Something

I've started to destroy the paintings by working quite physically with oil and a palette knife in the backgrounds, strengthening the background colour and creating a much more dynamic surface in the process.  I think that i've been too tentative with these images and that is why I have not been happy with them.  So much in the past has been about gestural painting becoming more refined into figuration, that there needs to be some kind of destructive action as a counterpoint to the much tighter figuration.  So much of these paintings start out as measured analytic drawings that there has be be something beyond filling them in to make them exciting. I think i'm getting somewhere with these images, a combination of precision and that materiality that I so long for in painting.

Daniel Pitin

I don't know very very much about Daniel Pitin's work, work, but something really resonates with me about the figure in this complex space.  I love the way that paint is used and also the colour which has a murky beauty of resonant greys and browns

Daniel Pitin

Reworking

I think that I have been too tentative with these new paintings, and increasingly I'm concerned about the adhesion of the paint to this new surface.  In thinly applied areas the paint easily lifts and I'm worried about the longevity of these paintings.  To counteract that I started another painting of Johanna in the unprimed board surface and thought that the result was much more exciting.  Especially as the ground colour gave the whole image a new cohesion.


I have also experimented with a new green and have started to explore the possibilities of making these images predominantly using two complementaries.  


Dissatisfied with the overall thinness of the paint film, I attacked these images today with squeegeed paint, producing a much more seductive colour area that I hope will be a better counterpoint to the figuration.