In Love with Layering [266]
56:32 Share

That's how you find that unexpected is going over that edge of what feels comfortable and I think layering can be a brilliant tutor for that because you can't do it without losing things. Hello and welcome to Art Juice. This is honest, generous and humorous conversations that will feed your creative soul and get you thinking with me Alice Sheridan and me Louise Fletcher.

And today we're going to be having a somewhat more practical, perhaps studio discussion, probably for the painters out there, but I think the ideas behind it will apply to lots of different types of art and certainly perhaps the way that you approach what you make. But before we get into that, let's have a quick catch up. What have you been up to? What has your week looked like as a

I've been meeting a few new people this week and they say to me, what's the podcast about? And I say, well, it's kind of art, but it's also real life stuff. So you should ask our latest reviewer because unfortunately I forgot to pull it up, but I got an email to say we've got a new review. All right. When he just said boring, blah, blah, mediocre chat with no point, blah, blah. Yeah. Yeah.

So that pretty much sums it up. So thank you for that great description. In fact, I think that should be our new tagline. Boring, blah, blah. I'm happy with that. Sometimes I think it's that those little moments of chat that make the world go around. So yeah. Exactly. I love a good chatty podcast. So if you don't like a chatty podcast, we're definitely not for you. Anyway, what have I been up to? So I've had a little bit of painting time. So at the moment I'm between places and when I'm here, I have a studio. So I try and

It's actually helping me to organize myself in a way I've never managed before. So I'm getting more painting time in, even though I'm only here three days this week. And I've had a few little breakthroughs, which I don't want to talk about because I feel like they'll dissipate into thin air if I talk about them. But good days where I feel like even though I may have had a bad painting day in sense of not finishing anything, I've had a little breakthrough.

And also just a lot of admin because we finished my free course. We let people into the full course

and sorry to be boring about all this everyone but at the end of that we let everyone who wanted to come into the membership site that I run and that was yeah and that was a lot more people than we expected and poor Astrid shout out to Astrid if she ever listens to this who does the member admin for our tribe

I would just get these messages on our messaging service, which would say, I'm sorry, but I have to take a break because I'm going mad. I'll be back in a few hours. Wow. So many. It's not just that you're letting people in. It's that then they say, well, I was letting, but now I didn't realize I set a password. What was my password? Or I don't know how to find the website. I didn't get the email. All the things that happen.

So we've been doing that for a week. So I stepped in to help and Tracy stepped in to help and we managed to get through everybody. It was really good. And some lovely people have come in and lots of new energy into the group, which is nice. As you know, when you get those new people in, you bring this new, fresh excitement to it, which is nice. So that's been it really. And then I sat down to do this with you and thought, where did that week go? Because it doesn't feel like a week since I spoke to you.

I've had the opposite. My week feels like it's been about three, which is quite nice, really. I've been, I was aware I spent the weekend away in a tent. When we said that at the end of last week, you were like, oh, oh.

Because I thought, right, when you said festival, I pictured you wading through mud to go see Radiohead or something. Yeah. But then it looked like it was more like a spiritual, I'm going to tell you what I thought it looked like. Woo woo, spiritual, granola, weave my own yogurt. Was it, which was it? Or was it a combination of both?

It was more the latter, but it wasn't, it was, yeah, it was a very, it was a small festival. It was called Verve in Wiltshire and I went with two friends. So it's really just a really nice excuse to get together. We had a beautiful tent all set up for us. That was absolutely gorgeous. So we could stand out. The thing with tents is that you can't stand up, isn't it? And everything's pokey if you're in a little tent. And I did that, but we definitely decided that we're past that.

um yeah there were some quite comedy moments about what you take with you on a glamping trip that included for some of the others complete eye downs silk pillowcases we took hot water bottles with us like we're talking about making it comfortable um so we had a really nice base it wasn't huge numbers of people so you didn't feel like you were battling through crowds but they had a really kind of a very comprehensive lineup of things to do events they had

four or five different stage areas with talks, practices, sound baths, breath work, meditation, yoga type physical things. It was actually a really fabulous way to wrap the summer up. It was gorgeous. It was a little bit chilly on the Sunday morning, which is where I think I got this slight cold from. But it hasn't stopped me that much this week. But yeah, it was actually...

It was really good. Really, really enjoyed it. And I think...

It's just interesting how you're open to different that, you know, if you'd asked me a year ago, would I have done breath work and had a bit of a moment in a tent with 80 other people? I would have said no, no. I wouldn't. And I just think there were really whatever, whatever route we choose today. I think that whole thing of, I wouldn't have let myself go.

That's a really interesting thing to reflect on is like, where are you keeping things contained because it feels safe because you don't want people looking at you in a certain way, because you don't want people judging you and and I think actually when you see other people also doing that, it's, it's, it's very powerful and it's very moving, actually.

It just had a lovely, lovely feel to it. It was great fun. Apart from the DJ on Sunday night finished at 10pm. I mean, really? 10pm? That's just right for me. That's a bit half an hour past my bedtime. It was all right because we went back to the campsite and chatted with some other people till 1am. So there we go. That resolved that.

Yeah. I think that thing about holding ourselves back, what I find fascinating about that is you see in other people. Yeah. Not in yourself as much, but it's very easy once you get tuned into it to see other people doing it. And it's very hard not to get hold of them and go.

Stop it. Like, come on, you don't have to hold yourself back because you've realized what's happening. Doesn't mean they've realized what's happening and you can't push people to realize that. Yeah, I do think it's harder to see it was for me anyway it's harder to see it for myself except in hindsight, when I can look back and see.

Yes, and I just think it's just a general level of achievement, which is why I think it goes so hand in hand with what making art can give you as a gift to unlock all these different layers, if that's the approach that you choose to take with it or you find that that's helpful. That was almost like...

A perfect segue. Into layers, baby. It was almost like you were BBC Radio 1 DJ segueing into the next piece. That's fine. We can skip over the rest of my week, which has all been... No, let's not skip over it. Go back. No, we can very happily skip over it. It has been...

admin-y things and things getting slightly waylaid by unexpected mum's doctor's appointments and you know in quite a nice way I have to say but yeah I said to you at the beginning I've had a clear day this week to get certain jobs done and then when that's that day has finished the next day has been set for something else which means I'm getting to the end of the week thinking I've now got four quite chunky things I should have been working on

None of which are completely finished because the day's never quite long enough. But that's it. There's no race. I'm feeling quite happy about getting back to it all when I need to. But yeah, no painting for me. Just doing tax admin in green spotty jumpsuits because why not? I wish we had a picture of that.

I did have a picture when I bought it. When I bought it, I put a picture on Instagram and said that my husband said, oh, well, it's very nice, but it's not for every day, really, is it? Oh, that one, that wasn't. That one. And I thought, why not? That's lovely. No, I pictured you in like a furry onesie with like leopard spots on it or something green and black. That's what I thought you meant. No. No, that was beautiful, the other one. No, that wasn't what I pictured.

So, right. So, on to what we were going to talk about was layers in painting. We thought we hadn't done a sort of studio practical thing for a while. And just this idea of layers and how we work with layers of painting, I think it comes up a lot. There can be some confusion over it. And I think certainly it can be quite difficult to work with.

Maybe some leaning into it along the lines of we've already mentioned, but why has it come up for you or where did it come up as a suggestion? I'm going to be really honest where it came up for me, because we said last week we were joking that I never look at the spreadsheet of ideas and I don't make pre-plans. And I thought, right, I'm going to try.

um by the way my charging cable is going nutty and having a little meltdown in the corner that sounds like electrical shock so if i suddenly disappear it's because i need to get my other computer out however um

I was listening to, I went through, I made a list of ideas and right at the end, I was listening to another podcast. Shout out to Laura Horne Arts Podcast, which I've been really enjoying lately. And Laura was talking about, as part of our last episode, layering. And as I looked at topics that we've covered, I thought, oh, we've never discussed our process about that. And I think we both have,

different approaches to it but we both do involve layers in our work and it just struck me as an idea that I'd like to steal from Laura so then when I've added it to my list you picked it as the one to talk about their conversation was about Laura's particular process but I often get asked about it on a broader kind of why before we get into the why

Maybe we should talk about what we actually mean when we're talking about layers. So when we say layering, when you see that as an idea with acrylics, what does it mean to you? So to me, it just means that you are not finishing a painting in one layer of paint. Right. That you are building up layers.

a painting from layers of paint, whether it be an abstract painting that's intuitive and you don't know where it's going or a representational painting, but you're building up effects or textures in the paint.

So on a very broad level, I just mean it as you don't just do a painting and it's one layer with some touching up, which is really how I painted at the beginning, if I think about how I first painted.

I kind of imagined that you had an idea, that you sat down, that you executed that idea, that it either went well or went badly, and then you stopped. And it was only watching someone else layer in a workshop, in an in-person workshop, where I saw someone putting paint on in layers and finding happy accidents that I was like, oh, wow.

Okay. That's how people do it. Okay, so a non-layered painting is where the application of paint is the final and finished result in one go. Yeah, although I would think of it as...

I suppose I would think not in necessarily one go, but you've probably got the main thing down and then you might touch some parts up or say you're doing a portrait. You might have got the nose slightly wrong. So you just touch it up or you may add another color onto the skin tone, but you're not making a face, then making another face over the top, then putting a face over here and scrubbing that one out.

You're just doing, you're executing your image in basically one layer. That's what I think an unlayered painting would be. Okay.

Because when I was thinking about this and what my relationship with it had been, I think a lot of it comes down to what kind of materials you use, because obviously, you know, layers exist in watercolour paintings and oil paintings, but we use it in very different ways. I mean, watercolour, you have to build in layers towards your work.

deeper because you can't go backwards towards light very easily. And in oils very often, layers are, they're often used to have a warm ground or you build your form with burnt umber and then you layer your colors on top. I mean, that's been going on since the Renaissance, basically.

But I think what we're talking about is working with them with acrylic paint, which where the ability of the paint to dry means that you can return to a painting over again and work in work with that quick process.

to reveal layers of what's gone before. So there is something about the unexpected rather than, as you say, a more traditional approach where you might use layers, but you're building it towards layers

not a fully preconceived necessarily, but a clear idea of what the outcome is going to be. We're talking about where you move and shift and use the unexpected, right? Yes. Yeah. I mean, that is how I do it. Even when I'm painting portraits, which I do fairly often, it's still many layers of paint before I get to my finished result.

And things change. And, you know, I changed my mind about the posture or the position of the head or just the colors or I'm wanting to build up texture. So, yeah, for me, that is what layering means. And it's not just acrylic paint for me. And I think for you, too. It's mixed media. It's collage. It's crayons. It's pastels. It's oil past. It's all sorts of things in my layers.

and I was thinking when I first started painting I wasn't using acrylics I was using oils because you know proper painters use oils and I was using layers and I was doing under layers and then in the in the wet oil I was drawing through and getting lines from underneath I didn't realize that that was a named technique called sgraffito and

That was my happy discovery. But it was very different with oil, for sure, because of that drying time. But we don't paint with oil, so we're allowed to talk about what we do. Not anymore. This is one of my primary...

There's a few things about oils. I don't like the smells and they do give me a headache. And that is one reason. But primarily it's a lack of patience. The way my process has evolved, I want to be able to very quickly come in and do something else. I don't want to wait. And I did experiment recently with oils just a little bit.

And I kept coming back to it. And like three days later, I was like, it's not dry. What's wrong with it? Like, this is nuts. I can't do this. And I know if you've developed your process properly,

differently and you'll have ways of making it dry quicker. And I also know that for a lot of oil painters, they can't stand that they can't come back into acrylics to make the change something. So it's all how you've developed your, your, the way you work. But for me, acrylics are magic in the ability to combine them with lots of other things and the way they dry so that you can layer over those other things really quickly and

and get these really cool effects and then go backwards if you don't like what you did. Because I also worked in watercolor and that's a nightmare for someone like me because I did want to go backwards and you can't. And what I discovered with layering that I love that I had no idea I would love and the explanation of why watercolors didn't work for me is that I love to remove as well as add.

Yeah. And that's why I was frustrated with watercolors because I did literally want to go backwards. Okay. Now I want to take some of that off and put something else there. And it's, it's so skilled to use them properly. And I wasn't at that level, but you couldn't do that. However skilled you are. So for me, acrylics give everything I can excavate out what I've done. I can add more. I can. Yeah. You can just get so many interesting effects and yeah.

Paint effects, I never get bored of. So layering for me, again, it's the thing of taking yourself out of it as well, which is my big struggle, taking my own thinky, trying to be good brain out of the equation. Layering helps me do that because I can put a few layers on, then excavate some of it back and get a surprise that I couldn't have created intentionally. Yeah.

so sorry go on i was just gonna say this goes into just the idea of like making sure that you're using the right materials and mediums for the way in which you want to paint and the way you want to feel when you want to paint and and you know there's a reason why they're all that where they're all different and you can have like you can work with watercolors in a very um

careful, gentle way or a really wild way. You can work with watercolours in all sorts of ways and with acrylics too. But I think often one of the struggles that I think people have is not understanding how the medium works and working with the medium that they've chosen to work with in order to get the results that they want. And some of that is the knowledge, skill, experience gap that we all have. Like the whole...

Getting to know your paint and working with your paint is one of the tasks you have to do. And I mean, I don't think I've even finished and I've been at it 10 years with acrylics, working with how it works, like what is the dry? And of course, there are things that you can add to extend the drying time, the fluidity, all of that kind of thing.

But initially, you usually don't start off with all of those. There is a way that you play or approach a medium when you're at the beginning of working with it. And I think there are inherent frustrations. And I think one of the things that you need to do is learn to work with the medium that you've got and not try to make it be something else. Like if you're trying to work with acrylics and make them be like oils, it's always going to feel frustrating because they're not.

One of the frustrations with acrylics is it's harder. It's not impossible, but it's harder to blend colours. It can be harder to get subtlety. It can be harder to get like if you just have a layer, it can look very flat and quite plastic if you just put paint on as a colour that you've mixed. And so I think layering is a way to bring in more subtlety and nuance into acrylics, which sometimes it needs more.

That's a good point. So glazing over areas, for example, with thinner paint to shift the textures or the colors of certain areas. I was thinking, I love layering and that's what we're talking about. But I also have a little bit of, we're beginning off with what's our relationship with layering. I have real admiration and a little bit of envy for those people whose paintings are

don't seem to have layers after layers after layers and yet are brilliant. And just recently, I've really been looking at one of my absolute favorites is Jason Craighead, abstract painter from, I think, North Carolina, certainly America. If I got the state wrong, I apologize. Really beautiful abstracts on raw canvas. It looks like raw canvas to me anyway. And some of it

seems to me not to be covered up. Like, I don't know. I've never got really close to one. One day I will own one, I'm sure. One day I'll, you know, hope to get one and see close up. But it looks to be not layered. And yet the compositions are genius. The mark making is really authentic and raw. It's just very original work.

And I there's a little bit of my brain that goes, yeah, it takes you layers and layers and layers to get like nowhere near as good as that. And there's a this is what we always do as humans, though. Whatever we're doing must not be right. But I think there's a part of me that's got a bit of a love hate relationship with my layering process in the sense that I do really, really admire those people who seem not to do it.

I think it can feel a lot of work, can't it? The layering. Sometimes, you know, the little messages that can come in are like, okay, you've done all of these first layers and levels. Now we're just going to cover it up or we're just going to cover it up. It's like, why? And I think there is an important lesson to be learned in that, which is that by trusting yourself,

Making a move on your painting that feels uncomfortable and like you are risking losing something can at the end of it give you something more rewarding back. That's how you find that unexpected is going over that edge of what feels comfortable. And I think layering can be a brilliant tutor for that because you can't do it without losing things. The struggle that I've had with it over the years

over time is that it can feel like a very slow process and at times it can feel quite ill considered yes like you're leaving there's an element of chance but like you're leaving too much to chance and therefore where are you as the person who is um orchestrating building

this painting, not necessarily controlling it, but where are you as the director of the painting if it's all just, oh, we'll just put something on and scrape it off and see what happens. That for me feels a little bit like, yeah, I don't know, I don't find quite so much satisfaction in that. Yes, you get those moments where you think, oh, that bit's lovely, but then you want to move it like down and to the left and you're constantly having to

battle and pull against that element of chance. And it can just feel a little bit like in the early stage, you have to go through a lot in the early stages in order to get something that feels good at the end. And then my brain ends up starting to control it and thinking, okay, well, if all the early layers can be all deliberately bright colors, and then I can do something else that will mute them down, and then I will do something else

then it starts to become too much of a predicted process for me. Like a formula, yeah. That's the struggle I've had with it. Not to say that I don't love it in parts, but sometimes it can feel quite sludgy in a way to what I want. Yeah. And I'm kind of on a mission to kind of do the opposite. I was just thinking to not orchestrate.

And because I believe that our intuition can orchestrate, not our mind, I believe that my intuition personally is better than my mind. So, for example, I had this painting lying around that I didn't love, but it had a really cool effect in it. So I was keeping it, but the effect wasn't enough to make a painting. So eventually the other day I just went at it.

And it was just one of those moments of everything felt good. I had the right colors. I just was really moving quickly and I was moving in a way I enjoy. And I was putting the paint on in the way I enjoy. And after like an hour, I stepped back and I was like, wow, I really like that. But it can't be a painting, can it? Because it only took an hour. Whereas the thing that was underneath it took absolutely ages. So I left it and I'm still leaving it at the moment. I'm not sure.

And, but that was that feeling, something was orchestrating it. And it, and it was me because it's my hands, but it wasn't my, I wasn't thinking.

Other than I have this discussion with my students all the time when I say we're not thinking, of course, we're thinking like, oh, I think I'll put some orange on there. Oh, I think I'll get that brush. You have to think that or you'd be dead if you weren't thinking something. But it's not consciously stepping back and going, hmm, I think what I'll do is put something there.

I fail at that every single time. I've tried it every which way. I can't do it. But if I can get into flow and get out of my own way, I can make something I love. And then I go through layers and layers before that comes again. And that's the sludgy part for me. That's the part where I get frustrated with myself. It depends. Again, this goes back to my earlier question about what we're looking for when we paint. Like you're looking for the experience of painting and

you're looking for the surprise, like that satisfaction of when the interaction between you and the paint and something in the painting surprises you, like that is one of the biggest buzzes of painting. It has to be, doesn't it? You get there, oh, I made that. Like, how did that happen? And I think layers can be a great contributor to that feeling. And I also think that they can be very frustrating because you,

you can't necessarily always remember the steps, know what got you there. And then it can feel a little bit random. And I think that that can be sometimes a bit undermining that you feel, right, well, that thing happened, but was that purely by chance? Can I do it again? And this is where I think the real conscious element of painting needs to come in and just understanding what your process and your practice is.

It's almost like with layering, you need to agree with it. What is the deal? Why are we layering here? Because if you're clear on why we're layering, then you don't get hit up or you don't get so sucked up in the, oh, but it's not working. It's just like, I'm just, I'm just playing. I'm just layering. I'm just doing more. And then I'm going to take some away. And you have to be, it's being ready to notice where those things are that light you up.

with the painting. But I do think that it can be frustrating because they, it can be a lovely area, but then you can get fixated on a very small area and it's not the whole painting and it's not enough. And that that's where you've got to bring some consciousness back into it again. I think, yeah, consciousness is not good with me. I mean, when I step back and look at the painting that I love, the composition's good. The colors are working really well.

You know, it's not... I'm not saying...

that without any experience, you can just throw paint around because you can't, it doesn't work. You have to, I've built up a library of marks and ways of applying paint and different tools. And I know my color. I think color is my strongest point. I think composition is my least strong point where I sometimes struggle. I think color is very intuitive. So yeah,

You can only do what I'm describing when you have done all that. So there's a lot of consciousness before that. But I do find consciousness for me a real problem. And I can give you an example of where I really observed it. When I worked with Bibi in California, Bibi Jin a lot for people who don't know her, Bibi Art on Instagram or web, I watched her process and she layers, but...

She doesn't waste a lot of time or a lot of layering. So she very much layers. She does something intuitively, then she builds on that. I don't mean preserving parts or, you know, she'll happily paint over something.

But she'll build from that point. Whereas I, you said this to me years ago and I still do it. You said you've made like five paintings by the time you stop because I will almost do the painting and then cover it all up and start again because I love layers and I love excavating. So I want to build up those layers, but I actually lost something that was probably almost done right at the beginning.

So I really admired watching her working in the sense that it was very conscious and deliberate, more conscious and deliberate than I'm comfortable being.

But she didn't agonize over paintings for months and months. And they looked great at the end because she built on what she had. She trusted her intuition in what she did at first and then followed that. And I lost some things right at the beginning that I should have kept, that I think were... And I've started to believe, and this is why I said I have a complicated relationship with the idea, because I've started to believe...

that I learned layering and I learned it from two different teachers around the same time. And so I went that direction. I'm not sure it's actually the best direction for me. If, if it's true that what I do instinctively first is usually better than what I think about story of my life.

um and and how we are in life is how we are in painting I really believe that you can see it with people all the time so yeah so I'm kind of on the what am I going to do with this because my whole process is built up from layering and if I don't layer I can't excavate and I can't by excavate by the way I mean I use like a furniture scraper if I'm working on wood

um i use knives i use a screwdriver i use a sander i use bits of sandpaper i use all sorts to get down to the surprise layers beneath and i love that part of it but i lose something in the process i think so i don't have an answer it's very much like up in the air for me it's it's interesting points isn't it it's almost like how much does it suit your personality

again it's this way of picking the process that works for you. My relationship with layers has definitely changed particularly in this last series of paintings

I was going to ask you that, actually, if I can just say, because for people who don't know, your layers used to be much more thicker paint, I'd say more opaque. And then over the last few years, you've moved to more fluid paint applications and a lot of more transparency layers.

So yeah, less of that scraping through thing, because what I was finding was particularly as you work bigger, I think scraping through and discovering things from underneath and you can get bigger tools with it. Like I use bigger scrapers and credit cards and things, but the interest in those kinds of marks is often quite small scale. It's often like when you're seeing something, you know, really close up, you see those and it doesn't really matter.

for me anyway, it didn't really help contribute to the whole of the painting. It was almost like a detail but not enough to carry the whole painting. And as I started working bigger and I think also as I moved back towards working on canvas away from panel that it changes your mark making and I wanted to

It is intuitive. It does still include elements of uncontrolled, but in a controlled way. So if I'm working now and I've done some recently that are on canvases that are partially raw canvases and partially they look raw, but they've got clear gesso on because the paint sinks and soaks in a different way. So I've been playing with that. But it's...

lighter liquid forms of paint. It's still layered in the sense that they're still stacked on top of each other, but they're not completely covering. So we're not layering and covering and covering, covering and excavating. We're building and adding and putting layers on top, placed more considerably

And in that sense, it hasn't necessarily been quicker because the layers underneath need to really dry before you put the layers on top, unless you're deliberately wanting bleeds. So it's been slower. It's been more thoughtful.

it's had its own frustrations. It's got a totally different level of risk because if you're approaching a painting in that way, you can't just cover it all up again and start again. Like if you put the mark in the wrong place or you use a kind of liquid form and it goes quite a long way in a wrong place, it's there. It's there. You can't,

cover it over and move it and change it a bit, that's where it is. So you have to work with it. So it's given me a lot of different puzzles to solve. And there are elements of it that I've really enjoyed. I've really enjoyed actually that having to

slow down and be a little bit more thoughtful. And that has also had its frustrations too at times, but I think that's the journey of painting. - Yeah. It's like in life, we can't have everything, right? So we can never have, I can't have sanding and excavating and instantaneous first thing that comes out

We can't have everything. I think what I admired, now I think about it, about Bibi is that she was taking the first thing that came out and then refining that or building on that. Yeah. And I feel like I often disregard the first thing that came out. My best reacted to, and I know this doesn't mean anything in some ways, but in other ways it does, my best reacted to Instagram post in the last week

six months is the one, a picture I posted of my very first layers on two paintings that I, I only went crazy on because I fully intended to cover them up and was not expecting them to be anything. And then I loved them. And then I covered them up because that's what you do. You keep pushing it forward. You don't just stick with what you first did in hindsight. I never regret covering up paintings because it's just all part of the journey. Yeah.

But in hindsight, there's another direction there for me, which might not involve as much layering. The challenge with that, and I come back to Jason Craighead, one of my favorite things in a painting is visual texture, by which I mean, I don't like lumps. I really, really don't like lumps, but I like things that look like texture. But when you get close, it's smooth.

which is why I like sanding so much. And I like that because of the, what I call the first read and the second read when you look at a painting. Well, it's not me, but that's what I got from my one and only art teacher. So when you look at a painting from far away, that's your first read. And then when you get up close, that's your second read. And there's got to be more stuff for me

not the second read or it's disappointing if that's just all there is i don't feel like i've got anything and why i love his paintings is even though he doesn't have layers and layers he does have that so you get up closer and you see a little piece of collage or some some pencil lines or some very very delicate little marks which are very faint

So it's not like he's not built, he is building, he is layering, but just much more sparsely and probably, you know, carefully than I have been. So I think now I'm thinking about it where my conscious needs to come in is in the stopping. It's in, it's in the awareness of where I've got to. Well, in the stopping. And I think knowing that,

If you think of a painting as different, like a recipe with different ingredients, you want to get to a meal at the end of the day that feels like you can eat it, that tastes good when you eat it. You have to be conscious of the ingredients you're putting in. And I think that's one of the problems with layering, particularly with acrylics, is people tend to use acrylics.

And me included, I think it's a very natural inclination to do. You know, you choose your color so it's often a mid to dark value and if you're not careful you end up with a painting that's got a lot of darks and it ends up feeling very heavy. And that's why we're often attracted to what we see as those first expressive paintings on, whether it be on paper or whether it be on natural canvas, because it's got that lightness of the original surface underneath.

you don't have everything like solid and heavy. There is an immediate layer in that, which is the part that is untouched and the part that is touched. And I think once you can understand that, then you think, okay, well, how can I, if that is the sense that I like, how do I bring that into my painting? And when I was working much more and still now on paintings where I do layer to the edges and

It's making sure that you're in this kind of constant dance between the different elements or the ingredients that you've got to choose from. So for me at the beginning, it was often a darker mark very clearly at the beginning, because you can see that against your ground, which initially for me was always white because you've got the white then it glows through other colors.

But giving something dark with contrast helps you establish some composition, even if it's going to change, but it helps you establish some composition in that initial stages of the painting. Where do I want this to go? Where do I want the weight to be? And that would totally change. The painting would rotate.

But going through a process of dark and then very bright and then muting it down to less saturated colors, then it would get very sludgy. Then I would want to bring back some white or light into it. So you're going through this kind of cycle with layers. And I think that can feel very scary to do, because when you have built up something that texturally is quite dark,

Maybe it's quite beautiful, but it is quite heavy and solid to come back with light, not necessarily white, but where are your lights dancing around the page? And I think what I've been trying to do is how do I keep those more from the beginning, much in a way that you would do in a watercolour? Yeah.

I was going to say it sounds very watercolor. Very watercolor-y. And I might be falling into my own trap that I said at the beginning, which is pick the right medium for what you want to do. Maybe I should be going back to watercolor again. But I do, I like the fact that with acrylic, it can get thicker towards the end. So you're also playing as well with your different textures in that way as well. You know, you've got...

some degree of the paint that is homogenous because it's all acrylic, but you've got different aspects of it, the different elements of it all together in one painting. And so it's been a very, very different way of layering. But I think, you see, that's where I go back to the conscious element of what is, why am I doing this? What is this part of my process introducing to this painting?

Is it an ingredient that's adding a little bit of spice? Is it bringing in something that is going to be a slow simmer, like making a stew where I'm going to layer and layer and layer it and let it cook and then discover, like, why am I doing this part of the painting? And how does that suit my process in a way that I enjoy? I think you've got to have that understanding. Otherwise, it's just stuff. You've got to, and the thing about this is,

We learn from other people or we learn from our initial experiments and then we figure it out as we go and it changes over time. Yeah. So, and do you have to be able to let go of some things? So just like you let go of scraping through on wood when you move to canvas, maybe I have to let go of my love of excavation if I want to move something else forward. Yeah.

And you have to, because you change and your interests change and your taste, you know, what you love changes and how you want to work changes. And I think this is where, for me, the conscious part comes in when I'm not painting. And I've got much more lately into painting.

journaling but only about my art so I'm not very good at doing it about myself but I can sit down in my studio writing my sketchbook just what the things we've been talking about and I've stuck in some images of paintings that I feel I lost because I layered over

And then writing about that experience and then mulling over, yeah, but then I can't, you know, how could I, maybe I could build up the layers and then maybe I could paint that way. How am I going to do this? Exactly. Like there are other possibilities and you've just got, but this is what I'm saying to students in my course at the moment. They'll say, but then which of those possibilities do I choose and how do I do it? And it's like, no, that is...

your job now you said that at the beginning about a task this is your task now is to go figure that out it's just when we don't have a lot of time we get a bit figured out one day and then we have to come back a week later and figure it a bit more um so so that's why I find the journaling helpful because I can think a lot of it out when I'm not in my studio I can but I do think for me separating my conscious time out of painting seems to be a key

It's something that when I was with Bibi, she pointed out, she said, I see you thinking now. I see you going into it. Like you were really fluid and now you've gone into, you've all frozen up. And I know it happens. And I have different ways to click myself out of it. But sometimes it's just waiting for the moment when the inspiration comes to be able to do the thing. So really what I need is a life where I sit in my studio and

with cups of tea, reading books, and then all of a sudden I get a burst of inspiration. I fly to my canvas, I make a painting, and then we have another week of nothing much happening, which in a way fits the manifesto human design profile. You should be painting alla prima then and forget the layers. Yeah, I know, but then I can't sand them. And you have to know composition well to do that. You have to be really good at composition. My worst thing.

that's the next level then isn't it and that's part of this is that when we get good at something if we're not careful where where does a skill become a crutch yes no where does it become something that you're over over reliant on that is stopping you explore and learn and I think working on wood and drawing it come from like when I very first started I was doing little oils on wood

And I didn't like canvas at all. And then I reached a point where I just thought, actually, this is holding me back and canvas feels hard and difficult. That's why I'm going to do it. Yeah. Wherever we feel this. So anyway, it was going to be a discussion about layers. And now we're basically saying, oh, maybe layers are not the thing. But the point I think comes back to is they were the thing for me for a long time.

And they might not be anymore. They were for you in one way and now they are for you in a different way. And it's this constantly checking in with yourself as to where you are and whether it still suits you. I tell you the other thing I feel I would really miss is layers of

No, maybe that's not true. You see, I was going to say layers give this sense of mystery. How was that done? How was that achieved? Because you couldn't do that thing just on purpose with a paintbrush and a pot of paint. So as you're looking at the painting, you're thinking, how was that done? That that's really a cool effect or texture or whatever, which is probably something only artists think and not buyers necessarily. Um,

But then the paintings I love by Jason, they're mysterious to me. Yeah. And they don't have that. So it's not the mystery. The thing that I think I would miss, because I think any good painting really has an element of mystery and you as the maker might be intrigued with the way it's made.

And certainly I know that when I get to painting that I think I don't know quite how that happened. That little part of magic is part of what tells me that it's finished. But the thing that I would miss if I did paint a painting with one go and it was done and complete, like...

So great book on this is Carol Marine, a painting. I think it's called One Painting a Day or A Painting a Day. I used to follow her blog back in the day. She used to have a blog where she posted the painting every day. And she would do a small still life set up and it was done, painted. You know, she knew what she was doing. She had control of the medium, done, complete, finished in a day. And I know people who paint like this, but I enjoy the relationship building with a painting.

I enjoy the fact that it takes time. I enjoy the fact that some are more complex than others to reach that point where they feel finished. I enjoy that ongoing challenge. If I felt it was a challenge, like a crossword puzzle that I could sit down and complete in two hours, I feel like I'd be staying within my...

zone of existence that I already know and my existing zone of competency. And I think working with layers in whichever way you do that, you know, even just understanding how am I working with layers at the moment? Like I say, what are all of these things contributing to the painting? Are they necessary? Am I doing things because I've been taught them, but actually they don't suit the way I want to work?

Like these are questions that we all have to ask ourselves, you know, and it means ditching things and it means losing things and it means saying no to things. And it means not having a painting necessarily come out in a way that you want. And then you do it again another time and you get something different. So I can't see a time where I will lose layers because I think they do bring a visual depth.

And an intellectual depth for me. That building challenge is something that I find very satisfying. But for sure, particularly in this recent set of paintings, how I use layers has changed for definite. Yeah. And I can't see me ever having, you know, just one and done painting. But I would like to get to a place where I honour the instinctive a lot more.

And maybe layering to complement that rather than layering to cover that up, then cover up the next one, then cover up the next one, then eventually get to something that, I mean, generally I like where I get to. Yeah. But in some cases, not as much as where I initially started. Yeah. And there's just a lot of, there's a lot of exploration to be done. That is my job to figure this out.

Yeah. And those early stages where you've got just, you know, some quite expressive marks on something that is quite raw and untouched, that has a lovely feel to it. But I think it can often look very good on Instagram, for example, reduced down to a tiny image. But the reality is that maybe that mark that was just a dark blue or red, it doesn't really matter what it is, but it was, it's a singular mark. Is, is that enough? Do you want variation within that? In which case, yeah,

you might need to have just a little bit of planning in terms of, for example, having enough paint made up of two colours that will blend wet in wet, which is something...

With acrylic, if you're working wet and wet with acrylic, you do need to have a sense of knowing what you're going to do before you do it because you've got to work with it quickly to get that to happen. You can't go, oh, here's a mug. Oh, that's not quite right. Well, I'm going to go and do something else and change it a little bit. That's where layering is maybe a little bit easier to build interesting colour than doing it just in that mark because you've got to have everything at your fingertips already. Yeah.

Lots to think about. Yeah. So it was going to be practical, but I feel like it ended up more philosophical again. I think it's really hard, isn't it? Without videos, without an image that you're talking about that you can show examples of, it's quite a hard thing to discuss on a podcast. Yeah, it really is. And it's not supposed to be directional either. It's just, you know, maybe there'll be just little moments of what we've said that you think, actually, yeah, I do do that. I am a bit stuck. I would like to change this about the way I use layers.

yeah that's good enough and if you didn't get enough from this one do go check out laura horn art podcast for her discussion of layers as well and how she uses them because again it's different again so as many perspectives as possible

OK, let's wrap that up for this week. If you want to see some of the paintings that I have been talking about, you can find them if you go to the Sanctuary Gallery at the moment. The paintings that I have been talking about will be on there. It's the larger ones in particular where I feel like my work with layering has changed. Or you can find that through the link on my website, which is alissheridan.com.

And you can see more of what Louise is doing. Are you sharing your work on Instagram much at the moment? A little bit. A little bit when I remember. There's been so much happening. But you can actually see... See if you go to my Instagram, scroll down and see if you can spot without even...

knowing which one would be the the one that got the best reaction that i was talking about that was an early layer just see if you can spot it going down that would be interesting okay so louise is at louise fletcher underscore art on instagram and i am at alice sheridan studio we will see you next time thank you for being with us today we hope you've enjoyed listening if you'd love to leave us a review that is always very welcome it helps the podcast reach new people and

And we're always very thankful when you share it. Thank you and see you next time. Bye-bye. Bye. Okay, that's it for us this week. If you want to see Malala. It's easy when we wrap up in chat, but when we have to wrap up at the end, it's really difficult.