Fossil part three

…..some canvas staining still to be done, but adding a little more linseed oil into the mix now and more paint too, the beginnings of some texture, and a wee bit more of the liquid (again heated gently until it melts) micocrystaline wax and genuine turpentine, and again once poured it quickly solidifies…..so in all three more sessions on this piece and I am already two weeks into this.

Not constant painterly activity…..stillness and looking, contemplating and some art historical, mythological, and science research also goes on along the way. Looking for all sorts of connections to feed into the work. For instance at the moment I am reading ‘The Ancestors Tale’ by Richard Dawkins, and oddly enough I am at that point in the book that discuses our concestor with cetaceans…..including dolphins.

Not surprisingly I am looking at J.M.W. Turner’s ‘Sunrise with sea monsters’ 1845. interpretations of the painting are varied……The Tate Gallery maintains  that the “monsters” are just fish, I however think that if you take Turner’s life his personal history – his mother’s tragic life, the lose of his sister and put this into the context of the times in which he lived…..the friends he had like Walter Faulks, who campaigned to end slavery, and in that context most profoundly Turners ‘Slavers throwing overboard the dead and dying, Typhoon coming on’ also ‘A Shipwreck at Sea’ and most of his work, then you have to accept that there is always going to be a deeper meaning to any one of his paintings….and then it is quite obvious that the Tate’s interpretation is at best simplistic and naive, and in fact all his works have an edge to them. The painting was done towards the end of his life and most think the painting is unfinished. For me it is as finished as it needs to be

Yesterday (16th March 2020)

This morning 17th March 2020

This evening 17th March 2020