John Hicks Artist and Lecturer
The Pruned Buddleia was painted after a visit to the Paul Klee exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, and owes much to his painting of Wàrlitz park in Dessau. It was the contrast between the scratched out rows of plant hieroglyphs to the rich impasto of the painted surface that interested me. But unlike Klee, I still draw and paint from observation, so was dismayed that he exhorted his students to be "thrifty" with "lavish" nature", and warned that " the light of the intellect goes out pitifully" as a result. Tried his approach, but finally took the opposite view and indulged myself.
The physical act of laying on and removing paint seems more and more crucial to my practice. Both this painting, and The Bay Tree, began by covering the canvas in brush and palette knife marks, then wiping away the inessential ones with a turps soaked rag: a beautiful way simplify by reducing the surface to stains.
Sadly, in both paintings the initial result was not beautiful, the canvas stained a sickly green. This green thing happens every time I work on landscape subjects, so have come to the conclusion that we know trees are green, so why paint it in? I overpainted this pea soup with a brushed white impasto, drawing up enough pigment from the stained canvas to make warm and cool chromatic greys. Just a few fragments of colour remained: an explosion of yellow (Buddleia branches) behind a smoky mauve (leafless shrub). I built these up up with my fingers and a knife, leaving just one viridian stained patch.
Pruned Buddleia, oil on canvas
43 cm x 33 cm (March 2002)Detail of impasto
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