naming & framing

These final stages of the process bring the work into its world, leading on from the raw core application of the paint itself.

With the deep canvases, framing is a matter of adding fresh colour to the sides. Do they need to be muted to allow subtleties to express themselves on the front? Do they need to jar a little with the main image? Do they need to reinforce colour in it so it lives more fully?

Today, I’ve been placing shallow canvases into hand-painted wood frames. I’ve surprised myself with vivid primaries for the frames, singing out around the more exploratory tones of the images themselves. I imagine each little piece energising the corner of a living space somewhere.

And then the naming. This process emphasises the language of the piece. Each painting is its own poem, using a language of colour relationships, sweeps of paint and minutiae. With the adding of a title, I want to leave the experience creative for someone engaging with the work. The title has its own power, being beautiful in and of itself, but then there needs to be a dynamic, never-resolving interplay between it and the painting.

You may know that I read, teach and write poetry. Visual art is a practice which has arisen in latter years, seguing out of my poetry practice.

This discussion reminds me again of Keats’ quote about negative capability. This was introduced to me by poet Liane Strauss when I studied with her at Birkbeck. I have lived and breathed it ever since:

I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.

John Keats

Art and poetry are ways that I keep the doors open to what matters.