LINES AND MARKS
I have created a group on Facebook called RUSSELL DOREYS STUDIO. Someone asked me why I leave lines on my paintings, if they are an affectation. In trying to answer what seemed to be a simple question I wrote reams and I spiralled off in all directions but I’ve pruned the reply (but I have some of those cuttings in water so that I can develop some of them for future posts).
The ticks, marks and the lines across the surface of my paintings are the marks I make in its construction. I don’t want to hide them and they emphasise the flat surface and the process and I can return to these stable points if and when the drawing gets lost. They aren’t my invention; you’ll find similar marks on Euan Uglow’s paintings, but I don’t want them to become an affectation, I do try not to let them become a trademark or gimick.
I’m a draftsman more than I’m a painter, and perhaps almost a scientist before a poet and I make paintings by rigorous analysis of objects and the space I’ve arranged in front of me, measuring and plotting with a pencil on paper. I analyse and examine what it is that I see, I don’t ‘sketch’, I try not to trust what I think I see but instead I measure and plot and test everything (I’ll describe my method in another post). I think that the process gives the work a conviction.
As well as my construction marks I also mark the wall and the surface on which my objects are standing so I can put things back in exactly the right places.
This is a habit that I established in the summer of 1983. I was painting a vase of flowers on top of a chest of drawers in a bathroom I shared with my sister, Wanda Herriman, who arrived home from University, swept the vase and other objects to one side and plonked her washbag down. I think that I launched my sister off up a steep learning curve that day and she would probably not, ever, have done that again but I don’t take chances, I mark everything.
These marks that I make on my shelf, especially the circles around the bases of bottles and bowls, have taken on a life of their own in the paintings I’ve been making recently. I’ve been recording the marks as though they were objects in themselves and getting the ellipses dead right helps to convey the plane of the top of the shelf.
