Working Methods: Shaping Up

All Images: 'Constructed City' Painting Panels (Work in Progress), April 2020

Needs must, when the virus drives - and so it seems that my 'Constructed City' project must adapt to changing conditions.  Until recently, I had imagined it as a largely print and collage-based enterprise.  However, for obvious reasons, I'm unable to continue my printing activities at Leicester Print Workshop.  I also find myself embarrassingly short, at home at least, of the proper kind of table space needed to lay my existing prints out, in order to start reassembling them on the scale I envisage.

But, as a million fatuous training workshops have taught us, there are no real problems - only opportunities.  Such a challenge really just represents a series of paintings I haven't executed yet - so I've decided to expand the scope of the project to include exactly that.  Consequently, I've spent much of the locked-down Easter period constructing panels, in preparation.  The nature of the proposed imagery suggests shaped formats - which is something I've not worked on for many years, and should make for a stimulating change.  It also gives me a chance to recycle and join-together some old panels I've had cluttering- up the place for quite a while.

The glorious weather made the whole process of glueing, nailing, screwing, sanding and priming, thoroughly enjoyable for a few days, in my sunny little back yard.  The only real problem is that (in classic bumbling idiot style) I now find that large one is too big to go up the narrow stairs to my newly reorganised painting 'studio'.  Secretly, I suspected it would be the case - but the thing just feels right at that scale anyway.  So, for once, I stubbornly put practicality (and the tape measure) to one side.  Anyway, as I say,  there are no problems - just opportunities.  Perhaps, if the favourable weather persists -  that big panel will offer the opportunity to do some outdoor painting.  In the meantime, there are a couple of smaller ones to get on with indoors, and the wherewithal to make yet more, as required.

There's nothing for it - I'd better get the brushes out, then...