Michael Pearce

No time!

In an all too fast ten minute space I managed to add a scraped on coat of Raw Sienna to the flying helmet, which is beginning to approach its finished sheepskin appearance. I laid on the paint then lifted it off with the knife so that it remained in the below the surface areas of the white highlights. Later I’ll add some pale yellow into both the white and the Burnt Sienna to get that sheepskin feel.

I’ve had images of 9/11 in my imagination all day because of the falling figure. This got me wondering about where imagery comes from: I often don’t really know what the paintings are about until quite a long time after making them, so I wonder if this one is catching something of the zeitgeist of the first decade of the 21st Century.

The subjects of the paintings are driven by some rational decisions: I like the idea of a contemporary Neolithic culture that exists alongside ours, but while I paint the work things change to suit the composition, or figures just don’t “work” in the piece so I alter them and they make a totally different piece despite my prepared sketches.

In this piece there is some structure within the imagery that is meaningful to me regardless of the way the painting ultimately will turn: trinity, four elements, the cube and a rose.

 

I used the knife to develop the surface of the skin of both figures.  The woman in the foreground needs more work than the man, because she’s so much closer to the viewer. I darkened the rock surface and added some new highlights to the rock to the left of the woman.

 

 

I am working to get the hand more satisfactory, so I laid down some warm colour over the rather unworked surface. Some tricky bits because of the remaining ridges from the previous figure, now long gone. I probably should have sanded them down, but I like the textures and occasional flashes of colour that show through from the earlier workings.

 

In this detail of the head you can really see how rich the surface is becoming. I have worked the eye a little more so that she appears to be looking above and behind her, where the falling man is going to appear. I’m pretty happy with this figure, but there’s still work to do to complete it.

Incidentally, is it any longer possible to paint a falling person without thinking of the World Trade Centre and 9/11? Icarus no more…

 

Here’s a close shot of the box as it is now. I allowed the green / brown surface to show through a new grey layer by painting the grey with a brush then scraping most of it away with the knife. I’ll clean up the edges of the squares so that they appear to be beveled after this layer is dry.