PART TWO OF KARL FLETCHER: In the Studio

 

A day in the studio

Working in a studio setting is for me a wonderful place of experimentation; the whole process includes trialling lighting, sketching and working out which colours work best for the subject. Sometimes I work in monochrome to understand the tone more or sometimes I try colours that are not present in the subject. I love complimentary colours and try to work with a limited palette to unify any painting I attempt.

These days I do not move straightaway to try a finished work, I accept that there will be a number of versions before I arrive at the point where I feel that my voice and my message is getting across. I spend time getting to know what I’m going to paint. I may want to change things so I warm up with sketches and play with the composition, I look to produce something realistic but not photographic. I feel my way around the subject with loose freestyle drawings, that way I get emotion into the picture by being expressive at the drawing stage. For me I feel I lose any poetry or emotion I want to get across when my drawing starts to look like a photograph. The danger is producing something that is so accurate it has become sterile, so I use what I call a “live” approach. Although there are rules I like to observe in painting, the most important one is that there are no rules.  That way I am free to do what is right for the painting, not what is right by what I have read or what someone may have said about how to paint.

I very often play around with colour swatches before I get down to attempting a finished version and sometimes I discard my initial attempts from the painting, simply because there not of the standard I would like. I usually keep early attempts in the “ideas chest” that way nothing is wasted.

I prefer painting flat, I do not paint upright or at an angle unless I am demonstrating so others can see, this way I allow watercolour to be watercolour. I accept the back-runs as part of the finished work. I usually try to make my brushstrokes interesting so I deliberately leave patches of white and hold the brush at different angles while I paint so that brush marks remain less uniform in the dried paint. Sometimes I may mix on the watercolour paper rather than the palette to give a thicker fusion of colour. I’m learning all the time.  I’ve just come to accept that some days, it just doesn’t feel like I am. I try to keep in mind something I once read while I’m in the studio, “plan like a tortoise, paint like a hare” I know I need both approaches to make a successful painting, a mixture of planning and risk takes abandonment. The most important thing I try to keep in mind throughout it all is that I want to paint like me, not me trying to paint like someone else. I want my God given uniqueness to shine through in what I do.

The Technical Stuff

For studio work I use a full spectrum lighting (if you’re planning to work indoors or set up a studio then ordinary light bulbs give out a yellow glow, full spectrum bulbs are as close as you will get to natural light inside). Getting the right lighting is essential to seeing the darker tones accurately in your painting and getting cast shadows to appear as they would outside. It is also essential for colour mixing right indoors.

I use artist quality Winsor and Newton watercolour tubes of paint, they are more expensive but they go a long way and produce more vibrant colour.

I use 100% rag cotton watercolour paper 140lb not pressed, I use Millford whenever I can which is the replacement from St Cuthberts Mill for the much loved but discontinued Whatman paper. I use a mixture of cotton and pulp watercolour paper for my practice work, usually Bockingford extra rough. I use full imperial sheets and I use every part of every piece, for some projects I use Khadi handmade paper – when it comes to paper I like to paint like a millionaire J

For brushes I only use one and have done for years, this goes against most of the popular teaching on the variety of brushes to use. For the importance of natural substance such as kolinsky sable, I use a da Vinci Spin Quill synthetic – Series 488 number 5. I use it for both large brushstrokes and detail work.  I love the amount of water it holds and the strength and spring in the fibre of the brush.

The Supernatural side

Some years ago I took a long break from painting to look after my parents. I didn’t paint at all during that time (probably around 4 years), I decided to go on holiday shortly after they both went to be with the Lord in 2007. As part of the holiday, I visited Florence in Italy. I decided to go on an excursion that was organized and led by a tour guide to visit the Basilica, which is better known as Florence Cathedral. On entering the Cathedral, I felt an overwhelming spiritual presence accompanying me wherever I went. and the more I looked on the Cathedral walls and gazed at the renaissance paintings that were displayed there, the more intense the sense of a presence accompanying me became. At one point, I felt it was almost becoming trance-like as I could only smell incense and see the colourful shapes on the walls. I could not remember anything said by the tour guide during our time in the Cathedral even though the Cathedral officials had interrupted her during her narrative for being too loud. The tour came to an end as we looked out of the large Cathedral doors that had been originally overlaid with gold depicting scenes from different parts of the bible. They opened out onto the pavement in front of the Baptistery, which was a separate building. I found myself gazing at the sculpture of a renaissance style angel accompanying Christ at his baptism which was situated over the Baptistery entrance, and a sense of encountering something unseen yet incredibly creative filled me from head to toe. When I left the Cathedral, I no longer felt any sense of being accompanied. I turned to my wife and told her what I had experienced; I can remember clearly describing to her “it was like something was waiting for me”.

I could put a number of interpretations onto that experience. What I know for certain is that the practical outworking in my life has been seeing the desire to paint and be creative returning and intensifying in my life from that time; whatever or whoever it was I encountered that day turned my tour of the Cathedral into a definite watershed moment that helped change the course of my life.

You can reach Karl at the following email address: fletchkd@hotmail.com

(C) Prophetic Art Magazine 2011

A Portrait of Artist Karl Fletcher

 This week we are featuring Artist Karl Fletcher.

A christian artist from Mancheser England. I hope you enjoy this two part series on Karl as much as I have. SGM.

About me and my work

I’m a self-taught Christian artist living in Manchester England, although I’ve produced work in oils, pastel and charcoal previously (and sometimes I still do), these days I find I can express myself more readily through watercolour. Although I have no formal education in art, today I’d say my paintings have become the main method for communicating the faith that motivates me; I have regular interaction with people enquiring about my latest or previous works or upcoming projects, I demonstrate to secular watercolour societies always with the backdrop that my viewpoint on the world is Christian. I exhibit periodically throughout the North West of England and my CV includes an exhibition of Christian artwork at the Lowry Gallery in Manchester.

I also paint in a church setting and I find that my work can be represented through the symbolism I find in the bible but increasingly I see it as the same God  motivating me whatever I paint; I find the secular/sacred divide has started becoming blurred in my work. Towards the end of summer for example, I am booked to teach at a secular watercolour society. They have asked that one of the weeks be devoted to demonstrating what they term as my wildlife paintings.  For me it is fascinating to see what I intended as symbolic “sacred” paintings of lions and eagles still being appreciated and still speaking to what I would term as a wider non-Christian audience, I see it as evangelism with a brush! 

Painting and watercolour in particular is a passion for me, there is something about the way you can portray light through watercolour that is captivating; and some of the effects that can be achieved in watercolour you just cannot produce in the other mediums. Admittedly, there are quirks with watercolour that have to be learnt with patience, and there are times when you have to hold your hands up and admit that the water and the pigment are more in control than you are, but once you have learnt not to control too much, the benefits and enjoyment of watercolour are endless. Personally, I have found one of the ways to successful paintings with watercolour is learning not to treat it as if it were oils or acrylics where the artist has much more autonomy. For me, a major key in working with watercolour is embracing the partnership that exists between water, pigment and timing.

 

What it’s like being self-taught

Being self-taught means that most of my learning comes through personal experience and from what I have been able to glean from self-help materials. These are usually in the form of older books written by artists who were willing to be frank about the need to apply themselves to the basics of painting and at the same time connecting this to a lifelong journey. Their work comes from a different time and the essentials of how to paint are far more at the forefront of their story. Reading their work has helped me to acquire skills, learn how to see as an artist and learn that the painting that didn’t work out, isn’t that emotionally scarring after all, it is just a painting, and one that I can learn from. Their words have really helped especially during times when I have been trying to break through to a greater expression in my work. I have often found myself repeating, “The greatest gift God can give to an artist isn’t the ability to paint, but self-motivation”. It is seeing the importance of self-motivation and the key it plays in gaining an increase to artistic ability that has been vital to my own development as an artist.

What inspires me?

I take a lot of photographic references which largely I never use, I do it because of the benefit the process gives me, it involves me looking for subjects and keeps my thoughts  active, revisiting potential candidates to see if I get that spark of inspiration coming to me from the image. Where the next subject is coming from is always difficult to predict and can just appear suddenly out of the blue as it were, I like to get in the way of inspiration by processing in this way. Probably the best way of explaining how something inspires me is to say I’ve learnt to recognise something calling to me, something about the subject calls out, grabs my attention and then won’t let go. Once I recognise that happening and connect with that idea then we are on the journey of learning how to render in a painting what it is that has excited me so much.

Inspired by worship:

In the studio I paint live during worship so to speak and find that when I do I’m asked repeatedly what has inspired me to produce the painting that I’ve created that day, or what does it represent or even what is the prophetic content of my work? This is another angle on inspiration, what people are really asking is not how did you become inspired but “what does it mean”? In these situations I fall back on an old maxim I came across some years ago which explains: (that there are three things that make a painting, the subject, the rendition and what others see.)  The truthful answer to people asking why I paint what I do is that at the time of completing the painting I may not know, so my answer jokingly is to tell them about the maxim and then ask… “now you tell me what it’s about”?  The truth is I know how it happened, it called out to me, but I may not know for some time why it did.

I know and appreciate that for others who paint in this way the process is reverse, the meaning to their work is pretty much clear from the outset, and they spontaneously paint. But for me it just doesn’t work that way, in the past I have to admit to having succumbed to producing a meaning when asked because I thought it was the way it worked, (like you had to know why you were going to paint something before you could paint prophetically) but in truth for me, the calling is very clear but the why, or any prophetic meaning can remain separate for quite a while.

That said I usually find inspiration from nature, from architecture or man-made objects, I sometimes find inspiration internally from an inner picture or thought but usually it’s something external that carry’s the call as it were. A recent example of this process is a series of paintings that were based on pottery I completed earlier this year, I found myself engrossed in finding old pieces of pottery that were chipped or broken and all I knew was that for some reason I had to paint them new without any defect. I spent a few months scouring antique shops and bric-a-brac market stalls for items that simply “called out” in this way. I placed them in a studio setting with lighting and the result was 6 watercolour paintings now entitled “the potter’s house” based on Jeremiah 18 verses 1-6, where God remakes broken vessels, the paintings depict new vessels with new purpose, the story of redemption in our lives, in reality all of the subjects are quite damaged but appear painted as new – the journey was probably 4 months end to end with the meaning only becoming clear towards the time I was going to display the work.

To Be Continued Next Week:

Fine Art

 Looking for people to email me with their fine art pieces with “all about me” my time in the studio, supernatural experiences related to the work you did. Also- Last night the Lord came and told me to add Fine Art Writing to this site. So I am game. If you are a writer or an inspiring writer- and are interested in Prophetic Writing.. ( stories that are Holy Spirit led – prophetic in nature, that are lead by the Lord because they are symbolic in nature to either speak a truth or a future truth or possibility of that being truth- in order for prayer etc.) If that is you I want to hear from you! If your published you can get exposure and tell your friends about us. Get the word out.

I am going to be teaching – the schools name is “The Prophetic Fine Art Academy TM – (Chicago location)

SGM

Hello world!

This is the beginning of a long healthy relationship. For all you Prophetic Artists out there, this is a full-fledged Prophetic Art Magazine. Here there will be articles and reviews and advertising all having to do with Prophetic Art, and Artists.

We will try to feature a new artist every month. This will be a way for artists to get exposure as well as stir them up to doing more, better, finer, stronger and whatever you can glean from the articles.

You are welcome to email me with articles – with art, or suggestions for the site. This will be for all artists everywhere. I hope you enjoy….

We are in for an awesome ride!

Sincerely,

Shekinah Glory MinGucci