Animated self-portrait (my father coming through)

[Chris Saper]

Dear Thomasin,

This painting is lovely, dynamic and rich and sculptural. So fabulous thanks for sharing.

[Thomasin Dewhurst]

Carlos - thank-you very much for your comments and your very interesting question (although you flatter me too much comparing me to the two artists you mention).

To answer your question, it seems that all my work these days is moving towards a more inventive and less inhibited stage, where the physical qualities of the paint help define the texture and structure of flesh. For a long time (since those happy, free days at university) I felt there was something very important lacking from my work, although I wasn't sure what. I thought that by refining my painting towards a brilliant realism (which I never achieved) would solve the problem, but it didn't. It just made me more precious and nervous and the paintings reflected this. After looking at one of my latest grandiose disasters in 2004, my very intelligent artist mother suggest I was putting much too much in the painting. This was a breakthrough in ideas for me because I realised that all the work taken to make the flesh look smooth and life-like (which it didn't anyway) I could achieve with just a few strokes. And when I began putting this into practise I started to see that I had much more time and energy to concentrate on other aspects of painting, such as composition, narrative, contrast, colour (things taught (and known) in primary school and stupidly dismissed when I became a "real" artist). So that was a first breakthrough.

The second breakthrough, in the past couple of years came again when I got stuck trying, again, to refine too much: not being willing to shift the figures' boundaries or outlines, or scrape off and rework when things started to feel uncomfortable. So this time, after speaking to a very intelligent university lecturer and told perhaps to add more colour to the shadows and move on to "the next level" (I hadn't a clue what that was in practice, but it did seem like the magic door to the artistic elation I was in need of). I tried and failed a few times and then decided to give it all up in favour of photorealism so I could stand a chance of being a BP Portrait award finalist. And in putting down the first areas of colour for my photorealist work, "Animated self-portrait" started to happen, and I thought the paint was looking much more unexpectedly interesting than a photorealist work might be.

So the intentions were conscious but the actual discovery of satisfying paint marks was accidental and unintentional. I did recently get tired of the choppiness of the marks in "Animated Self-portrait" and rediscovered Velasquez' rounded sculptural marks which I love using and out of that came "Figure in Turban".

And, finally, I am taking very seriously my beginnings of a painting because there is such a pocket of time there where you are uninhibited with your ideas and marks - because of the very likely event of them being covered by the "real" painting (like singing with all your soul and sense of fun in the shower because no-one can really hear you). The beginnings of a work, I feel, are essentially honest and revealing of just where you are as an artist, and so I am trying to leave beginnings showing or keep all marks the beginning ones, just working on composition and narrative i.e. keeping the marks really the means to the resulting painting and not making them the end in themselves.

[Carlos Ygoa]

Originally Posted by Thomasin Dewhurst

The beginnings of a work, I feel, are essentially honest and revealing of just where you are as an artist, and so I am trying to leave beginnings showing or keep all marks the beginning ones, just working on composition and narrative i.e. keeping the marks really the means to the resulting painting and not making them the end in themselves.

It is seldom I agree with an opinion 100%. This is one of those few times. In my own work, I have felt many times that the initial first stains and marks on the canvas came closer to what I was after than the actual finished piece. I personally think that the "artist" or "author" is more evident in his notebooks or sketchbooks. I am more attracted to studies in charcoal, pen, pencil or watercolour or even oil studies than finished, polished, framed pieces. I have always felt that the initial stages of a painting have a certain affinity to the notebooks and sketchbooks, only larger, and I think that it is 90% of the creative process. The remaining 10% that, at least in my case is put in to please the client (or I don

[Thomasin Dewhurst]

Thank-you, Chris, for your warm and generous comments. As always, they are very much appreciated.

[Sharon Knettell]

Hmmm..... realism, I am both attracted and repelled by it.

You can become a slave to it, for me capturing things just so on a human's face is almost obsessive. It also has to be as beautiful a feminine face as I can find.

However, making a face and that lives, breathes and communicates and paint that lives as well is not the end all and be all of draughtmanship. Realism and realistic are two very different things.

Your portrait breathes, there is space, there is honesty, there is no charade.

[Thomasin Dewhurst]

Thank-you for your comments, Sharon. I am always very pleased to hear from you, and educated and very encouraged by what you have to say.

I am not sure, though, what you mean here:

Originally Posted by Sharon Knettell

However, making a face and that lives, breathes and communicates and paint that lives as well is not the end all and be all of draughtmanship. Realism and realistic are two very different things.

Do you mean that you don't feel a face well-drawn and painted with truly felt and animated marks is near what we're aiming for? Are you saying that a David-like clean, smooth painting is just as good (which it can be, of course, I fully agree. I just am personally no good at doing David-like paintings; and I tried and tried). What is the difference, in your opinion, between realism and realistic? I am not arguing here, I am just hoping to clarify your meaning.

Carlos, it's always nice to be agreed with - you feel you are on some sort of "right" track. It's especially good to be agreed with by you. Thank-you for your (very articulate) comments. I also do my sketches and idea working-outs on the actual canvas and draw with tones (rather than outlines) to get a sense of solidity - it's so important - solidity, that is. If the character or composition or physiognomy looks off, it 99% due, I think, to erroneous rendering of space and form. And if you have a sense of form, I feel, even the sketchiest marks and the most distorted face look solid and finished.

I am starting to put in outlines as a compositional element - yay! I love bits of outlines, like Degas, who (with Picasso - thanks heavens he existed because he allows so much freedom and unfinishedness), I must admit, is one of my most returned-to influences. Now I am rambling, but rambling is a bit like beginnings of paintings - it shows where you are as a thinker and writer.

Alex, thank-you again, so much for your continued support. It goes a very, very long way to increasing my confidence and experimenting, and with the influence of your own excellent works I feel I am sailing along very well indeed.

I will start that thread you suggested just as soon as I've posted this.

[Sharon Knettell]

It is really, for me, a hard concept to get across. I have seen portraits, beautifully and skillfully painted, that are dead. I have seen Van Gogh's potraits, not skillful but alive.

It a matter of the conciousness of the painter coming through the paint. The paint as well as the subject are both alive. It is not a matter of style. I was just referring to how I paint. I love Gwen Johns paintings.

[Thomasin Dewhurst]

Yes, I understand what you mean perfectly, Sharon. That sense of life is the realism I am after. It's so hard to achieve, sometimes, though, and my paintings get redone so many times until I find it.