Matt's Gallery

Argh! Sound overload. I have been in the room for about 15 minutes and keep hearing the same sounds, over and over again. Like mechanical birds each with its own individual and annoying cheep-cheep. And then, hang on, I keep hearing new sounds.
The artist had stuck bright neon 'feathers' to cameras to make them look like birds.

The sound is important. These things work well individually, but in a room all together without sound, wouldn't make sense. The camera tripods remind me of trees. The cameras could almost be seen as little eyes. Emma Hart, the artist, has created an avian nightmare. The man in charge of the exhibition says to him they are like sculptures,  but I don't think of them that way. We become part of the performance as we look into the cameras. Not many people walk to the middle of the room to view the cameras. If you do, prepare for an interesting experience...it's a bit like standing in a clearing in a forest...

Work in Progress

Painting is a slow business...to get from the first to the last picture shown to the last took a couple of weeks... And it could have taken much longer... But I have some deadlines to hit...

Daumier

I have come across some pictures by a French artist called Honore Daumier. The pictures are of third class travel on a train. They're from the 1850s.

It strikes me that these pictures are of real people. And also, that it does not matter who these people are. It's probably accurate. It's certainly not intrusive. (I am still bothered about this privacy issue!)

What's important, surely, is the story behind the pictures. And the humour and insightful relationships between the people.

Work in Progress

Over the last couple of days I've been working at the undercolour in Burnt Umber and Burnt Sienna. These colours will help to bring out the final colours, make them more vivid.

The first picture (above) has a terrible yellow cast. Er, I guess that's obvious!

Today, I've done a bit more and have managed to take a slightly better picture.

Me and Alfred Hitchcock

I've had an idea throughout to put me somewhere in the picture, observing me in the scene, as it were. Like Alfred Hitchcock, to have a bit-part in my own production.

Or maybe to imagine me as I might be in five years. Hmm...

Everyone in the background looks preoccupied with something. Colin and Mr James, the men in the foreground, occupy their own private worlds.

Today I was talking with my mum about the Taylor Wessing photographic portrait exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.

Certain pictures were easy to relate to – for example, a picture of young men having their hair cut in halls of residence.

Some of the pictures didn't mean so much to me, because I couldn't figure out what the photogapher was thinking. I couldn't put the picture in any meaningful context. Sometimes I like to look at the picture without having to read about it in order to understand what it's about.

This applies to paintings, too. For example, the paintings of Leonardo, or the paintings of Vermeer. It's hard for me to connect with some of them. I suppose it is interesting for a painter at that time to be painting someone ordinary doing something routine (eg, a woman pouring milk) but when I look at it, I find myself looking more at how the painting is painted, rather than spending time considering the subject.

I don't find that I'm as interested in the woman, or her expression, as perhaps I should be. This is my fault, I know. I guess that it is important to put things in context and that life is richer as a result. Yeah yeah.

Maybe I should turn this attitude on myself.

I want people to understand that I am trying to convey a message about the nature of commuting. But if my picture survived for a few hundred years (I'm not for a moment thinking that it will, I'm just following a line of thought) then people wouldn't get the picture at all, I suppose. It wouldn't mean anything to them unless they understood what it meant to be a commuter, at the time. Or could be bothered to find out.

Some of these things will have to take care of themselves. I think the important thing, for me, is to paint well – and to put across the feelings of these people, and my feelings towards them, as best I can.

I've mapped out the grid on the canvas and have taken my time (well, about four days) to make a soft pencil outline of the picture.

Unfortunately, the photograph of the picture isn't very good! But it gives the general idea.

I've deliberately changed the men's faces. Colin (the fat man) will have a slightly angry expression. The older man (I'll call him Mr James) will be slightly more fragile and hunched.

Decision

I've decided, then, to work from photography to painting. See the post below, Commuting Syndrome, for some more details.

I've picked a photo which I think is fairly successful. The characters of the men in the foreground are strong. I took several pictures of the same two men and watched them closely for the duration of the journey.

I have worked several of the pictures together to make a composite image.

In all the pictures, the fat man in the foreground (I need to give him a name — I'll call him Colin) has his phone in his hand, but in the painting, he will not be looking at it. This will help to get over the point about preoccupation and distraction on a train journey. I also want to show how isolated people are determined to be, in general, on a train, in spite of their closeness to one another.

I have been looking at the catalogue of the Leonardo exhibition at the National Gallery. There's a term called 'synthetic naturalism'. It sounds complicated, but isn't, really. For example, Leonardo drew parts of various horses, taking what was ideal from each horse. He wanted to combine these different parts to make an image of a perfect horse. In a similar way, I want to splice together different photos of commuters to make a painting that captures as much of the experience of commuting as possible.