ianwarburton

secure. oil on canvas.160x120cms end of winter. oil on paper. 78x65cms beginning. oil on paper.78x65cms wood. oil on paper.78x65cms  There is a lot to painting that is intuitive: no planning survives first contact with the surface. This though from Peter Lanyon: A specific sight or occurrence may cause an apprehensive reaction, answers are expected. A continuous process of collecting and sifting information which is being fed to the artist who trains to select information which is relevant and proceeds to make marks in apparently automatic fashion. Considerable training is required to precipitate marks which relate to information received. The artist must proceed beyond the inspired guess to certainty. The surest way to inhibit painting is to remain at the guess.

oil on paper. 68x75cms.  oil on paper.68x75cms oil on paper. 68x75cms oil on paper. 68x75cms oil on paper. 69x100cms  My garden is coming alive:the shadows are not strong yet in the sunlight and even on overcast days there is more light. I have a trove of photographs, mostly black and white, which I trawl through when I think that the landscape is exerting too much of a pull. I refer to paintings history for the same reason and it is not a contradiction because I know that I could easily be overwhelmed by what the garden or the fields look like and that is not what I want might painting to become. I do though sail perilously close at times. There is so much detail and so much expanse, too much really and it requires an effort to try to isolate and develop the essentials. So I ask what am I looking at, what am I seeing, what sense can I make of it? Let me not lose sight of the fact that after all is said and done it is paint on a flat surface, a place where thinking can take pl...

65x78cms. oil, ink, graphite on paper. 65x78cms. oil, ink, graphite on paper. 120x120cms oil on canvas.  There are days when drawing is the main occupation: on some days the drawing begins with no particular direction and my attention is all on the surface and the marks being made. Never the less the exterior of my work space is ever-present and I take my clues from it. Sometimes I address it directly and at others I acknowledge it indirectly through the movements of my wrist, the pressure of my hand. There is no photograph that will place the drawing there, at that place, at that moment but the drawings are all about being there, both inside and out. This painting followed from days of drawing.

oil on paper. 68x75cms oil on paper. 65x78cms To consider landscape painting as a vehicle for expression or for implying that there is inference to be taken from the image is well established and does not need retelling. However, I was interested in a comment from the American painter George Inness who said : Some suppose that landscape has no power of communicating human sentiment. But this is a great mistake. The civilised landscape peculiarly can; and therefore I love it more and think it more worthy of reproduction that that which is savage and untamed. It is more significant. Every act of man, every thing of labor, effort, suffering, want, anxiety, necessity, love, marks itself wherever it has been.  - and then from Patricia Tobacco Forrester; Often the painting develops in a way that I had not anticipated, and I either work at pulling the image back to the original plan, or amplify. the tendencies that have emerged. I scrub out and overpaint as necessary. These paintings that...

 Except for the ones that inhabit my memory.  For many years I was a teacher of sorts. I worked in art departments. I met many young people and some of them became friends. One never knows how these things work, how interactions can have such lasting effects. A chance meeting is all it takes. I made a friend in Andy McIntyre, during our time together at Madeley Court School in Telford. He came to class, he came to tea. He had a lot on his plate and he wasn't the only one. Somewhere in the maelstrom he found a quiet but exciting space, a vision of possibilities. I recognised his rush to devour ideas and make progress. He was one of those for whom school can be daunting, almost not fit for purpose. I think art gave him purpose and he became a teacher who gave that gift to others.  I have no idea why, so far from home, he decided not to go on with his life. I can see him still, hear him still. A walk in the cold, tea and cake. Friendship. A chance meeting.Sometimes that is a...

Maintenance , attending to, the process of preserving a condition, seems like an inappropriate description of what is happening to the  hedgerows here. So, because there is so much of it to take in I have been trying to simplify and make an image that conveys the feeling that I had and perhaps what others might. If one of the functions of image making is to create a space for thinking then I will try this and see where it leads.

  oil on paper  oil on canvas oil on canvas oil on paper Sometimes things develop in unexpected ways for a while and these three do not quite fit with what I have been doing of late. In fact, since making these I have made more simple images based upon the single stump more akin to the first fauchage pieces. There is work to do here.