“Let me say above all, that my paintings are not things to be understood, but things to be experienced. For me, the paintings are inseparable from the process that brought them into being. Abstraction is an attempt to capture the essence that lies in between what we perceive and how we interpret that, the raw data if you like. There is a truer reality that is not of this world and these lives we appear to be living“
— the artist
I Want To See
An exhibition of artworks by Lucianna Whittle
I Want To See is an exhibition of paintings made in the last 12 months after a period of significant personal upheaval. My choice of Margate as a location was about looking beyond Brighton, where I have been based for nearly 15 years and engaging with a fresh audience who may be completely new to my work.
In my experience, when we come out of a challenging time and find we have grown through something, we are looking at our familiar world but with different eyes. It’s a bit like how memories can be rewritten when heard form someone else’s perspective. Or like that queer feeling just after someone you have known had died when you look at everything as if you don’t know it and can’t fathom why it ever held meaning for you. There’s a vivid sharpening of the senses after giving birth or death to bring use more expansively into the present moment. It is the artist’s job to stand a fraction apart from the everyday, and with excruciating sensitivity, to represent what is seen from that outer perspective.
I feel that I can be most eloquent when I am painting on a large scale. It feels more like I can reach inside the canvas to dig out the painting that is in there. I can explore the surface with my eyes and my hands - it fills my field of vision. It is vulnerable and exposing to paint big. It is giving power to what might happen and being game to see what comes of it.
Generally, perhaps controversially, I paint straight from the tube. Traditional colours, such as Crimson Alizarin, Cadmium Yellow and Phthalo Blue feel so pure to me, that as an abstract painter I can instantly get that hit of pigment to behave, represent and react according to the story I’m telling. Some of that immediacy is evident in the drips which are a mixture of incidental and deliberate. The composition is fluid until it settles into a form where I feel it can ‘rest’. The paper or canvas has to withstand being scraped back and layered over, sometimes four or five times. But nothing hidden is lost, for it has shown me where to look.
Be You the Sun
Oil Paint and Pencil on Canvas
180 x 140 cm
2017
Above all, my paintings are less things to be understood, but things to be experienced. That’s something only abstraction can offer us. I can be honest when I’m painting because none of the usual filters apply. We can’t see an apple without mentally saying ‘apple’ and all our experiences of apples attach to that moment. I’m only interested in the truth that sits beyond the reality we experience day to day. Hilma af Klint believed her paintings were given to her, images channelled from another source. Cy Twombly paints with a rawness of touch. He sees the thing to do and gets it down without interfering with it. Those paintings land in me!
For me, painting is akin to learning to surrender. I can paint where I think I’m at, but I have to be open to new leadings. Then the painting begins! I may think I have something down but the game changes. It can’t all come from me. I let that go so that my. painting has a chance. That’s the point where it starts to become its own thing: I release the painting, that way we have a chance to see something new. We can all project ourselves (on more platforms than ever before) but this is not that. I bring what I know, get it all down, than quietly leave while the painting leads me blindly to its becoming.
All These Miracles - 131 x 211 cm - Oil paint and pencil on Arches Huile 300gsm oil painting paper
I Call Upon - 123 x 183 cm - Oil paint and pencil on Arches Huile 300gsm oil painting paper
I Want to See - 123 x 163 cm - Oil paint and pencil on Arches Huile 300gsm oil painting paper
By the Gentle Grace - 128 x 145 cm - Oil paint and pencil on Arches Huile 300gsm oil painting paper
In Reverence and Fear - 123 x 177 cm - Oil paint and pencil on Arches Huile 300gsm oil painting paper
To break down my process, I suppose I could say firstly, after clearing my mind, I ask to be shown (I want to see). Then I look for the light and paint what I witness. Necessarily I have to paint through my blocks and watch as all my baggage creeps in, but then I can witness the two elements as they meld and transform and unify into my lesson. The vision given back. One painting close to peace.
The more I paint, the more I can exercise that non-thinking part of me and strengthen it, learn to trust it and honour its power to teach me, transform me and above all… show. me! I want to see!