Indian October & Art Fairs

Painting the Sublime
I've been busy working on my "Lewesdon Tree" commission. After some time spent gradually building up the background, I've now moved onto the foreground, and it's becoming a very intense process. This is where it gets fun, and also more complicated, as I have to switch between painting on several different picture planes. It's the point at which the painting really begins to communicate with me, to beguile and seduce me. This is always encouraging because there's still a fair way to go...

Some landscape painters develop short-hand techniques in order to express certain effects of light, shape and ambiance, but I'm not interested in mimicking these sensations, I want to get to the essence of the experience, and capture the over-whelming emotional complexity of the moment.

We've got so used to getting scientific explanations for how we 'interpret' reality, but all of these lack an appreciation of the mystical, the infinite, and the unknowable. The truth is that we're just a part of something far bigger than us that we'll never fully understand. But we can always feel it. And we can all have a mystical experience simply by standing in a field, watching a sunset or looking up at the night sky.

Thinking of skies, I've also been working on the stormy clouds in the latest in my series of paintings of views from Allington Hill looking out across the Marshwood Vale. I always start from a photographic reference for my skies, because they contain such a dense fluid complexity and chaos, and I don't want to only paint the parts I understand. This for me is how Science and Art can complement each other, the photographic process offers a form of scientific reality, and my painted poetic interpretation expresses my subjective reality.

Art Fairs
It was the Frieze Art Fair in London last weekend. This contemporary art fair has established the Frieze Art Week in the 2nd week of October, and has led to several satellite fairs popping up to mop up some of the visiting international art collectors. This year these other fairs included the Plus Art Projects underneath Atlantis (the largest art materials shop in Europe) just off Brick Lane in the East End. There was also the Sunday Art Fair, and the Street Art focused Moniker International Art Fair, plus the Future Can Wait - yes it can in their case...

Before I go to London I like to check out what's on in all galleries, and I tend to use the Art Forum Magazine online listings page. I also use Artinfo.com which has a smaller selection of galleries.

I also like to keep abreast of happenings in the art world while I'm in Dorset, so I subscribe to a weekly newsletter from Artinfo.com which offers a wide range of stories covering the international art scene. Another good source of art world info comes from the Art Newsletter. Then there's Artnet.com, which is broader contemporary art resource and also has an online magazine with some good reviews and stories.

In terms of 'real' magazines, there's Art Review, Art World magazine, and Modern Painters - which unfortunately seems to cover less and less actual painting...

For broader cultural insights KultureFlash is a weekly online magazine that has been covering contemporary culture since 2002, and is well worth a read.

In terms of videos, the Tate Museum offers a wide selection of artist interviews and exhibition reviews, for instance, here's a short film on Peter Doig. There's more interviews on the US TV /Internet Show "Charlie Rose", and while it doesn't have many fine artists on, it does have lots of Film Directors (JJ Abrams) and much more besides. Here's his interview with Damien Hirst from back in 2008.

Anyway, back to the easel...