just three or four things. At the same time as I saw these works, I was re-reading Joseph Conrad’s “Hearth of Darkness.” I am struck by the connections in thought between Conrad the writer, and artists such as Gauguin, Picasso, and Braque. First, their interest in what they called “primitive art” grew almost at the same time. Conrad wrote his novella in ...

I glued lots of black dots onto one of the paintings on paper. Each dot is an individual collage element, glued down one at a time: I'm in two minds about drawing all the spidery thin lines all over this one. I might just leave it as it is. The accordion book now looks like this: Here is a picture of it standing up accordion style: