Pamela Kay Paintings

Watercolours - Sketchbook Studies from the Turner Exhibition

2012-03-11T04:39:00.001-07:00

March 10th. 2012

Watercolours - Sketchbook Studies from the Turner Exhibition

A brisk ten minute walk from where I live is an exhibition of Turner watercolours at the Turner Contemporary Gallery. The first time I visited the exhibition, I was stunned by the work.
Here, on the walls that I could see free, any day I chose, was some of the most inspiring examples of watercolour technique.
Turner was an undisputed genius. This small, uncouth, frock-coated and top-hatted ( to give the appearance of greater height) shambling figure, was never without a sketchbook.
He never stopped drawing and painting, as the thirty thousand watercolours and numerous sketchbooks he left behind, testify. I would think not a day went by that he didn’t paint or draw.
The paintings on show demonstrate washes of colour laid over wash after wash. There are soft outlines and descriptive ‘written-in’ brush drawing - seen in wispy clouds at dawn over Lake Como or meticulously drawn Alpine peaks.

There was a startling watercolour of ‘The Longships Lighthouse. Lands End’ 1834 which for some reason caught my eye, so I made a drawing in my sketchbook to remind me of it. I loved the dramatic counterchange of light on the land against the threatening dark of the stormy sky.

I wanted to make a small watercolour painting as well, but although this is a practice long established at the National Gallery in London, I was forbidden to do it in Margate.
Instead, I took all my gear and made a small painting sitting outside the cafe at a table, on the very spot where Turner had lived almost two hundred years ago. Unfortunately, I am unable to reproduce the original Turner watercolour, for you to see, but I went back into the exhibition and warily held my small daub up against the Masters.
It is a very good test of memory, and although I had written copious notes, the colour was wrong, - it did not fade away to nothing at the top edges of the washes as it should have done. The subtle balance of tones and soft edges of the cliffs and lighthouse wasn’t there.
Half an hours’ work on a very small scale was never going to get even close to a large fully worked up watercolour that may well have been forgotten in a portfolio and stuffed away by the Master.
It’s easy to be overwhelmed by such a prolific genius, but I remind myself the although Turner knew how to lay a wash, he never had to do the washing-up!

I can’t wait to go back and have another try!

The Studio in Winter

2012-02-29T09:27:00.002-08:00

The Studio in Winter oil on canvas 22 x 24 ins

Years used to go by and there was never any snow here in the south of England - and now, two winters in a row I am given one of my most favourite subjects to paint.
From the snug warmth of my studio I can look through the small conservatory's windows to the garden, at its best!
The painting started out as a canvas covered with an intense light red ground - the warmest colour against which to paint cold snow. Parts were pink, with some burnt umber, parts were ochre, and can be seen under the early drawing and patches of first assessment colour.

I try hard to maintain the energy and force of the initial statement for as long as I can.
Early decisions about the composition are key to dividing the canvas and determining the proportion of shapes, whether windows or table top, horizontals and verticals.
The position of the lampshade and its area of warm but subdued light is very important and the process of drawing everything in took many attempts and much reassessing.
Verticals had to be checked as did horizontals and even large areas of fairly uninterrupted painting, like the door, still have to be scrutinised and ultimately, interesting.
One of the delights in an interior such as this, is the treatment of the reflections - in the table surface and the plate.
The relative tones of these areas has to work against the tone of the snow outside and the eye is constantly jumping from outside to inside to find and assess the right colour and tone to put down.
Essentially, it is the contrast between the cold, neutral colours outside and the warmth of the ambience inside that is the reason for the painting. There is a small patch of the original light red ground still visible in the window frame to the left of the lampshade. It was just right, so I left it. Contrast and variety, which can be achieved by close scrutiny of whatever you are painting, are two vital qualities in any work.

Still Life with Blue Cupboard.

2012-02-14T06:22:00.004-08:00

Still Life with Blue Cupboard. oil on canvas. 20 x 24 ins

If you are at all interested in painting still life, you become mildly obsessed with ‘things’.
Looking for things to put into a still life tends to colour any trip to a shop - for me, at least.
As a result, I have collected things from most places I have ever visited, and the memories of their acquisition sticks to them.
The blue cupboard came from Walberswick, Suffolk, when we were on a family holiday. It is such a joyous colour and cupboards generally, I find, are irresistible.
They always contain fascinating things, all of which drop a tone in colour, once they are behind glass. This quality has a quietly unifying effect on the colour, so one door open and one door closed helps to give that essential visual variety as well as a touch of mystery.
As a foil to the predominant blue (which is not one colour, but has patches of cobalt, ultramarine and windsor violet in it) the surrounding areas have yellows, oranges and siennas.
The linking colour is the neutral white and greys.
During the painting of this quite complex still life, I discovered - because you don’t find these things out until you are actually painting and observing them - how remarkable was the wooden bowl of very tiny tangerines .
The bowl came from a tourist shop by the volcanic geysers of Iceland, the Jiangxi miniature tangerines, from Marks and Spencer. I’m not sure which of the two is more exotic. but they could only come together with such ease in the twenty first century!
The bowl and its’ contents was such a satisfying part of the large still life, that I decided to paint it on its own.
This was surprisingly more difficult than it would seem at first.
What worked as part of a larger composition, wasn’t the same when stripped of its surroundings. It needed more than to be just on its own.
So gradually, over the course of a day and with about eight new starts, second thoughts and scrubbings out, and much shifting around, I arrived at a composition.
Halfway through I added the dark postcard of the Sanchez Cotan still life and worked at it until the fruit and the bowl had enough definition and crispness.
I still think it is a lovely subject, but for the juiciest painting of oranges, and fruit, go to Bonnard and look at his table still lifes!

Jiangxi Tangerines in a Wooden Bowl. oil on board. 8 x 10 ins

Hyacinths

2012-01-23T07:50:00.000-08:00

Hyacinths oil on board 13 x 17 ins

January is not a raucous month for colour, so I accept ‘subtle’.
The limitations of my small Sony digital camera make it impossible to show the more subtle colour changes that I try very hard to see in this quite neutral colour scheme.
The closer the colour spectrum, the more important distinguishing colour variation becomes - its paradoxical, but true, as you will find out should you set up something similar.

1. The first statement is a careful drawing, then a very broad stab at the areas of colour.
The extremes of dark and light tones set the vitality of the composition.
What is the reason for painting this basket of Hyacinths? They are a froth of bloom, racketing across the board, full of light, subtle colour changes and demanding drawing. It isn't important to slavishly copy their intricate mass, only to make it scintillate. How impossible is that?

2. Here are four detailed photographs of various areas during the painting, to show how broad the brushwork is at this stage.
The extreme left hand spike of flowers is thickly ‘written-in’, using a hogs hair brush, loaded with mixtures of titanium white and minute additions of pale cadmium yellow, cobalt blue and blue-black. The lightest parts of the petals catching the light are drawn in with almost pure titanium white.
The background is left thinly painted and darkly rich in tone to act as a foil for the pale blooms. (it is there in any case and very useful). First hyacinth detail here - on dark ground.

The hyacinth in the amber glass is a mass of roots in water. Under no circumstances would you paint the roots in any detail at this stage. Rather, the colours BEHIND the roots will set the surface for later detail.
Note that I am searching for colour the whole time.

The right hand spike of flowers is set against a light background and is a good counterchange to the left hand one. This gives more subtle colour and tonal change and seems to accentuate the fragility of the plant.

3. All is held in place by the iron girderwork of the leaves, shooting from the extraordinarily tiny bulbs.

Possibly the last thing to do in this painting is to finalise the drawing of the roots in the glass and to confirm that it is all impossible, but worth a try!

Primroses in the Delft Brick

2012-01-18T03:42:00.000-08:00

Primroses in the Delft Brick.
oil on board. 8 x 10 ins

1. It’s still the season for primroses and I shall paint them for as long as I can.
In the studio, I have a set of shelves that contain any objects rather like a small theatre. Things seem to compose themselves and they have a naturally interesting light.

2. This is the arrangement I see when I am painting. On the easel is the first broad ‘rub-in’ of colour and approximate positioning of things.

Behind the primroses, which are set individually in the holes in the top of the porcelain specimen brick, is a postcard of a Dutch painting.
It is one of my favourites and is of a boy in a fur hat by Jaques van Oost (1601-1671) and is in the National Gallery, London.
It provides a very necessary patch of rich dark tone behind the petals, helping to give them definition.

3. After the ‘rub-in’ comes a careful re-drawing to underpin the next stages.

4. As the drawing is confirmed, patches of colour are laid down to establish the darkest and lightest tones.
The dark areas are kept as thin as possible to give them light and luminescence.
A start is made on the flowers, which will not last very long.

5. All areas are worked on equally. This keeps the eye working to assess comparative tones in adjacent areas and to observe colour changes.
It is good to dodge about so that no one part becomes overworked at the expense of another.
It gives a much livelier finish to the work.

6. The painting is coming together now and needs just final touches of colour to give definition in all areas to complete it.

Hurrah for Hockney!

2012-01-14T02:59:00.001-08:00

I was a post graduate student at the Royal College of Art at the same time as David Hockney.
His Degree Show displayed his amazing draughtsmanship and the promise of things to come - he knows what he is talking about.
We both received our Degrees - he in his gold lame jacket and shopping bag (he was to be awarded a rare Gold medal, and dressed for the occasion) - and me in rusty, hired subfusc, - from the then Education Minister, who was out of office by the following week. (As I recall).

At last figurative art has a champion of substance and authority.
Hockney’s recent interviews given as his major Exhibition opens at the Royal Academy are remarkable, not only for his knowledge of his subject but also for the one-sidedness and lack of knowledge of those interviewing him.
To say, as one commentator on BBC4 news around 8.45 am today remarked that there have been no landscape painters (with a few caveats) since Constable is to ignore a centuries tradition of figurative and narrative English painters in what is a continuing tradition.

Artists of every stripe, famous and less so, haven’t stopped painting the landscape and happily continue to do so.
The fact that the reigning Art establishment choose to ignore this tradition in favour of greater money-spinning ‘celebrity’ art is the reason museums and state galleries have not acquired many of todays figurative painters in the same quantities as the ‘conceptual’ genre.
This myopia has resulted in a pursuit of art that is really advertising- full of ideas some of which are brilliant, but not painting.
In the sixties, advertising used to plunder the fine art market for ideas. Now, advertising is the art market and this is an incestuous arrangement .

Hockney’s views about the long lasting effect of the image are relevant and prescient.
Let’s hope this is the beginning of a rebalancing of the ferocious, one-sided grip that vested interests have on the art market and a return to an appreciation of the subtle and enduring qualities of observation and vision in the figurative painting world.

I recommend ‘The Jackdaw’ magazine for its championing of figurative art.

Washing Up - January 2012

2012-01-10T08:17:00.000-08:00

Painted very loosely, this 10 x 12 ins oil is of a corner of the kitchen.

The focal point is my small granddaughter, kindly doing the washing up, interestingly lit and absorbed in the task.

Composition is the scaffolding for any interior study and this one has an interlocking pattern that takes the eye through the painting.
It is not contrived; everything is already there for the eye to see. It may need ‘editing’ in the minds’ eye - a viewpoint is selected, edges are cropped to accommodate the limits of a canvas - but it is the final selection that becomes the picture.
Painting is all about selection. What is left out is as important as what is selected to go in. It is the personal selection in painting, that distinguishes one artist from another.

Domestic interiors are an intimate view of life and have been painted throughout history in various styles, none more so than in Holland, as the exhibition of Vermeer at the Fitzwilliam museum in Cambridge demonstrated.

I have been studying the work of Bernard Dunstan. R.A all my professional life and his interiors have a long legacy behind them.
Vuillard, Bonnard, Degas and many others inform his work and he hands on this knowledge in his own.
Domestic interiors are wonderful to paint because they have such atmosphere.

Three Pink Tulips

2012-01-02T09:29:00.000-08:00

A Happy New Year!

This time last year, I was painting the snow outside my studio window.
Now it is unseasonably mild and the rose Madame Alfred Carriere is in bloom outside the front door.
It’s all very bizarre and probably the reason why my first painting of the new year is in many ways a summery one. I hadn’t realised that until this moment, but the unconscious choice of subject matter is always influencing life just below the surface.
That’s why it is so interesting.

So here is a summer’s bouquet in January and a cheerful way to start the year. It says a lot for modern logistics that it is possible to buy roses (and strawberries) all the year round.
This painting has early tulips, roses, spray carnations and freesias in two glasses.

The important thing with flower painting is to try and keep the ideas fresh and changing. At the same time, there is a lot to be said for painting the same object many times.
Getting the two to work at the same time is the trick!
By painting something often, it is possible to become familiar with its shape and colours. This familiarity enables you to get to the point more rapidly the next time you paint it and learn a little more about it.
Gradually, layers of information and understanding build up about that one object. This is how knowledge is garnered - over many years of observation and practice.
Never take anything for granted and always try to look at your subject as if for the first time.

Clementine in a Copper Pot.

2012-01-02T09:21:00.000-08:00

There are few things more beautiful than a cut orange or lemon as any Dutch still life will show.
I only had a succulent clementine from the Christmas fruit bowl but it had a richer coloured centre than an orange.
Halved and balanced on a small pad of kitchen paper, so that I could see it clearly, the clementine was set in a copper pan that stood on a white linen napkin.
Some white somewhere is useful, because it will reflect and make the myriad of colours in the copper come alive and glow.
There are pale pinks, soft greys, muted brownish purples and ochres to be seen in the limited area of the pan.
Paint what you see and listen to your eyes!

A Bowl and a Glass of Primroses. oil.

2012-01-02T09:19:00.000-08:00

In the dog days between Christmas and the New Year, there seems little to do but eat leftovers and feel slightly ill with the unaccustomed feasting on rich food - that is, if you are very lucky.

I prefer to do a little painting or two to take my mind off generous presents of forbidden chocolates - and the early primroses are in pots in the florists and garden shops just now.
I love the fragile delicacy of their colour and the fact that once they are gone, they won’t be back for a year, unlike the ubiquitous carnation or rose.
So their scarcity value has an urgency to it that insists that they are painted now! This minute! - And keep on doing it until they are no more.

Primroses and the Vietnamese Tea-Pot

2011-12-19T00:46:00.000-08:00

I have just finished painting a still life with flowers - a wonderful combination with endless variants.
This is how it progressed and it is how most of my paintings develop. It is a fairly logical process and involves working from thin to fat paint application, laying on many carefully observed touches of colour in order to build up to the final statement.

That is an extremely condensed explanation, so here it is in chronological form.

1. The board I am using is an 8 x 10 inches, thin, best quality hardboard with a sheet of best primed linen canvas glued to it. It has had another layer of oil primer brushed on and left for a few months to thoroughly dry out.
I begin by scrubbing a turps diluted wash of violet and ultramarine oil colour patchily all over the surface.
There is nothing more boring than a flat, featureless wash. Give it variety.
Then I draw in the subject carefully. I use ultramarine blue very diluted with turps for this.
It must be right at this stage or it never will work. I get it as close as I can.
Then I lay in broad patches of colour and tone to give a colour ‘key’ to the painting.

2. This is the still life I set up in the studio. A very simple arrangement with a limited set of colours - browns, pale yellows, neutral greys and blues. Not a vast spectrum but infinitely subtle.
The tonal range is from very dark to very light, which gives some drama to a quiet arrangement. The Primroses provide a froth of texture as a counterchange to the solidity of the objects.

3. After the first assessment, it will all have fallen apart if the approach has been to achieve an initially broad statement. I stop to re-draw at this stage or I will flounder about until I have.

4. It is imperative now that the primroses are completely painted. By the next day some will have died, others opened more fully. Careful study of these delicate shapes with their minute variation of tone in the drawing of the petals and the minute change from pale yellow to grey is needed next.

The painting reached this stage at the end of the first day’s work. I always take it into another room on a small easel to watch it in the evenings.
It paid off, because I instinctively felt there was something needed in the bottom right-hand corner.
At the start of todays work, I included a small white porcelain bowl and another primrose to balance the composition.
It helps to have an open mind the entire time throughout the progress of a painting, and to be prepared to change things.

5. This is the finished painting - ‘Primroses and the Vietnamese Tea-Pot’

Now you set up a still life and paint. This is not a spectator sport. The only way to learn about painting is to DO it.

Have a lovely Christmas, and I’ll post more in the New Year.

Breakfast in the Studio, Winter.

2011-12-16T07:56:00.000-08:00

Breakfast in the Studio, Winter. oil on canvas 36 x 30 ins

This painting, ‘Breakfast in the Studio, Winter’ is a large oil, painted on stretched canvas.
I thought I would put it on the blog as a seasonal start.
There is nothing more enjoyable than painting in a warm studio when there is snow outside.
The light is quite different when it snows- sharp, cold and pale, the inside of the room, amber in a warm, soft glow.
I am fascinated by the geometry of the design of the composition, which has to work before anything else can be considered. No matter how large or small the canvas, if the groundwork of the composition is wrong, nothing will retrieve the painting. It is the ‘girderwork’ of the painting.

Figurative painting is unfashionable. Probably because it is difficult.
It requires skill, knowledge of the craft and dedication. It also needs appreciation and that demands an educated eye.
Reading books about it and visiting museums and exhibitions will put you on the path, but how to choose which path from the plethora of ways out there is another matter.

I shall show you only one path, mine, with off shoots to others which are those of my teachers - the painters I go to for information, inspiration and guidance.
They will not necessarily be yours, but you have to start somewhere and then follow your own trail.
Do not be sidetracked by loud opinions or ‘cutting edge’ theories.
Noisy artists are not really sure of themselves, or they wouldn’t make such a fuss.
Your own painting and the awareness of subtle, fine work, comes from listening to a still small voice in the head - your instinct.

It takes a lot of practice to hear it, but it’s there.

An ‘Ephesus’ moment

2011-12-14T08:58:00.000-08:00

There is an exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, entitled “Vermeer’s Women”. It is a small collection of paintings of women in Dutch Interiors of the seventeenth century by Vermeer and his contemporaries.

My daughter and I visited it this week and we wandered around entranced.
We came to ‘A Young Woman Seated at a Virginal’ (London. National Gallery) and my daughter asked me why I thought it was such a masterly painting - I had lingered long and often in front of this one.
I spent some time pointing out the deeply satisfying underlying geometry of the composition.
I had been reading Bernard Dunstan’s book ‘Composing your Paintings’ in which he explains far better than I, everything a painter would wish to know about this particular painting.
Every angle has a part to play from the bow of the cello to the fold in the woman’s sleeve.
I pointed out how the lightest part of the painting drew the eye dramatically to the sumptuous fabric of the sleeve, and the face and arms of the woman, and how Vermeer directed your eye around his painting if you allowed him to.
We read the accompanying curatorial notes and had an ‘Ephesus’ moment.

I must explain this.

A few years ago I went on a Swan Hellenic cruise with my daughter, a potter, to the wonderful archaeological site of Ephesus in Turkey.
At the entrance to the site, just before the start of the street of the Kuretes was a neat stack of ancient Roman drainage pipes.
She stood in front of them and pointed to each one in turn:
‘That one was thrown by an apprentice - it’s irregular and wobbly inside.
That one was thrown by the master - it’s even all the way through.
That one was at the top of the kiln and that one needs more firing’ - she said - and so on down the entire pile.
Her practical knowledge and immediate recognition of the execution of her craft two thousand years ago made the whole stack suddenly come alive. The people who had made them immediately became real, their work transformed, marked and made by, it seemed, only recently living potters; no longer was it just a pile of old terracotta pipes.
I understood.

This was our ‘Ephesus moment’.
We had it again at the Vermeer exhibition, when I was able to return the compliment by explaining composition, colour and tone in front of the ‘Young Woman Seated at the Virginal’.
We both realised that the Curators’ notes were erudite and historically informative, but didn’t tell you much about things from a painter’s point of view.
My explanation to Victoria, however meagre, added the kind of illumination for her, that she had given me in Ephesus.

This is the reason for this blog - although at a completely different level.
I will try and take you through my paintings, (because I know about them and how each one progresses) and hope this may help you with your work.

It will be about looking at paintings from a painters’ point of view.

more later.

An introduction to Pamela Kay

2011-12-14T02:06:00.000-08:00

Pamela Kay is one of Britain's foremost painters of flowers and still life. Inspired by Dutch, French and Spanish Masters of the 17th and 18th Centuries, Pamela Kay's paintings reflect her interest in the beauty of humble everyday objects and their unassuming nature. Her work encompasses not only flowers and still life but also interiors and gardens.
Pamela Kay was a student at the Royal College of Art and Canterbury College of Art. Her work has been shown at the Royal Academy of Art for many years and she exhibits regularly with the New English Art Club in London. Her work is in Royal and International Collections.