Diary of a Painter: Keith Murdoch
Confession
When I was asked to contribute to this wonderful Diary of A Painting series, I was thrilled for a couple of reasons. 1. it’s very flattering to be asked, and 2. I had been musing over such an activity anyway - documenting my practice with a daily blog/diary/events-scribbled-on-a-bus-ticket. Here, handed on a plate was a ready-made platform.
I didn’t waste time either - I began to commentate on my daily activity; noting the music I was listening to, videos I would watch that kept me company throughout the struggle of making art, and I’d write detailed descriptions of the painting process; the angst, the weight of history, the importance of decent paints…you get the picture. The main problem was though, my process is non-linear. It’s undiary-able. I would go so far as to say that I don’t even have a process. But that wasn’t going to stop me shoe-horning my activity into some kind of diary format! Before long I was patching together several days worth of mundane activities into one ‘exciting’ session. I was poeticising the music I was listening to and how it influenced my mood, dropping a Mozart Magic Flute here and Philip Glass there. At one point I was actually making painterly decisions with one eye on what might make good reading in the diary. The result: A passionate, poetic and utterly embellished piece of [World class] fiction; ’based on a true story’ perhaps but only very loosely. As I do with many of my paintings, I lived with the first (and second) version of the diary for several months before destroying it in favour of a search for the truth.
That truth is: I work very haphazardly. I lurch from one painting to the next and back again; usually ending a session defeated and more confused than when I started. I make a mark here, spread colour there and generally push some paint around until, after several months - BAM! A moment of clarity; Armed with this clarity and painfully aware of its fleeting nature, I attack the nearest canvas with absolute belief in what I’m doing and create something meaningful.
Those magical moments are few and far between. Typically there is no “BAM!” and the process is simple graft.
About the work
Rock Pool (oil on canvas - 8” x 10” - 2017)
I make landscape paintings. There, I said it. Pigeon-holed for eternity. But its true. They are memories of Landscape and I generate those memories by sitting in the landscape, experiencing it in all its awesome glory and I make studies in the landscape. I gorge myself on these experiences until I need to vomit. What comes out, I hope, is a truth. The truth as I see it.
Outdoor Studies (each : Acrylic on Paper, 5” x 7” 2017)
Possibly most of my creative time is spent making these studies outdoors. I make them to learn something about the landscape, but do not often refer to them directly when working in the studio. It’s their memory that I’m most interested in - the memory of creating them. The excitement I felt when one colour scraped across another, or the moment I discovered how to describe something I’d been looking at for weeks, sometimes months. I take those moments and distil them into something meaningful in the studio…
Back In the studio: There are usually 8 or 9 small paintings on the go. They sit at varying stages of failure, but when that moment of clarity strikes, one of those canvases will be at the right stage to act. I am a believer in inspiration forming a large part of a successful creative endeavour, but as Picasso perfectly put it, it must find you working when it strikes. I paint whenever I can; dragging up those memories - over thinking, over painting, clueless, desperate, but always ready for that ‘Moment.’
As you might have gleaned, my working process is non-linear, and doesn’t particularly lend itself to a diary format, but I’m going to try regardless…
Diary (Version 3.0)
*Warning - timeline might be utterly exaggerated.
Day 1… to … Day 21 create between 4 and 8 studies per day (but not everyday) . Return to the studio (as and when I can grab the time), start a new canvas with sheer belief, work on other canvases with similar intent but ultimately get absolutely nowhere. Some interesting things will happen, but nothing is fusing to a whole.
Day 22 - Day 45: Return to the Landscape with a plan and focus derived from the studio sessions (either excited and focussed after a BAM! moment (unlikely) or to trudge on regardless) I’ll learn more about the place and will generate more memories. It’s likely that I’ll get distracted by a different aspect of the landscape (or something shiny) and alter my studio focus when this new found enthusiasm becomes the overriding memory… When the newness dissipates, older memories will make themselves heard once more and add themselves to the chorus.
Day 46 - Day 63: Life (earning money to buy paint) gets in the way: outdoor studies are made sporadically, studio time is seldom. I grab a rare and precious chance to sit and reflect in the studio, after a short period of inactivity (probably listening to music and scrolling through social media,) a spark of clarity. Osmotically the toil and amassed experiences of the past months have rationalised into absolute assuredness - interesting things happen but the erratic nature of my studio access struggles to maintain focus and momentum. Clarity is in danger of dying… I blow on its embers with an outdoor study session or two. I’m feeling positive.
Day 206: Paint the same painting I destroyed as a failure 200 days ago but somehow today it makes absolute sense. BAM!
Milestones
The ’finished’ painting I have selected was born out of this methodology, but should be viewed merely as an example of a single stage towards the end of the process. In fact, I would like that all of my ‘finished’ paintings can be seen as milestones on an evolutionary journey rather than statements on finality.
Keith Murdoch © 2017
Appendix
It’s always interesting to know what materials artists’ use - I know it fascinates me, so I’m happy to share:
Studio works: I use various brands of oil paint but most commonly Old Holland, Pip Seymour , Rublev, Michael Harding and Rembrandt. I’ve recently started using Langridge and am very impressed with the pigment load. I find the Michael Harding paints behave the most predictably for my liking, so I currently favour them.
I tend to use cheap brushes, mainly because I don’t look after them - so I order them in bulk and let them rot in turps. For ‘Turps’ I use odourless thinners and after exploring various brands, I’ve currently settled on Gamblin ‘Gamsol.’
For the Outdoor Studies: Schmincke Acrylics almost exclusively, but do use the odd Golden for specific colours. I usually work on Hot Pressed Fabriano paper as I love it’s smooth surface and slightly off-whiteness. They come in block format too, which is perfect for outdoor use.
I use good quality brushes for the outdoor studies - A combination of premium synthetic brushes and a range of sable brushes. The sable isn’t necessarily for detail, they simply make a different mark to the synthetic brushes.
Keith Murdoch
