Painting – BLANK CANVAS

TERMINUS: ALL CHANGE. Closed for refurbishment.

This week should have been the beginning of a super new art made in the studio by myself phase at 3rd Space on the widely advertised Open Studios weekend….

It isn’t instead it pretty much defined what I am and am not interested in going forward.

My painting career probably ended a very long time ago around 1988 when I quit London when living in a squat and working in a studio space with no roof where the snow came in (true) just about finished me off.

Then I was a full-time painter burning the midnight oil and living a pretty haphazard life. That was then this is now.

I am now 67 years old, retired and enjoying retirement and the impetus to splash out on 6 feet square canvasses and pretend I De Kooning again just isn’t there.

I proud of the paintings I did but never had the time (work) nor the finances to do it properly. So in the end I didn’t do it any more.

My paintings have appeared on various album sleeves.

https://shaunbelcher.com/canvas/?cat=25

This also coincided with a intense period of looking after my then alcoholic and ill wife who passed away in 2020. Symbolicly I painted over a large canvas associated with her and her sister and called it a day.

That hasn’t changed but my interests in other areas has developed.

I recently had old photographs used in a record sleeve for a hometown band I know and also did the sleeve layout. Along with that I read song-lyrics/poems at a launch gig in my hometown art centre. No drawings or paintings involved.

Here they are holding the album sleeve on location I took the photograph used on front cover.

Thames Valley Texas: poems and songs from Normal Town

So no drawing/painting but I more interested than ever in following in no particular order…

Politics, Writing, Real Poetry not 90% of the crap presently masquerading as poetry.

Photography especially the greats like William Egglestone and Martin Parr and the unjustly neglected Raymond Moore.

Music not just the obsessive vinyl collecting but its history and bands like The Dreaming Spires who aware of the history of music. I am trying to keep up with a monthly podcast (link below) called Trailer Star Music.

So the 3rd Space Studio is closed for a refit. Hopefully when it reopens it will be re-purposed as a Photography/Writing space. I also hoping to set up a black and white printing space I have two old Durst enlargers donated to the studio by Graham Lester George.

I will be getting rid of those old paintbrushes and canvasses ( I know somebody who more than happy to take them) and easels.

For now here why it closed and hopefully when reopens will be a lot less cluttered and useable.

As for what have I been doing go here..

https://tapeheaven.substack.com

https://shaunbelcherwrites.substack.com

https://darkweather.substack.com

My Video channel on youtube

https://www.youtube.com/@TrailerStarRecords

Blank Canvas Time Again

Today I ventured into my studio again after several years not painting…this blog not being update since May 2019 says it all.

I did have a couple of forays but ended in nothing substantial but this time I committed to going further.

The only two painted canvases I have left are both memories of a trip to Youlgreave from 2010 or before not sure exactly. Was a trip my then wife and I made to The Old Bull in Youlgreave. I held on to them as they have pleasant associations which became harder to find as my wife’s illness escalated. She passed away in 2020 and is the main reason I have not done much of anything let alone paint.

So here the two old landscapes and a painting of a road near my home town of Didcot in South Oxfordshire from I guessing 1988. A bit damaged as only have a polaroid. The painting was gifted to a friend for their wedding.

This kind of shows where my head is at in regards to new paintings. Been looking at John Nash after finding an excellent book in Waterstones sale.

Also Marsden Hartley who always reminds me of the Canadian Group of Seven..another key influence back in the day.

Open Studios Notts 2018 Report

An overview of OSNotts 2018.

We opened for the Bank Holiday weekend in May and numbers were OK but not spectacular which lead to us reconsidering participation this year. I was able to show the Poetry Festival banners.

Open Studios Notts 2017 – Report

Here photos of my studio space and small show of paintings as Third Space Studios opened up for Open Studios Notts.

Abstracts at Doctors Orders

I managed to complete some new canvases in time for the second show of work at Doctor’s Orders Micropub in October.

This coincided with the annual madness that is Goose Fair so I called it my ‘Cock-on-a stick’ show.

Nottingham Open Entry 2016

It is that time of year so here this year’s entries in the annual Nottingham Open. For various reasons it may be my last entry for a while because rumour has it the Open will be on hold whilst the Castle is turned into a Robin Hood visitor experience..

Where I will be living by the time that finished could be interesting but it will probably still be within the Midlands ..possibly not Nottingham though.

The reason will become clear in due course.

Meanwhile here the almost pitiful output from this year. What was going to be my great painting launchpad was derailed by some pretty serious PhD submission work.

What here shows work in both acrylic and oil ( thank you Spectrum oil paints however as the website now down and facebook not updated looks like gone out of business which sad….sending me some free paints may have been their last act…)

I started the year inspired by the use of digital preparatory drawings by Dan Perfect in the Castle show. I then developed a sparser abstract mark-making approach out of the digital drawing. Then I turned to oil which by its nature was more viscous and harder to get used to again.

After a cock-up with leaking linseed through using wrong ground with oil paint I repainted the canvases ‘Summer’ and ’96 tears’ again from photographs. These were directly influenced by the lightness of touch of David Jones’s watercolours in the Djanogly show.

At least I have these to submit…not much

but better than nothing at all…

The Summer Collection 2016

As it summer time to round up my previous painting work over 2015-16 and start a new set.

This year I have been spending a lot of time concentrating on developing a workable PhD art history/cultural geography proposal. This is now well advanced and should have some concrete news about that by the end of August. Meanwhile the Tracking Time Blog details where that going….

Here two new Summer Paintings

96 Tears – Acrylic on Canvas 18″ x 18″.

Summer – acrylic on canvas 18″ x 18″

Here is a pdf downloadable catalogue for my last year of abstract painting and drawing.

View this document on Scribd

New Paintings March 2016 and David Jones

I painted these three canvases after Spectrum paints very kindly sent me some new tubes of oil paint. Sadly my ground wasn’t suitable and the linseed leaked into the support dis-colouring the painting. I painted over.

However I am re-painting the main and to my mind most successful image above right alongside a new set of abstract paintings and watercolours inspired by the David Jones exhibition at the Djanogly Gallery which I visited last Saturday.

I was always influenced by both his landscapes and drawn lettering.

The new works will hopefully be shown in the autumn in Nottingham venue TBC.

Update September 2016:
These abstracts will be on show at Doctor’s Orders in October 2016

Digital Drawing/Painting experiments

Candy Crush A3 digital drawing 2016

Photoshop Cs3/XP on a 're-purposed' laptop base and Philips square screen. Medion tablet.

I have spent the week both preparing new oil painting surfaces and fitting up my home pc/ laptop and studio old laptop to use tablets. I have not done a lot of digital drawing..even Moogee was mostly scanned drawings but am learning.

Mostly I experimenting with lag (home 64 bit ironically slowest) Windows 10 laptop fastest depending on which tablet/pen I mix up. The nearest to a true drawing experience ironically seems to be laptop and CS3 maybe because of inherent latency in other versions.

I also tried printing out both A4 and A3 images scaled down just to see how looked which interesting. I think if printed on high quality printer at A3 with decent paper could be equivalent of prints.

As for subject matter like paintings I re-investigating notion of code or residual mark-making based on landscape. Filtered through an Arshile Gorky/Paul Klee lens so to speak. I presently reading ( have been reading for two years!) a biography of Gorky (see below). It a little romanticised but does give a good account of his migrant status and position in American society..hence the name change and pretense of being Maxim Gorky’s nephew.

Here three test images . First is a very basic drawn image. Second a stage pre-layers in photoshop and finally the completed image.

I was taken with the way Dan Perfect used digital ‘pre-drawing’ in his joint show with partner Fiona Rae at The Castle (above an image of his) and it somehow combined with my reading about Gorky.

New Oil Paintings – 23 Years On

So after 23 years I open a can of oil paint and start painting. First thought is why did it take so long. Is far nicer to work with than acrylic and whereas I appreciate the quick-drying facility that allows rapid over-painting there something too dry about acrylic.

Early days but have started over-painting a couple of series from last year that failed to convince me or the public. Most interesting thing is I started to work in references to previous drawing research and cartooning in a roundabout way.

Here the drawing from Nottingham Open two years ago it links directly to painting above.

I also connecting that with my early 1980’s decorative and aboriginal art influenced work. I do not feel the pressure of the career break any more and actually feel like this could be a career for possibly the first time ever. I have never been a part-time painter and I shall give it a good go for the next year and see what happens.