There is some music for this painting, but because it was worked on and altered over a long period – in spasms, for way over a year – it is difficult to pick out anything that specifically sets a single overall mood. If I remember correctly I started off with Handel's 'He shall feed his flock like a shepherd', then went through the gamut of Shostakovich/Bach Preludes and Fugues, Richter, Radiohead etc, interspersed with a vast multitude of random pop singles (e.g. Fire Brigade).
I was always struggling to get energised, but in the very final stages of this marathon I ended up with the William Lawes six-part 'In Nomine' (which I hope is now playing). It's a wonderful piece from when I first became interested in Early Music in the 1980s. It was recorded in 1971 - at the very beginning of the Early Music revival - by Gustav Leonhardt, and uses 20th century violins, violas, and cellos instead of gut-strung viols. Despite this heresy(!) the players produce a sublime passage near the middle where only a few parts twine and weave around the high long-note melody ('cantus firmus') of the 'In Nomine' form. The Handel still works though.
Back to the painting. Originally working-titled 'Sheep Tree', the source image is an old snap from a bus – just a view yards away from here. The landscape is the fine arcadian parkland of Culdees Castle Estate, in Strathearn. Interesting to see that there is actually a group of sheep resting beneath the main tree.
I should say that this was composed and begun in a state of resistance – by which I mean that last year I went through quite a bad period of negativity about painting, but still felt obliged to at least attempt some work. In the original composition there were three sheep in the foreground, with a naked figure lying beneath the tree. The sky had horizontal bands of pale blue and light grey cloud, with a bit of lighter, more ragged cloud, towards the top. My back had begun giving me problems, and my initial work was fairly cursory in a 'whatever it is you're doing get it done quick so I can sit down please!' sort of way. Some of the hurried early work wasn't smoothed enough and caused some lasting effects on the surface. For some reason I experienced difficulty gauging the tones in my source and replicating them on the painting – even attempting to work with a photographer's grey card to get them right (it turned out that I wasn't far off in the first place, but I suppose that is a measure of my self-doubt at that point).
I placed clothed figures and a dog beneath the tree. An improvement on the rather meaningless single naked figure. That altered the premise of the painting, and made it far more relevant. The foreground spaces weren't reading properly, so I repainted all the sheep a little smaller. That didn't help, so I painted out all the sheep. This made the whole thing far too empty, and the space still didn't read properly.
At this point, even after another long lull, I was seriously weighing up whether to abandon this piece, and rub it down and re-prime it ready for a new project.
After testing out new remedies on photoshop, I decided to carry on but drastically change some elements. I introduced the two wedges of rough foreground grass (from the setting for the other sheep-based composition which didn't work). I made the sky a grey overcast, with the slanting band of light, and exaggerated the 'upper glow' from the original source a little. All this helped massively, but the broad brush painting of the opaque sky paint meant the redrawing of all the tree outlines, yet again. Which was tough. It was also inspiring though, as that loose grey paint made me think about the effect the back lighting was having on the far line of trees – their dark silhouettes had become fuzzed and desaturated. Developing this idea, I made their upper foliage faded and grey, and introduced more colour and contrast towards the ground, where the colours and tones were normal and natural. I rather liked this effect – it empowered the backlight - but it presented me with a challenge when applying that system to the main tree. Here, the very top foliage is a very light grey, and could be considered a bit unnatural, but I think – and hope - that I've got away with it.
A quick run-down of technical stuff. From my notes: 'Spot-gridded and elements placed and drawn with crayon. Forms and tones developed with thin Raw Umber fluid acrylic. Then oil paint.' As I said above, I had to re-draw the trees multiple times - so, so, tedious. On the plus side, though, all that correcting and repainting has produced quite a nice surface, albeit with many more layers of embedded dust and cat hair than I'm comfortable with.
I'm pleased with the new flat diagonals and wedges in the foreground and sky, though - they bring a gentle dynamism to what was originally a very static composition. Generally, I love stable horizontals; they are very satisfying in a 'landscape' or square format. Unfortunately, in this 'portrait' format too many became dull and unhelpful.
All in all, there are some interesting bits of painting in this (and the odd unresolvable patch I'm just letting go), but - because of the rather 'fire-fighting' nature of the compositional rescue - it maybe lacks the 'wholeness' which good paintings usually have. I'm glad I rescued it, but it was a real struggle and took far, far, too long to produce.
Lastly, I feel I should make it known that the group of figures beneath the central tree is a composite, using photographs of some of the atrocities discovered at Bucha, north-west of Kiev, as Russian soldiers retreated in April last year. Including the dog.
