Exposed

Exposed K Howell 2011 Pastel on Paper 14 cm x 21 cm

     I was looking for a still hour. Maybe two. No radio, no internet, no bloody words. Stone seemed a likely option...
     A kindly passerby asks me what I'm painting. I point at the exposed gritstone and he scrutinises it for awhile and then says, "What, just the rock?"
     That is what I'm facing, there is nothing else here. I nod.
     "Do you really see those colours?" he asks me.
     Now this is where I feel a little exposed. What shall I say?  No, I'm just using up superfluous pastels, really. But he seems genuinely perplexed when I say, "That Is How I See It."
     "Looks like brown rock to me," he says. "But have a nice day."
     If only we could all own such tolerance...

Metamorphoses

Metamorphoses K Howell 2011 Pastel on Paper 28 cm x 28 cm

     The cold is descending slowly. Perfect weather to visit the beech. This is one of my favourite trees. Depending on the direction of approach, it has many aspects,  its identity constantly shifting. Today, this tree scuttles. As though it has woken up, found itself lying prone, and is trying to work out how to mobilise itself.
     The closely-grained, smooth surface of beech wood used to be made into tablets for writing surfaces. Old English bōc and Old Norse bók both have a primary meaning of beech and a secondary meaning of book, and this is the source of our modern word book.
     Sitting on a load of beechmast, I try to forget about writing, but you see, I've come to the wrong place...

Out of Season

Window onto Winter II K Howell 2011 Acrylic on Paper 14 cm x 12 cm

     This blog is a year old. Thanks to everyone who has dropped by! I've really enjoyed reading other blogs and seeing what people are working on. A 'blogs to visit' sidebar will be coming in the near future.
     This tiny piece is out of season, but I've been putting together a series of Very Small Paintings to submit for a winter exhibition. I enjoyed the challenge of confined space and tried to go for truly microcosmic pieces, based on ice and snow collecting on a hawthorne tree.
     I did some studies last winter exploring structure, and used these as the basis for some miniscule work. Working small is very inhibiting, but this was an exercise in limitation. An experiment. Having completed seven, four of which are 6 cm x 8 cm, I think I'm suffering from some kind of repressed brush syndrome. I was going for jewel-like, and if nothing else, the paintings are small. Terribly portable.
     Anyone else tried working ridiculously small? Any lasting damage?

Shadows

 Birch Outstripped by Shadows K Howell 2011 Pastel on Paper 28 cm x 28 cm

     I like shadows. They are rich and full of mystery. Often, they are extreme; a dense pool of dark at your feet, an elongated exaggeration of your height, stretching effortlessly over uneven ground. In a wood, the patterns become entrancing. Actual trees and shadow trees connect and overlap in fascinating rhythms.
     Shadows are the places light doesn't reach. Obviously. They give the world definition. An intriguing wealth of colour goes into the illusion of their solidity.
     When I was small, I developed an obsession with the word penumbra, which is harder than you might imagine to use in conversation. But the sound of it was (and still is) magical. Almost shadow. A word that is evasive, vague, yet exact. I had to make do with umbrella, and translate it in my head as an epithet. Shadow-maker.
     It seems the right time of year to wax effusive about shadows. For the Impressionists, it was all about painting light. Today, I chase shadows.

Familiar Ground

Or, Why There Will Be a Relevant Blog Post in a Day Or Two...
    
     It is almost eleven at night. I'm staring at this paragraph (embryonic blog post) which refuses to reshape itself without me physically pressing keys and I think this is ridiculously churlish of the text. Enter fourteen-year-old. She drops onto the settee with an exhale that implies she was being held upright by pneumatic design.
     "Right," I say, adopting my parent voice. "Finished your homework?"
     "I still have ...English," she says. This language is clearly an imposition too far.
     "So...what do you have to do for English?" I ask. I check the screen to see if the words have done something extraordinary while I wasn't watching, but no.
     "You won't believe this," she says. "I have to write a paragraph, a character description, in the style of John Steinbeck."

Familiar Ground K Howell 2011 Pastel on Paper 14 cm x 21 cm

     "So?" I say. "Write a character description in the style of John Steinbeck. You read the book." I consider rewriting my paragraph in the style of John Steinbeck, just to see what would happen. No, I'd sacrifice word count. Word count is dropping as it is.
     "But why should I? I don't like his style." She says.
     I see that she is not going to budge easily. I think back. What would I have done? I'd have written a paragraph describing a character who bemoaned the futility of such exercises.
     "You don't have to like it," I say. "It's an exercise. You just have to show that you understand his use of language, his sentence construction, his word choices - "
     "But I don't like his sentences! His vocabulary is boring!"
     "It's evocative," I say. I delete the adverb that somehow escaped my attention previously. Word count plummets again. Damn.
     "I don't want to write like that," she says.
     "You don't have to write like that for the rest of your life," I tell her. "Just for one flipping paragraph. Make it fun. If you don't like the style, mock it a little. Show you understand it. You can write however you want for the rest of your life." Yes, you can spend an hour staring at something, knowing how you want it to sound, and struggling to knock it into shape. That's fun, that is.
     "I like RICH language. I like INTERESTING sentences!"
     "So when you're finished your Steinbeck paragraph, write another one the way you want to write it." I say."It's a PARAGRAPH! How hard can it be?"
     "I don't FEEL like writing my own stuff right now," she says. "I'm tired."
     Really? I close the document, and determine to grow up before tomorrow comes. Renewed respect for John Steinbeck, who wrote many fine paragraphs.

A River Runs Through It

River K Howell 2011 Pastel and Rain on Paper 8 cm x 13 cm

It's marvelous how rock is shaped by the passage of water. This study is very tiny and quick (it has been quite wet lately), but shows something of what I was after. The sculpted rock holds the memory of relentless rushing  activity, and is still being shaped. Borges says, in his poem about poetry, 

 

To gaze at the river made of time and water

And recall that time itself is another river,

To know that we cease to be, just like the river,

And our faces pass away, just like the water."

Rain Song

Song K Howell 2011 Pastel on Paper 14 cm x 21 cm

     Partially owing to the wet weather, I've done very little painting out of doors. The rain has been spectacular. I love the smell, the heavy skies and the slick varnish on the world. I'm happy to get soaked, but my favourite moments are those bright breaks between showers, when a flash of sunlight bursts through from under the bruised layer of cloud and illuminates the wet world.
    This tree struck me as lyrical. It seemed to be having a good time in the rain, and has found a moment in which to shine. The very-close-but-not-quite manganese blue was admittedly an odd choice. I was thinking to evoke the elusive, toxic qualities of that blue. That's the colour I see when I smell rain. Usually.
   Interestingly, the main commercial use for manganese blue (other than its value as an artist's pigment) was to colour cement for swimming pools. It's attraction might explain my early, failed shallow dives...