John Lincoln

Return

2009-12-15T11:24:00.000-08:00

I have not written here for some time. I have not really felt the need. After all if I have nothing to say then there can't be much point in trying to say anything. The internet is now so replete with Blogs and other opportunities for individuals to write something that I am quite sure that even if I had an earth shattering message to convey no-one would read it.

To be honest I had completely forgotten about this blog and only came across it by accident when clearing out some of the bookmarked sites I have listed under 'Favourites'.

I continue to paint, in fact until I am physically unable to wield a brush I think I will always paint. Since writing here the last time I have completed many paintings. These can be seen on my Flickr pages - www.flickr.com/photos/john_lincoln or my web site in the Update pages - www.art-insight.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=5&Itemid=19 or my page on Art Break - www.artbreak.com/johnlincoln

I will be coming back to these pages on a regular basis, so, if anyone is reading these notes, do feel free to comment yourself - (be nice) - and I will hope to read you and reply.

In the meantime if you are due a holiday this month - enjoy; and have a great New Year.

Post Christmas

2008-12-29T01:51:00.000-08:00

The festivities are over - well bar New Year's eve. Now its down to work again. I have much to do with three exhibitions this year - so far.

I am exhibiting with Jill Tattersall at the Carre Gallery, Sleaford in June this year. In May I will be taking some smaller works for showing at the Wild at Heart Gallery in the village of Bloxholme just north west of Lincoln City. In August I will have a one man show at the Geest Gallery in Ayscoughfee Hall, Spalding.

I will be opening my studio in the last weekend of April and the first weekend of May and during the two week period in which they occur I will be contributing to a group show in the Haven, Boston which is intended to coincide with these open studio weekends.

Crimsoned memories

2008-09-21T01:45:00.000-07:00

Festival of the Trees

This image painted in acrylic on canvas 40" x 30", is about memory and place. Its title is composed as a haiku and refers to memory and its links with actuality and perception, that is my personal experience.

Crimsoned memories

Between layers of time wrapped

In green lace

22nd August 2008

2008-08-22T04:36:00.000-07:00

This is the latest in a series of mixed media paintings. It is another 'seed' painting where the function of a seed can be a metaphor for the human condition. The painting is called Blind seed and is 18" high x 12" wide.

A new painting

2008-08-03T00:42:00.000-07:00

This image of sunlight being sucked down to the very core of a tree was completed recently.

5th July 2008

2008-07-05T10:20:00.000-07:00

I have just completed this new painting. It is called The badger's trees and is one of a series of paintings that I have embarked on within the theme of In the spirit of trees.

11th June 2008

2008-06-11T13:49:00.000-07:00

Atelier East

This painting has been selected for inclusion in Atelier East's Summer Show at the Angles Theatre, Wisbech in Cambridgeshire.

Wren, king of the birds.

Oil on canvas

20" x 26"

10th June 2008

2008-06-10T02:11:00.000-07:00

New work

I have completed two new paintings. they are part of series I am working on concerned with The spirit of trees. The first is The singing tree - 24" x 36" - Oil on canvas and the second is - The frognal tree, 24" x 18" - Oil on canvas.

26th May 2008

2008-05-25T23:51:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since I wrote something here although it is not as if nothing has been happening.

I have been offered an exhibition by Atelier East in Wisbech. They have asked me to exhibit some work in the Angles Theatre there in May next year. Also Theartbay in Stoke on Trent asked me if I would exhibit some work at their gallery in the town and I delivered 7 paintings last week. They have also scanned the work and will be putting the reproductions up for sale in Debenhams in Stoke.

I am putting a collection of 15 paintings together for a show in the Wild at Heart Gallery, Broxhome in Lincolnshire for July this year. Four paintings are currently being shown at Forge Arts a gallery in Hackthorn, Lincolnshire and I have a painting accepted for the OPEN08 Exhibition at Alfred East Gallery in Kettering

I am working on a number of pieces, all different in their rationale and intention, which is how I perfer to do things. I get quite bored simply repeating myself in picture after picture. I like to think I am about creating images that vary in their content, materials, styles and in what they 'say' to the viewer, assuming, of course, that they communicate anything at all.

However it is also true to say that whatever I do it is about the relationship of us humans and nature. I like to make references to various natural processes in such a way that they stand as symbols for human thought and behaviour, albeit to varying degrees of clarity and understanding. After all without mystery life can be quite uninteresting.

The picture above - Wren, King of the birds - is a slight reworking of one I completed a couple of years ago. I wasn't happy with some aspects of the image where I think they needed enhancing with greater tonal contrast. The other - In a Celtic glade was completed recently.

13th March 2008

2008-03-13T05:02:00.000-07:00

I am slowly getting back into production and while the work was underway on the extension to the studio I continued to paint and construct whenever possible. Here are three new items.

Blood on the sun -

Oil/acrylic/mixed media on board 12" x 12"

Celtic torque

Oil on board - 12" x 12"

Seeds of change

Oil/acrylic and mixed media on box canvas

12" x 14"

New extension

2008-02-20T01:51:00.000-08:00

The extension to the back end of the garage (studio) is now complete and I have moved all the paintings in. I am able to use the back wall as a display space and have hung about 25 paintings there, albeit a bit close to each other. The remainder are stacked in front of each other and along the high and low walls. I managed to get the large table from the study in too and I have fitted the drafting table to one end of it.

The space under the table is now taken up with three, three drawer cabinets on castors. This has enabled me to store many of the tools and some of the materials I need to paint as well as construct collages and assemblages.

The refurbished study is also complete and all books replaced in the new shelving. This means I have a place, free of clutter, where I can read in peace and at my leisure - perfect!

I am now working on several paintings and hope to have some to show on here quite soon. There is one minor problem, this being the middle of winter. Before the extension was built I used an oil-filled electrical radiator to heat the garage to a workable temperature and it did the job very well. However, now that I have enlarged the space by about 100% the heater is struggling to keep the studio warm, particularly on frosty mornings. I have to let the heater do its stuff for about 45 minutes before venturing in to start work. Still, once I am there and have acclimatised I am able to just get on with it.

A dream

2008-02-04T02:04:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday morning, at around 7am, I was still in bed asleep and I had the following dream. It isn't anything special, it's just that I rarely remember dreams and this one was quite vivid.

The dream
I was leaving a college, or some such place, with single room accommodation, where I had been staying temporarily. I needed to get my bags on to a dark, grey-blue, quite large, rectangular van to take me and others to the station. The van was parked in a large square, like a parade ground in front of two coaches that were lined up one behind the other. I managed to place two of my bags, one on top of the other, at the rear edge of the van on the right side. I think I did this because I wanted to leave room for others' bags, but there was only one other bag in the van, also at the rear but at the left.

I needed to go back to my room to pick up one more bag. When I got there a man was giving some sort of farewell message to us, that is me and some shadowy, indeterminate figures who were hanging about in an ante room in one wall of which the door to my room was situated. I don’t know what he was saying but I think he thought he was being very clever even funny. He had a light ginger moustache and beard and was in his fifties.

The door to my room was just slightly open and I pushed to go in. Then I was in a courtyard, still outside my room. It had been raining and the concrete floor of the yard was quite wet and littered with leaves and a few sodden socks. I decided that it was not worth picking these socks up and then I saw the bag it was against the wall at the far side of the yard I looked down into it and it was two thirds full of my possessions, also very wet but I couldn’t make out what they were. Except it was clear that little black insects, roundish with lots of legs and about 20mm across where scuttling about inside and then one big one appeared and leaped out of the bag onto the floor and stopped briefly, long enough for me to get an idea what it looked like.

It was big, about 75mm across, also roundish but not perfectly so and was covered with triangular shaped scales. These scales were metallic in appearance with many colours, iridescent greens, blues and purples. It had two ‘dead’ matt black eyes, set deep within the body towards the front and many short legs round the circumference. The scales had points at the front and when it moved towards me I poked at it with the tip of my finger and the sharp tip of one of the scales penetrated my skin. This was quite painful and I felt concerned that it might have poisoned me.

Next I am running back to the large van because I knew that if I was not quick I would miss it - and I did. When I got back to the square, although the two large coaches, in front of where the van had been, were still there – the van had gone. I knew now that I would miss my train, I just knew it as if it had all happened before. I started to look round for someone who might be going to the station and who would give me a lift. Then I woke.

I suppose afterwards, when I thought about it - and I was quite surprised that I was able to, the aspect of the dream that struck me as most strange was the distinction between the mundane activity of placing bags in a van and the appearance of the, quite exotic, possibly dangerous, insects.

Update

2008-01-20T01:04:00.000-08:00

On the off-chance that someone might be reading this I thought I ought to say something about why there have not been many additions to this Blog. For about two months now I have been having a lot of work done in the house to improve space and facilities for getting on with painting.
I have re-designed the study and will be getting some bespoke furniture built here in February. However I have had to completely clear the study of existing furniture and contents and that has been quite a big task, not only moving it all out but finding temporary homes for all the items.

Also I have had an extension built to the studio, which now gives me twice the space I had before. It has been built like a conservatory with double-glazed window units on two sides and a diffused polycarbonate roof to allow light through it. I hope to move in to the extension in the next couple of days after the floor has dried and I am able to paint it before installing the various items of storage and worktop furniture.

If all goes to plan - does it ever - I hope to begin adding new work to these pages.

New Year, new work

2008-01-03T04:25:00.000-08:00

I have begun a series of organic 'abstract' images. they are small ones to start with - just 12" square. They are, so far anyway, painted in acrylic with mixed media - including, sawdust, earth and humus. The first one - Sun in a seed is included in an earlier post on this Blog and here is the second - Seed dispersal.

These paintings are likely to find their way into two exhibitions arranged for later in the year. I will need something like 15 paintings for each - so 28 to go!

New work and other things

2007-12-28T03:52:00.000-08:00

Since last updating this blog, which I accept is not done as often as it usefully could/should be, I have re-worked three paintings in acrylic. They are on canvas and originally painted solely with a painting knife but now I have modified their appearance by using a brush and other implements including a painting knife and clay-shapers to bring them closer to my current vision of the subject in each case.

Each painting is entitled with a haiku poem. The first is -
A hard silent light
Grips the autumn undergrowth
Frozen in the sun

The second -

Evening sun warms
Scarlet glows the relict hedge
Heart of the country

The third -

Cool blue leaf green
Liquid light white blast
Thrust down deep brown

Christmas is over, though we have the New Year celebrations to come. My present this year was a Nikon D80 for which I am very grateful and will now have to spend some time learning how to use. Maybe I will post some of the results on here - if they are worth it.

Work has started on extending the size of my studio. It will look like a standard rectangular conservatory with double-glazed units for walls and polycarbonate roof. The aim is to get as much light into it as possible. It provides me with a largish wall along the back which I will use to hang paintings for viewing, should I get the opportunity to show them. As a member of Art on the Map - Lincolnshire Open Studios I would expect to take part in the project next year. However, there have been many changes to the Steering Group that manages the project each year on behalf of us members. Since the AGM in October I have heard nothing about what is being planned for next year. As for the web site for Art on the Map that has been dormant and undeveloped for months and is quite useless as a source of information and debate.

28th November 2007

2007-11-28T07:23:00.000-08:00

Latest work
I have completed two pieces. One is in acrylic and mixed media on board, 30cms square. This painting - The sun in a seed - is about the energy of the sun captured in a seed leading to germination and subsequent growth. The other is in pastel and is called - Ice flower.

Art & Soul

2007-11-19T05:07:00.001-08:00

Art & Soul is a new magazine, published in Peterborough for the city and its surrounds. It promotes contemporary music, visual art and writing from the area.

In issue 8, just published, it has a feature article on me and my work.

Go to - http://www.artandsoulmagazine.com/issue8/

At the top of the page click on Next Page eleven times to get to pages 21 and 22 to find the article, it takes a few seconds to get there.

Visual artists - a reductive point of view

2007-11-19T02:18:00.000-08:00

Visual art is about looking and thinking too.

Visual artists create images, (imagine), from within the mind - the inner self, as well as from what they observe in the external environment.

Artists can - with varying success - reproduce a visual experience from observation and do the same from thinking - in the broadest sense. That is 'visualise' concepts, philosophies, cosmologies, emotions and points of view. All are rendered in point, line, form, colour and tone, in two dimensions, (eg drawings, paintings, prints, collage) or three (eg sculpture, assemblages, constructions) or four (visual experiences through time, eg video and deliberately manipulated sculptural experiences such as some forms of land art).

Artists create visual metaphors of life's experiences and speculations through varied symbolism, from absolute abstraction to those images which have a closest possible photographic or three dimensional exactitude.

Why? To articulate for us and themselves their experience of the material world and the inner world and all that that may mean for life itself.

Musings or ramblings

2007-11-10T02:19:00.000-08:00

To muse is to engage in reverie - I think. Its a nice* thought, here I am sat in front of this PC musing and thinking about thinking - in a reverie!

*Nice, now there's a word, it can mean - fastidious, over-particular, hard to please, dainty, punctilious, scrupulous, acute, discerning, discriminating, sensitive to minute differences, requiring delicate discrimination or tact; or, more colloquially - pleasing or agreeable, satisfactory, attractive, friendly, kind......

Painting - I think a lot when painting. Applying paint to a surface with a brush is fraught with difficulties. Not least all the doubts about whether the colour is mixed 'correctly', whether there is just the right amount of paint on the hairs, whether the paint should be rubbed, scrubbed, stroked or ground in.

But that's the least of it. So many other things to think about. Painting can be a form of reverie too - a meditation. It is possible to exclude all distractions for a few brief moments while being in this state of 'niceness' brought on by the act of painting. Hours go by - sometimes - without reference to the passing of time and then - what has been achieved? Very often, not much but the value of those intensive minutes and possibly hours is considerable and can be measured or reflected in different ways. A feeling of satisfaction emerges if the image on the surface has moved on a little, constructively - that is, when the changes wrought by the brush bring the image closer to the vision in the mind's eye.

Achieving the emotional and visual links between the, incomplete, inner vision and the resulting image on the surface can be immensely satisfying and re-assuring. Though, failure to make the connection between thought and image is devastatingly depressing and de-motivating.

Sometimes, no nearly always, the 'inspiration' or the original 'idea' is so nebulous and elusive that the effort in realising it on a flat plain is excessive and wearisome, and invariably falls short. Painting is paradoxically and simultaneously a heart-breaking and heart-warming experience - but always 'nice'.

Have a look at my web site - http://www.art-insight.co.uk/

27th October 2007

2007-10-27T01:29:00.000-07:00

I have recently completed three paintings. The first, in oil on board, is about the flower, morning glory, the second, in oil on canvas, is concerned with the development of light in a wood and the third a pastel on paper of Woodwalton Fen.

After the three solo shows I have presented this year, the last finishing earlier this month, I am feeling a bit jaded and I have been more or less pottering around with different images in my mind and nothing very consistent.

The assemblages show in Hackthorn next month is complete and I go to install them next Thursday. See - http://www.forgearts.co.uk/indexframes.htm

I have just started on a series of very colourful and textured paintings of varying sizes where the subject is essentially organic but the treatment is metaphorical abstraction. Metaphorical in that the image points to organic forms as they may be affected by the energy of growth and expansion. An example is the germination of a seed. As soon as I have a couple completed I will put them up here.

Cosmic egg emerging

2007-09-23T06:57:00.000-07:00

This is the 7th piece completed for the November exhibition. I have used a turned-wood egg to symbolise the 'cosmic egg' and show it 'emerging' from the cosmos.

Web site: http://www.art-insight.co.uk

Mandate of Heaven

2007-09-06T10:55:00.000-07:00

This is the 6th of a collection of assemblages I am putting together for the exhibition in November. It is concerned with Hexagram 55 of the Yijing, where Duke Zhou assumes the 'Mandate of Heaven' .

Exquisite corpse

2007-09-01T10:43:00.000-07:00

ARTicles of association, three artists, Jill Tattersall, Stuart Goodacre and me are getting together to put on a show of assemblages at the Forge Arts Gallery in Hackthorn, Lincolnshire this coming November. The centre-piece of the show will be an 'Exquisite corpse'.

This assemblage has been constructed by the three of us separately without each of us knowing what the others were doing other than Stuart had the head, Jill had the torso and I had the legs to complete.

This is the result. It is 60" high by 20" wide, (150 x 50 cms)

25th August 2007

2007-08-25T09:55:00.000-07:00

The (metaphorical) garden

England is often described as one big garden. There is certainly no wilderness and as for wildness, well that depends on your outlook. Take a train anywhere in the country and look out of the window and you will see wildness. It can appear as nondescript, overgrown sidings, untended back gardens, field margins and derelict ex-industrial yards, all of which have ‘stories’ to tell, certainly a history and even their own ‘archaeology’. These places and their accompanying adjacent areas of manicured environments – domestic gardens, town centres, modern commercial building surrounds and certainly those areas of intensively farmed land, together provide at least one characteristic that can work as a metaphor for our relationship with ourselves and the environment in which we live; and that is, through human consciousness - control.

We have in this country a number of agencies and organisations, government funded and non-government, set up to conserve those parts of the country that comprise the nearest we have to a natural environment. These include Natural England, The Woodland Trust, Wildlife Trusts and many others. The principle is conservation and that means management. Now, on the face of it this appears to be a contradiction in terms – what is natural about management? Management most definitely requires choices to be made – about what the land is managed for, what animals and plants should be protected by managing the land in a particular way which may mean that some plants and animals prosper at the expense of others in given designated areas, such as nature reserves and areas of outstanding natural beauty.

Particular sites or green spaces as some of them are now being called have particular landscape, geological, plant and animal attributes, which when taken together characterise that particular place as unique and worth conserving, what I would term, though I am by no means knowledgeable in these matters, as an almost self-contained ecological unit. I say almost because most if not all of these green places rely on ‘corridors ‘ of access for re-sourcing its plant and animal requirements. These include the movement, through flight, wind and water (rivers, streams, hedges etc) of birds, insects and animals as carriers of seeds and themselves as food sources for resident animals and plants.

I see this merging of those particular attributes as fundamental to the ‘spirit of place’ that has informed the work of many artists, writers, poets and musicians through time. However, for me that is only part of the story. In as much as nature in England has a natural history, its social history is equally significant. In fact, in my view the two are inseparable. Together they provide the context in which the spirit of mankind is developed and nurtured and where this development is recorded, the record, in history, myth and legend, is contemporaneously and through time the means by which we humans articulate our place in the world and by extension the Universe.

In my view, this spirit of place provides the locus for all our cosmologies and a resource for all our religions.

I have for some time, in my own mind, characterised the garden as a metaphor for the relationship we have with our environment and in particular the natural environment.

I have described in pictures some aspects of the intervention of humans and the effect this has had on the environment and us, as a ‘garden’ in operation. This garden is a place where human psychology and its resultant behaviour can be explained and described in visual terms using narrative and symbols to portray the myths and legends of humanity through time and place.

I have to say immediately and without equivocation that my attempts to do this are meagre and partial. The subject is enormous, however what is important for me is the garden as metaphor and as context, the place where life happens and from which I can exemplify, through images how I and others relate to the environment in which we find ourselves and which we control in a variety of ways and with varied success.

The painting above is entitled - Ornamental landscape.

24th August 2007

2007-08-24T03:34:00.000-07:00

'Tree of life' and the 'cosmic egg'
I recently completed a painting of the Tree of life as the cosmic egg with blackbird. The tree is a yew I planted in front of the house some years ago and which I have been shaping into an 'egg' form ever since. This spring until early summer a blackbird pair nested there - hence the painting. Shown here is a photograph of the tree and the painting derived from it.

21st August 2007

2007-08-21T00:36:00.000-07:00

Cecil Collins wrote -

"The myth and legend are strong penetrating poetical forms in which everything lives focused in its essential archetypal essence so vividly that the mysterious creative vitality of life is powerfully imprinted upon mankind's consciousness, and remains there for thousands of years. Myth and legend are a sign of creative vitality in society.

The purpose of art is to worship and praise life through wonder and magic."

I believe that myth, magic and mystery are some of the means by which we articulate our relationship with ourselves and the natural forces that surround us here on earth and in the Universe. Except for mystery, which by definition is unexplainable, I have no intrinsic belief in the content of magic and myth but their power to move minds cannot be ignored.

The painting above is called - Magic fish.

18th August 2007

2007-08-18T12:09:00.000-07:00

Today I have been working on a number of gouache paintings. They are small and fairly quickly completed. they are completed in a conventional way, close to reality with no embellishments or formal developments. This is an example of one completed sometime ago.

15th August 2007

2007-08-15T05:55:00.000-07:00

New web site

Today my new web site went officially 'live' - www.art-insight.co.uk

There are over 90 paintings on view in a variety of galleries with themes including - Trees in the landscape, Floral paintings and Myth & symbolism paintings.

Feel free to browse and enjoy!

11th August 2007

2007-08-12T02:23:00.000-07:00

A day out at the sea-side

Today our son Stephen, drove my wife Pauline, his son Kian and me to Hunstanton. The day was gloriously sunny. Kian is just four and still tires easily so after about four hours of messing about in the sand, in the sea and along the beach front we headed back home. On the way back we visited Caithness Glass in King's Lyn where Pauline treated herself to a large, tall glass vase and further down the road we stopped at a roadside stall, just outside Wisbech, which was selling vegetables at very reasonable prices.

10th August 2007

2007-08-10T12:35:00.000-07:00

Our grandson Kian has come to stay with us for a week - mayhem will prevail. Thomas the Tank Engines and track all over the floor, tent on the lawn and water everywhere. Ah well!

In the evening I drove up to Sleaford to view the exhibition See It at the Hub. The show was a mixture of paintings, collages, sculpture, drawing, mosaic and some craft. It was an inetersting show. I met Jill Tattersall and her husband and daughter. Jill had two pieces on show, a collage and a folding book. I also met Wyndham ex colleague on the Art on the Map Steering Group and Sarah Graves a mosaic artist.

I will attempt to include an image of a painting or something of mine here whenever I post a Blog but can't guarantee it. The picture is of a cover for a book I made last year. The cover is made from deer hide and a drop of molten tin.

9th August 2007

2007-08-09T08:42:00.000-07:00

Abstract art - a personal comment

I have been reading the book - The Green Fuse: Pastoral Vision in English Art 1820-2000 by Jerrold Northrop Moore. In it he quotes John Piper an English painter of the twentieth century who said - "To ignore subject matter was to look at painting for itself alone, for its manner and its past and present habits, for its language of form, discounting its message."

I painted in the abstract between the years 1966 and 1971. Then, because I had become tired of the repetitive nature of what I was doing I turned to figurative work derived from nature and natural form. I looked for the effect of light on the textures, forms and colours of nature and responded by way of the psychological, emotional and even the spiritual effect my observations had on me.

This painting, Celtic glow is recently completed.