Extractive Industry (After Georgius Agricola) 2017
Acrylic and oil on three-part cut panel, 61 x 61 set in frame 73.5 x 73.5
Acrylic and oil on three-part cut panel, 61 x 61 set in frame 73.5 x 73.5
I make paintings slowly. Very slowly. In layers. Paintings as objects infused with perceptions of landscape and its representation. Sites where human labour is often overlooked, occluded by ‘views’.
My studio, halfway up a hillside, is located between limestone and millstone grit. Behind me Barrel Edge rises high above the house. In the opposite direction, as the land falls away to the west beyond houses and trees, the long stretch of Middle Peak Quarry reaches below the horizon and is punctuated at its northern end by a massive rock face. Limestone. Sedimentary. About 330 million years old. Horizontal bedding planes and vertical joints. I see this from the studio window and walk in this landscape.
The stone was hewn. It is best known as Hopton Wood and Hadene. Kedleston Hall, the Bank of England, the Palace of Westminster, the Royal Festival Hall, Broadcasting House and many other buildings have left scars and spaces. 120,000 headstones in Commonwealth war cemeteries originated here. It is the material of sculptures by Gill, Epstein, Moore and Hepworth and more recently crushed stone for the M1.
Vernacular structures, walls, barns and houses in stone characterise the locality. Blocks, for local paving, were cut by hand. A ‘getter’ aimed to produce 400 four-inch square setts a day, one ton.
The limestone is mineralised with lead. Numerous mineshafts lie in the Gulf Fault and the Gang Vein: Ratchwood, Rantor, Rantertakers, Twentylands…the poetry of mine names. Now, at surface, just hollows and hillocks. Below ground, the rhythm of miners’ work is inscribed in hard rock. Small repetitive pick marks indicate progress of about one handspan a day in pursuit of galena, lead glance. Perseverance and the determination to succeed in winning ore are palpable. The prospect was not always rewarded by a find.
On the studio bench a panel. In previous paintings in the series ‘Landscape Issues’ (since about 2003) a cross, of particular dimensions in relation to the field, is situated parallel with the picture plane. This time it is oblique. I have made many drawings to determine its form. As in earlier paintings it is cut out of the ground and then replaced, jigsaw-like. Thinking of this as a quarry I drill a circular form beneath it and to the right. A mineshaft. Two layers of acrylic gesso primer precede a succession of layers of acrylic colours. In essence all are monochrome. A sequence of straight lines is closely drawn through the surface of every layer. Hundreds of lines. At every stage something of the painting’s construction so far is revealed before it is completely painted over, obliterated, before once again drawing through the surface. And then again, with a different colour, painting over and drawing through, scraping down. Repetitively, time after time. Within every repetition there is a subtle variation. At every stage each layer has a different character arising from the thickness of the paint applied and the brushes used, their shape, width, stiffness etc. and the use of acrylic mediums, together with variations in the length of drying time. This is as much measured by my ability to find opportunities for studio work as anything else. The drawing, guided by a straight-edge, is undertaken with small double-ended blades made for use with utility knives. I do not use a blade holder. When a twinge threatens RSI I take breaks. Different manufacturers produce steel with various degrees of hardness. A new blade with a sharp point performs differently from one which has a tip blunted through use. All these elements, together with the speed with which a line is drawn and the pressure exerted, mean that every line has distinctive qualities. Sometimes it is a whisper, sometimes a wound. Each crossing of a drawn line with the cut-out form is particular. The integration of drawing in painting engages me. If the painting has texture it arises from the process rather than something applied as a decorative or evocative adjunct. Paradoxically, though these paintings have a fairly flat surface because of the treatment of each layer, they sometimes have as much paint as might be found in a heavily impastoed Auerbach or a Zebedee Jones. Some of what emerges is predictable but at each stage there is always surprise. There is a tension between what arises from the systematic approach adopted and the chance discoveries made as the work progresses. The small hints of colour that result may be read from various distances. The surface of the painting embodies the history of its making. As in so many paintings (think of works by Mark Rothko, Brice Marden, Callum Innes for example) the edges tell a tale. I stop when the painting looks back at me and I recognize a certain ‘object-quality’ that resonates with my experience of landscape, labour and substance and I sense that the time and effort that has gone into the work is transformed into stillness, distilled. If after a period of contemplation I discover that the work engages me less rather than more I will return to it, sometimes after weeks, months or years, once again overpainting and drawing through. But this particular painting, for now, will rest and I hope it will find its place in the world.
The colours used include: Liquitex Red Oxide (PR101), Burnt Sienna (PBR7), Synthetic iron Oxide (PY42), Titanium White (PW6), Unbleached Titanium (PW6, PY42, PR1010, PBK11), Carbon Black (PBK7), Phythalocyanine Green Blue Shade (PG7), Napthol (PR170), Quinacridone Magenta ((PR122), Ultramarine Red Shade (PB29), Yellow Medium (PY74), Yellow Oxide (PY42).
Winsor and Newton Transparent White oil (PW6, PW4).
Other artists live with me whilst working. Cézanne is never far from my thoughts. His eye and his mind. The quarry at Bibémus and Mont Sainte-Victoire. His perception, touch and perseverance. Piero della Francesca, Nicholas Poussin, Georges Seurat, Piet Mondrian, Agnes Martin. Brice Marden whose group of paintings in terre verte at Gagosian in London (late 2017) was a rare and absorbing treat. Aspects of my interests in landscape are found in particular paintings by Eric Ravilious, Peter Lanyon (“St Just”, “Lost Mine”, and associated constructions) and in the later works of Prunella Clough. Books and catalogues of these and other artists are always near at hand in my studio.
Music that has engaged me as I have made this painting includes Thelonious Monk Crepescule with Nellie; Charlemagne Palestine Strumming Music 1974/2017; Morton Feldman Two Pianos and other pieces, Philip Thomas and John Tilbury pianos; Howard Skempton Pianoworks, John Tilbury piano; Schubert Notturno in E flat major D897, the Florestan Trio; Howard Skempton Lento; Howard Skempton The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Roderick Williams baritone with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group; Bill Evans Peace Piece; Howard Skempton Only the Sound Remains, Christopher Yates viola with BCMG. I have listened to this music in periods of reflection. It is not a background accompaniment. Morton Feldman spoke of his involvement with ‘the decay of each sound’….’this departing landscape’. Music and painting should invite the concentration necessary to perceive and feel such subtleties.
My reading has included:
Georgius Agricola De Re Metallica; The bulletins of the Peak District Mines Historical Society Mining History; A geological map The Matlock Special Sheet in the series Classical Areas of British Geology; Lucy Lippard Undermining; Lorine Niedecker for her ‘condensery’ in Lake Superior; Peter Riley The Derbyshire Poems; Harriet Tarlo (Ed.) The Ground Aslant: An Anthology of Radical Landscape Poetry; Charles Tomlinson Selected Poems 1955-1997; Frances Presley Halse for Hazel; Nan Shepherd The Living Mountain; John Cage Silence.
Afterword:
For a reader this diary offers insights into my range of interests. For me it is a record of an ongoing endeavour, through distillation and ‘condensery’ in painting, to satisfactorily realise in a single object that refuses to be easily categorised a range of ideas and concerns in art, landscape and the frequent disregard of human labour.
