Met with a painter friend (Ian Hinley) last night and we had a great chat about all sorts of aspects of making work. Our approaches are very different, his approach to the problem of painting is both intellectual and technical and importantly he has the hand of freedom so the work can feel loose and free. My approach on the other hand feels like I am literally discovering again as I go along, like I am coming at it not bringing anything with me, which of course isn’t true, but there is, much like Ian’s, both advantage and disadvantage in these takes on the problem.

Its interesting how we are interested in some fundamental aspects of making work, we discussed edges, he is interested in them, not in the sense of the edge of the canvas, although the word does to me seem universal in that sense. His interest lie in making sure edges were resolved, as they marked the boundary between planes, and were critical in constructing the painting. It reminded me of Andy Pankhurst talking about how Uglow was trying to find the edge, in a different sense, but an edge all the same.

We ended up talking about painting shiny objects, like water or metal, which is something I would like to try and hope is in my ‘wheelhouse’. Ian was telling me about a concept of ‘diffusion’, that a textured object actually diffuses the light reflected, hence appearing ‘matt’ in nature, but a reflective object has very low diffusion and behaves differently.

It made me think and say (I think) that to paint something ‘succesfully’ or for it to be authentic or real then you had to be at the surface of the thing you were painting. I tried to explain it again today to another friend and somehow it made more sense, but as with these things the description doesn’t fully articulate the notion. I think its to do with how when you are painting or drawing an person/object/thing, you have in one sense to be directly in contact with it, imagine you are drawing, or making the actual surface, just somewhere else in space (as in on the surface of the canvas/paper/whatever), but you have to ‘be at the object edge’ for it to feel real, for it to make sense. Something like that anyway.