I received an email from a fellow painter in America the other day and it reminded me of the lonely existence of the self employed painter of artist of any kind I guess. He is a well known teacher and painter but  was worrying about elements of his work and it appeared to me that this was getting him down a bit. I don’t think that he was asking me for advice but I told him that it seems to happen to us all from time to time and that what I do when this happens is to retreat to the simplest of subjects, a single pot or a piece of fruit and try to apply what I remember from my student days, that which those who were wiser than I tried to demonstrate to me.

 

It really is interesting to me that people like ourselves who are surrounded by others, students, family etc. should experience this isolation. I imagine that it applies to the likes of composers, painters and sculptors etc. whose creative output is mostly in their own hands.

 

The self-starter mechanism has always been weak in me. Inspiration does not come easily. Of course a beautiful sky or display of flowers will generally move me but these things often appear at the most inconvenient of times like whist driving to a medical appointment or the like. When one decides to go out and paint, often by the time one arrives at the selected destination it is blowing a gale or is raining or the light has declined.

 

Commissions, although not my favourite of pastimes at least have the advantage of forcing the painter to adapt to another’s timetable but they can be a bore, especially when not going well.

The best pictures to me are those which have a personal connection or ones that I choose to paint. They give me the most satisfaction because they allow me to exercise my artistic as well as my painting skills to the fullest extent. After all it was the reason that I started painting in the first place, apart from the perfume of gum turps and oil. Much and all as those artistic skills are important the discipline of painting is key to producing a work of quality and these are the skills that can be easily taught and practiced. They are also the ones that one needs to concentrate on once the act of painting has commenced. The objective viewing of the subject as a set of shapes to be put on the canvas is what gives reality in the finished picture.

 

To sum up I will quote Alan Martin, not for the first time.

 

“Oil painting is easy. All one has to do is to mix up the right tone in the right colour, put it down in the right place and control the edges.”

 

 

 

Don James                                                                           23^rd July 2010