Apricity - the warmth of the winter sun.

Staining on heavy canvas describing the feeling of apricot on a winter’s day.

My work has always followed the seasons and it is no different on the MA Textile Design course - as Autumn turned to winter I was struck by the colours in the hedgerows and the brilliance of the hues when lit by the winter sun - and so an obsession with expressing  ‘Apricity’ began. I had been talking to my tutor about needing a motif in a painting I had done and she simply asked - why did I need one? Having been surrounded by leaf motifs for the last few months letting go of a recognisable motif seemed a refreshing and invigorating direction. We talked about how my work was about looking up, about banking colours (going back to Derek Jarman’s Chroma) and the advice was to research Howard Hodgkin and explore how he captured colours or ‘banked’ them. I hadn't really appreciated how he produced his work before - Hodgkin was a great traveller, an observer of life and spaces yet he didn’t sketch or draw en plein air, his modus operandi was to sit and to soak up the places he was in, to observe and absorb, he would then paint them much later, not only that but he would take years to paint one painting. 

Irish author Colm Tóibín describes Hodgkin’s working process,  “A word, an event, a place…a thing that happened. A memory in the distant past. And it isn’t just a question of capturing the moment. It’s almost the opposite of that. It’s trying to find in the experience, whatever it was, the way it was remembered. To try and make something that would matter.”

My life is always ‘against the clock’ so whilst I steal moments when I can, to indulge in en plein air work, I also rely on photographs to capture moments outside, things that catch my eye, light and shade, etc… then move on and get on with my day. Now I had the impetus to think differently, to consider not drawing outside and definitely not take any pictures - but instead to stand still, to observe and really think about what each colour was, think about the shapes around me, the marks I would make to recreate them and soak up the power of the winter sun, feeling the apricity and taking time to store up its warmth. Honestly, what a treat for a busy person - mindful and restorative.

So, back in the studio and days, possibly weeks, later I began to make studies on paper, from memory.  When talking about Hodgkin’s work Sandra Sontag says “What is worth painting is what remains in and is transformed by memory.” So I painted what remained and what was transformed. I painted the colours I could see in my mind, the colours of the hedgerows at golden hour. I made marks that alluded to the mass of branches and to the direction of growth. I painted apricity.

I have since developed the work onto painted canvases but also into textiles using the most painterly techniques I can;  transfer printing and polychromatic printing - more experiments still to come, and also layers that use light to explore shadows and depth, too.

My Apricity collection of canvases will be released soon. If you are not on my mailing list yet, please do join it so you can be amongst the first to see the finished works and have the opportunity to buy one.

I recommend this documentary on Hodgkin if you want to explore his work more https://howard-hodgkin.com/resource/imagine-a-portrait-of-the-painter   where you can also hear more from both Sontag and Toíbín.