Today I decided to take all the bits of canvas that have been with me for years out of their various hiding spots and measure them for stretchers. I have been meaning to do this for ages.
I am not exactly careful with canvas fabric. Once it’s off the roll, it is fair game. I use it to wrap stuff when I am on the road or as a painting rag. Even when I don’t actually use it, all those bits of fabric are lying around the studio where they get covered in drips and all sorts of other studio DNA. I like my canvases to be messed up before I start working on them. It’s like life has already started the job for me.
Picking through this collection of odd ends, I get such a kick out of how different the textures are. One is herringbone, and it’s really tough. The largest piece is a super velvety linen. Its softness is deceptive. It’s so tightly woven I would hang my life on it if I ever had to escape from prison.
I found a couple of tiny sketches on that large linen piece. One is a sketch of Go, Go Pitch-Black Night. I remembered straight away where I drew it. It was in 2017. I was in Italy and had used that piece of linen to cover the table I was painting on. I must have sketched out the shapes on it. I dug out this short video from back then. A lot of sunshine and good joo-joo was baked into that linen during that summer.
My wife is helping me work out the sizes of stretchers I can fit into the fabric pieces so that we can order the wood. When I was in Berlin last year, I picked up a pack of tiny stretchers on a whim. I was surprised how much I liked working on them so I will try and get as many small pieces out of the odd ends of this fabric as I can.
Click image below to watch the video
When flames and snakes are your neighbours, they can't help but be part of the story. This rough, heavy-duty cotton canvas has been in my studio for probably eight years. It was unprimed, so I spent months applying thin layers of oil paint before it went anywhere. I like the dryness that comes from all that soakage and the roughness of the surface. There were wildfires near the sea, and you could see the glow of orange at night in the distance. I was grappling with a shape similar to the one I am painting here back in Ireland. I tried it again when I got to Italy, but it wasn't until I saw the shape as a flame that it unlocked itself. On some of the smaller landscapes, these flames appeared …