2012-2014

26 NUDES FROM PREVIOUS DRAWINGS

With the remaining time on my studio residency I decided to do some small paintings based on the Privacy drawings. They’re fun to do and don’t take long. They’re all 51 X 40cm or 20 X 16ins, not a size I’m really comfortable with, but I’m improving I think and its practical in the circumstances. I haven’t bothered with titles they’re just numbered more or less in the order they were done.

As I progressed I got a bit looser, a bit bolder. My only regret was the drawings I’d chosen to work from. I would love to have done another ten, say, time permitting. And I’d love to have done the same for just the interiors or backgrounds here. They are an important part of the noughties for me, but I’ll just have to hope it’s not twelve years before I get another studio opportunity.

Privacy1 2012, 51 X 40cm acrylic on canvas

Privacy2 2012, 51 X 40cm acrylic on canvas

Privacy3 2012, 51 X 40cm acrylic on canvas

Privacy4 2012, 51 X 40cm acrylic on canvas

Privacy5 2012, 51 X 40cm acrylic on canvas

Privacy6 2012, 51 X 40cm acrylic on canvas

Privacy 7 2012, 51 X 40cm acrylic on canvas

Privacy8 2012, 51 X 40cm acrylic on canvas

Privacy9 2012, 51 X 40cm acrylic on canvas

Privacy10 2012, 51 X 40cm acrylic on canvas

Privacy11 2012, 51 X 40cm acrylic on canvas

Privacy12 2012, 51 X 40cm acrylic on canvas

Privacy13 2012, 51 X 40cm acrylic on canvas

Privacy14 2012, 51 X 40cm acrylic on canvas

12 EXTRA PAINTINGS FROM 2014

Notes at bottom of the page.

Privacy15 2014, 51 X 40cm acrylic on canvas

Privacy16 2014, 51 X 40cm acrylic on canvas

Privacy17 2014, 51 X 40cm acrylic on canvas

Privacy18 2014, 51 X 40cm acrylic on canvas

Privacy19 2014, 51 X 40cm acrylic on canvas

Privacy20 2014, 51 X 40cm acrylic on canvas

Privacy21 2014, 51 X 40cm acrylic on canvas

Privacy22 2014, 51 X 40cm acrylic on canvas

Privacy23 2014, 51 X 40cm acrylic on canvas

Privacy24 2014, 51 X 40cm acrylic on canvas

Privacy25 2014, 51 X 40cm acrylic on canvas

Privacy26 2014, 51 X 40cm acrylic on canvas

As in 2012, in the last weeks of my studio tenancy in East Brunswick this year (October, basically), I returned to my Privacy series, to see if I could bring some of the more painterly approach I’d found with the Encryption paintings. Instead of presenting them on a separate page, I’m adding them to the Privacy Paintings 2012 page, basically to save space. The home page is already quite long.

Anyway, these 12 never quite attained the vigour of the Encryption paintings, basically because of the need to consider colour. They’re based on just pencil drawings that often exploit ambiguities of line and tone so that introducing colour either kills these or has to find a way around them. Trying to think through a colour scheme tended to rein in my wilder, more gestural impulses. I’m satisfied with the results, it’s just that I hadn’t realised they had this other issue. At some stage I will reconcile the two things.

But I’m glad to have the opportunity to add to the 14 examples, if only to do justice to the original drawings from 2002-6. I couldn’t really do much at that time, with my studies and lack of work space, so it’s a bit of a fallow and forlorn period for me. After working in just black and white for the Encryption series, I suppose I’ve tended to get a bit more vivid with the colour here. There was room in the series for more extreme colour at points, so I don’t see a problem with the consistency with the 2012 works. I’ve stuck with just examples of a single female figure (the drawings have various examples of two figures). Single figures just made it simpler, particularly given the small scale, and a female figure had a certain vulnerability that seemed a big part of the privacy theme. I did try the odd male figure in the drawings, but never felt they expressed what I was after. That may be for another artist. It is one theme where I think the small scale helps. It seems to me nudes mostly call for an intimacy that small scale allows. There are large, heroic or mythic nudes, obviously, but that’s not what I was aiming for here.

I’d also considered doing some of the Interiors drawings as paintings, but with this batch of the Privacy series, the interiors often seemed more elaborate or prominent (probably why I didn’t use them in the 2012 batch), so that you can get a good idea what they would be like without the figure and I don’t really need to do them now. There are other poses and other interiors, but I think 26 is enough and I’m ready to move on.