SHAPE 2017 TateExchange Book FINAL Draft - Flipbook - Page 40
if I would like to paint, and my response was that I would, but it was not
possible as my vision prohibited me from executing accurate mark making.
Stephen’s proposition was, “If you like, I will paint the paintings that you want
to paint, you describe the pictures and I will paint them. We can start on
Tuesday”. This work was of interest to him as he had been writing about the
nature of drawing, making the case that drawings were actually examples of
‘modelling thought’.
As I was taken by surprise, I had to quickly think of a subject for this series of
paintings, something I could be confident about being able to describe. My
choice was to refer to my memories, the kinds of memories that comprise
of a clear image or picture that does not change over time. For example,
childhood memories of a beach holiday where the landscape always fills
the frame in a particular way and people always occupy the same position
such as: your mother is in the lower right portion of the image. These are
sometimes referred to as eidetic memories and in my case there seem to be
rather a lot of them to draw upon.
The first painting we embarked upon was of a view of the sandy beach at
Calais seen through the window of a small bungalow. Initially the descriptions
began by framing the elements of the picture onto an imaginary grid, then
these would be drawn onto paper. In the course of our conversations the
details of the pictures were established through a series of statements,
questions and answers. We found ourselves using a lot of similes that related
to architectural objects, places, scenes from films and artworks or even
weather conditions to describe the scene. “The window was salt-stained,
like the residue left on the walls of a vase, only whiter” or, “although the sky
was blue it was greyed out very slightly by a fine sea mist, like a Sugimoto
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