These are the vast open landscapes of the Cambridgeshire Fenlands that influence my paintings. This image was taken with a Fuji X100F a couple of days ago when the sky was particularly dramatic. I have carried out some basic editing – mainly tonal adjustments and sharpening – using Silver Efex Pro2. I have to say the Fuji is a great little camera, easy to take with you and it produces really good jpg’s with the Acros settings. You can’t really tell from the photograph but it was an incredibly blustery day out in the Fens….the clouds were racing across the sky. Really should have used a tripod and a long exposure to capture the movement; maybe next time.
This is a large oil painting on a 122 x 92 cm canvas. It is semi abstract and expressionistic in terms of technique and approach. It is however, based indirectly on nature and more specifically on the hedgerows of the fenland in East Anglia. Trees, brambles and woody shrubs such as hawthorn, blackthorn and field maple create an exuberant entanglement of chaotic growth.
The material and paint I have used is applied with a variety of tools including brushes, palette knives and assorted scrapers. As you will see, the surface is built up in heavy impasto layers and translucent glazes accumulating over a period of time. I have been working on this piece for a couple of years now and it has undergone numerous changes; that is just part of my process. Some of you will no doubt see the influence of the contemporary artists Anselm Kiefer and Gerhardt Richter.
Detail of ‘Arcadia’
…..And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all.
Either you had no purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
And is altered in fulfilment.
There are other places
Which also are the world’s end, some at the sea jaws,
Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city—
But this is the nearest, in place and time,
Now and in England.
The Fenlands are highly productive agricultural land and at this time of year, farmers can be seen ploughing and tilling the earth in readiness for the next year. The tilling blades comb the topsoil, mixing and aerating as they are dragged across the fields. I have used plaster, oil and cold wax medium, alternately scoring and layering the materials to recreate the furrowed surface. The late evening light at this time of year has a warm soft glow that I have tried to capture with gold iridescent paint.
For me, a title is an important element in the creation of a painting. I know that many abstract painters use numerical systems to identify and classify their work. I prefer to title each image and through the invention of the title, try to enhance the life, associations and potential relevance of the work. In this instance, I really wanted a title that would express in a very direct way, the inspiration and the key components of this painting which of course relate to landscape. The title of this painting therefore is relatively straightforward; it refers to the three realms of earth, sky and water. I wasn’t aware until later that ‘The Three Realms’ has other, in many ways more interesting connotations. In Nichiren Buddhism ‘The Three Realms’ are, according to Quora:
(1) the realm of the five components
(2) the realm of living beings
(3) the realm of the environment.
These could be thought of simply as, from the standpoint of a human being, the person, society and the environment.
Detail of ‘The Three Realms’ by Peter Corr
The materials used in this painting include oil paint, pumice stone and cold wax medium. The heavy impasto creates an almost rough hewn marble like surface pitted and marked with successive layers of cold wax and oil paint.
‘After the Rain’ 80 x 80 cm on canvas by Peter Corr
‘After the Rain’ could be seen as a departure from the tonality and minimalist approach I have been using recently, but even so, this painting remains firmly in the realm of abstraction.
The weather here in England is a a limitless topic of conversation for all of us and we have just experienced one of the hottest Summers on record. However, the wind and rain is never far away and this painting reflects my experience of cycling though the Fenland landscape, experiencing alternate moments of warm sun, showers and gusts of wind. In Cambridgeshire, the wind either carries you along on your cycle or stops you in your tracks. I can travel the same journey in half or double the time depending on the prevailing wind direction. I am increasingly convinced that the weather here in this part of the world is a living entity, a whimsical creature, a chameleon.
Detail from ‘After the Rain’ by Peter Corr
In ‘After the Rain’ I have tried to convey a sense of movement and changing light, using angular shapes, a kaleidoscope of colour and dissolving forms. You may detect the spatial devices of overlap, fragmentation and multiple viewpoints employed by the Cubists and later on, the Italian Futurists.
“……..Nobody would affirm that the tree grows its crown in the image of its root. Between above and below can be no mirrored reflection. It is obvious that different functions expanding in different elements must produce divergences”.
This is a large mixed media painting on a 122cm x 92cm on a canvas frame. It was produced from studies created during my residency in the New Forest; the work is partly expressionistic and impressionistic in terms of technique and style. The key medium is cold wax and oil paint applied with a variety of tools including brushes and palette knives. The surface is built up in heavy impasto and scored, etched and systematically redrawn over a period of time. The detail insert (below) should provide some indication of the rich tactile qualities encrusting the surface of the painting. My working method allows for various incarnations of the painting to present themselves before the final image crystallises. This work in particular has undergone numerous transformations. I originally had in mind a view of the forest infused with intense light and colour, but it has progressively mutated towards a more poetic and subdued interpretation of dusk in the forest.
I have been influenced by the contemporary artists Anselm Kiefer and Gerhardt Richter. If you have a moment, take a closer look at the detailed photographs to gain a more tangible sense of the textural qualities in this work.
This is one of a new series of paintings continuing and extending my interest in less conventional art materials. I have drawn inspiration from the raw and unadorned nature of the Fenland landscape and tried to reflect the rich tactile qualities of the earth fusing tar, bitumen, hessian, oil paint and cold wax medium. My approach is gradually becoming more instinctive and physical, often working directly on the floor, scraping, dissolving and burning materials until unpredictable and unexpected transformations take place. When I reach a point were the image really begins to surprise and engage me, I have found a resolution.
The grid like imagery refers obliquely to the patchwork quilt of fields and enclosures as if rendered from an aerial perspective. The gouges, marks and striations echo the relentless impact of man and farming on the natural world.
River City is a mixed media acrylic painting on a canvas frame. It belongs to a series of paintings loosely based on the city of Cambridge. We can never really know a particular place or location, not in a purely visual sense, not even through the so called objectivity objectivity of the camera lens. There are so many different ways of seeing, understanding and interpreting; our view of the world is a subjective, personal experience. It changes as we change. The Cubists new a thing or two about perception.
I developed this painting through an exchange of ideas, thoughts and materials, you could call it a dialogue. What you see here is the result of many ‘conversations’, a constant give and take between what I think I have to say as a painter and what the painting says to me. A painting will invariably contradict me and tell me I am mistaken, on the wrong track. Sometimes, I delude myself into thinking I am in charge but I know my place; ‘painting’ is a collaboration, a combined effort, an ongoing debate. What you see here is a partnership between planning and accident, conceit and humility, confidence and deflation, wisdom and foolishness, seeing and not seeing.
This is a large mixed media painting on a 122cm x 92cm professional quality canvas. It was produced from studies created during my recent residency in the New Forest; the work is partly expressionistic and impressionistic in terms of technique and style. The medium is cold wax and oil paint applied with a variety of tools including brushes , scalpels and palette knives. The surface is built up in heavy impasto and alternately glazed and scored over a period of time.
I have been influenced by the contemporary artists Anselm Kiefer and Gerhardt Richter. If you have a moment, take a closer look at the detailed photographs to gain a more tangible sense of the textural qualities in this work.
This painting is currently on exhibition at The Old Fire Engine House in Ely until 28th October along with work from the artists Paul Janssens and Caroline Forward.
A key member of the Arte Povera group, Mario Merz produced expansive mixed-media paintings, sculptures, and installations, through which he propagated an egalitarian, human-centered vision. Through art, he counteracted what he saw as the dehumanizing forces of industrialization and consumerism. Together with compatriots including Jannis Kounellis and Michelangelo Pistoletto, Merz eschewed fine art materials in favor of everyday and organic matter, like food, earth, found objects, and neon tubing. In 1968, he presented his first igloo, which became a motif in his work, representing the fundamental human need for shelter, nourishment, and connection to nature. By 1970, the Fibonacci sequence became central to his work, shaping the tables and spiraling forms for which he was known, and incorporated into his igloos and canvases. In these Merz sought limitlessness, against the confines of modern life.
black and white landscape photograph Cambridgeshire Fenland @petercorr.com
Excavation
The conceptual artist Richard Long would have enjoyed using these industrial machines. On the road leading to the village of Coveney, old irrigation ditches are being refurbished. Giant earth moving equipment cuts through the clay subsoil in V cross sections, like a knife through butter. Water immediately flows into the channel and mirrors the sky. These large scale sculptural interventions will never find their way to the Tate Modern turbine hall…but they really should.
Gilded Shore is an abstract painting in terms of technique, style and intention. It is based on the flat, open landscapes of the East Anglian, Cambridgeshire Fenland. Semi transparent glazes give depth and luminosity as light is reflected through the layers of pigment. The variegated surface of the painting is achieved with thickly applied bitumen and cold wax medium. The lustrous quality or sheen is achieved through a combination of burnishing the wax surface and interleaved layers of metallic paint. A variety of tools and implements have been used to create incisions, marks and subtle textures that can be read as earth, sky, and water. The restricted references to three dimensional space is designed to create a subtle counterpoint the pictorial flatness of the deep raw and burnt umbers.
