How do you manage sponteneity?

A thing that has and will raise it's head all my life.

I suppose a large goal of mine in terms of paint ay least is to create compositions.

This involves working from various notes and studies many of which can remain fresher than what the finished product becomes.

As I sit here pondering,

I have two ways to deal with this situation: 

1/ Make at least some of the roughs on a bigger scale, almost so they they become finished pieces in their own right.

2/ Substitute freshness with richness, intencity and vibrancy.

As it happens, whilst writing up the Wooden Om page:
http://loonsencyclopedia.blogspot.co.uk/p/wooden-om.html
I came across some stuff I wrote on the same subject whilst staying in a very peacefull place in Puri at the end of a long trip to India and just at the point where I was contemplating painting a large show in oils on canvas.
It had been quite a thoughtfull time in Puri and I had been able to give the issue a fair degree of consideration.

Puri 3.11.81

The fishing fleet floats ever so slowly back to sell it's wares and the sparrow decides not to build it's nest in our rafters and we are more contented than we will be for a long time.

( It must be the ups and downs of a trip like this)

I think of the problem of how am I actually do my oils on this enormous subject - the title of which struggles ever upward.

It is basically a problem of non "conversion" I have to do something like make new pictures,

otherwize the the oils become glorifications of the existing watercolours and quite often with not nearly as much life or energy in them.

Although I could be basing this very much on what people have said to me in the past about my work. I do find for me that if Ive lived in a canvas it takes a certain life of its own.

One way to get round the problem of "plastic re-representation2 is to study the notes, memorise what is the basic thing that has to be said and then pump it out without any further reference to the notes.

Trouble is that it's quite hard to be spontaneous when you are trying to remember colour, tone, form, line etc. It's too much to handle: hopeing for no mistakes. You have a very delicate composition problem where spontaneous life has to be carefully, exactly and correctly manufactured.

The facts of dynamic tension have to be cold bloodedly executed with the aid of additional drawings: All points worked out separately and simply painted with awarness of "now" and with control and patience.

So far, I have:

Basic impression (with practice - a thing performed by heart)

Composition (built up and sure)

Improvisation (start on a point and take it where it will)

The devil in the pack is glorification - trying to redo something magnificently and similarly. Your moods are going to change and you would be better off on spending the time on presentation. There has to be another goal attached, you can't start with a conclusion.

Curatorial

- by organising artists

Phil Gray's Allsorts

My old friend started a thing on facebook about the sweets you used to eat in the 60's and what they did to you. I think he could almost write a book on the subject, here are two of my more anecdotal comments on that post:

I had a penny arrow, sitting in my desk.
You were not allowed sweets in school, I was saving it for the walk home
- I wasn't going to eat it, I was only seven.
But the girl I shared the double desk with couldnt wait for the class to settle down for the afternoon and out came "sir, Martin's got a penny arrow"
This was the first time my trust had been betrayed by a woman.
I still remember Margaret Little!

and-
On the home run, we stopped at Toogoods cafe for sweete on Fridays.
The lad involved in this anecdote's name was Robert Hookham and out of desperation he invaded his sister's savings box and bought up a whole box of bubblegum. There were 144 inall, I know, I counted them.
We stopped eating bubblegum after a while and never started again.

Embellishing the Masters

I happened to come across some files that had gone missing from a group of e-mails I sent out a few years ago, I think they would make a good page (later) in the Loons side of the blog and a good album in Facebook.
A chance to beef the older ones up, add some new ones and present them in a coherent format.

https://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=10151054909721424&set=a.10151039599841424.491659.707526423&type=1&theater

From Minster to Shellness

(Back from)
Another stretch of coastline, quite wild in its own scruffy informal way.
All branching out and eroded.
Almost like supporting its own little universe.
A lot of Kent countryside and incredibly so close to London.

On the North coast of Sheppey from Minster right along to Shell Ness - a name that haunts me with its simplicity and directness: you won the whole beach and its muddy dunes.