Tom de Freston

Tom de Freston- diary entry

I purchased a  tube of Acrylic Vermillion today, having fallen in love with a tiny tube of Goache Vermillion that I had in a multiset. Its like Cadmium red, but better. Its got such a vibrant, luminous glow. It seems to have a particular potency when applied reasonably thinly, so that the light can work its way through. I can only imagine how sublime Michael Hardings ‘Chinese Vermillion- oil’ must be. Its bloody £80 for a small pot.

Also purchased a ‘magenta light’ made by Golden. Have stopped always buying ‘Golden’ colours now. Mainly becasue I tend to only use acrylic as a base colour, but also becasue for basic colours the difference is pretty small. But for more specific colours like this the depth and potency of the colour is on another level. Have not yet used it but it sat so well on my hand when I ran a bit across, that i had to buy it.

Added to this purchase I bought a small pot of irredescent pink powder, intended for face paint. It looks like oily skin which has been sent through a car wash on a wax setting.

All of these colours are for the base layer for a new large painting I am working on to be hung in the MCR. It will be a 5m by 1.53 m painting. It is following on, in format, directly from a series of recent large drawing/paintings I have been working on; none of which I have discussed or uploaded yet.

It will consist of seven panels in the background (alternating between horiztonal and veritcal format) The panels will be sized at 90cm x 30cm (mimicking the rough ratio of the whole painting). In these panels will be small single figures within stormy epic ‘landscapes’. They are hoping to deal with some form of Romanticism and idealism, and will loosely have a narrative which leads towards a fall.

In the foreground will be three figures, the largest of whicyh will be sat down, becking in the audience. Beyond one being male and the other female, the other two figures have no yet been forumlated.

In the background will be a chaotic mass of figures, drawn from a wide array of fragments and drawings I have been building up for a few months. The process of loading them in will be like collage, adding parts and building towards a whole, but unaware what will following what, merely respodnding to the last addition. The figures will be small, as if in the deep distance, making the panels in the background (paintings within the painting) seem epically scaled. In the recent images I have been working on the scale creates an illusion of frames which are up to 100ft in size, in terms of the illusion.

painted the crown on ‘A Brief Histroy of heroism’. It certainly drags the eye, along with the white face, to this figures face. This hopefully controsl the dynamic of viewing the work, ensuring an engagement with this figure is likely to be the first point of contact for the viewer, before the depart for a more fragmented tour around the rest of the picture.

Added in a ton of figures to the lower half of the background in ‘A Brief history of Heroism’. I think it is on the verge of working. I wanted the figures to conform to a certain logic in terms of perspective and scale, but for their to be a tension where the interrelaitons, both thematically and in terms of scale, only just holds together. I don’t know if I ahve pushed it too far, so burst the sense of chaotic tension.

As a rule I have a mass of vertical, standing male figures, dressed in socks and boxers and then a series of female figures lying down. Some of the figures and iamges are direct quotations of art history; sleeping venus’, figures from Gericault’s ‘Raft of the Medusa’, Danae types, Michelangelo’s David, the Appollo Belvedere, Adam and Eve’s expulsion from egypt, Christ and the 12 disciples (the reference being consciously tenuous), David’s ‘Brutus’ and ‘Oath to the Horatti’, Rembrandt’s ‘Abraham and Issac’ and Venus crossed with Diana.

other figures are from more mundane sources; Ruby Wlash riding a winner at Cheltenham, men wrestling, a dog (Molly), a naked figure lying down, a wrestler with a great moustache and others I can’t now remember.

The painting, ‘Metamorphoses- the lost chapter- Jove’s last rape’, is nearly finished. I think the horses having sex with the women are now really working. The line is caricaturish (sp), but the surface quite fleshy and naturalistic in type.

I stretched the paper for the 5mx1.53m painting today. Needed to walk across it and then got stressed as I left dirty foot marks. I think I will leave them. The first surface I create, upon which the images sit, is meant to be a kind of excessive, abstract expresionist, Pollock like surface. Its meant to be a nod to that kind of convoluted, masculine, energetic, autobiographical, testosterine filled, ejaculatory type of painting. The foot marks, such a crude nod towards the physicality of painting the surface, seem to fit with this. The use of pinks, glitter, irredescent gold, red stars, pinks and crimsons, is supposed to set the above with a sense of ridicule, excess and fleshiness.

Came up with an idea for displaying drawings. Rather than bind them, or put them in folders, why not have them loose in smart boxes. This way they can be grouped, and the sense of a collective can be formed. yet equally, shoulsd I wish to, individual images can be seperated out to be displayed in other forms. It allows the flexibility previous modes I had in mind don’t.

Need to plan documentation of all work since October at some point soon. I seem to just be allowing it to pile up. I must at least, soon, photograph all the finsihed work.

This evening I’m going to add the three figures in the big version of ‘Raft of the Medusa’. I am really pleased with the sketches, so am quite excited about seeing how they translate into this final version. I tihnk I have the composition and figure types sorted in my head now.

I keep added dogs to images, I don’t know why. I seem to like how they are often detached from the central theme, getting on with thier own business. I also like the energy of their movement. But they don’t seem to fit in any logical sense.

Drunk less coffee today, think i work better that way.

read a chapter of Susan Sontang’s ‘On photography’. going to try crack on with that and ‘The poetics of Space’ this month. Have got incredibly lazy with reading. I find it so rewarding, but am so slow and find the actual process laborious. She talks about the increase of images, the democracy of photos and their difference to other platonic/mimetic forms of visualisation.

Tidied the studio today, seem to work really well when I have the space free of excess clutter. Not tidy, just the removal of irrelevant crap and mess.

No sign of the mouse today.

I still seem to get carried away about the performative element of painting, particuarly early int he stages. Its as if your looking down on your self, as an audience, considering the theatre of the act. once the painting reaches a developed stages I no longer have this, its a drier, more detached and objective mode of working.

Switched between music and the radio today, think I find the later better still, its more a background prescence.