Sally Wakelin

Royal Academy Summer Show

This is the second painting I submitted for the Summer show at the RA, the first being the portrait of of my uncle Peter.

A completely different kind of painting altogether, I wanted to explore pure colour, to find the clearest, strongest ways to show its true nature and behaviour in watercolour medium. Only three colours are used, cyan, magenta and yellow, employing juxtaposition, overlay and tone as well as wet and dry paper and re-wetting techniques. Each colour is laid on individually, not mixed.

As a jeweller my work is very much about control, my designs are geometric and ordered, serendipity is a rare and welcome component, usually appearing whilst pushing the limits of the material. This process follows through in the “Dots” series of paintings. I begin from a precise positioned grid of marks, working on wet and/or dry paper, overlaying in several passes following a strict order whilst allowing accidental or material based irregularities to occur. Colours are applied with droppers or with broad washes laid over dried dots, allowing the colours to soften and run at will.

This following painting uses another technique, I laid down intense drops of colour on dry paper and allowed them to dry out completely before brushing over them with clear water and a large brush, spreading the colour and making the colours run.

Berlin April 1947

Writing

All that we found of their existence was a crumbling box in a dark corner of the abandoned apartment. Inside, a pencilled diary and a dress of grey folded neatly its white pique collar spoiled by spots of rust from the pin of a cheap brooch. As I read through the pages, I felt the cloth of the dress between my fingers and a vivid scene played out in my mind. Late 1942, a young woman abandoned and alone in the once grand apartment of her Jewish employers. It was almost six months since they had been dragged away to their awful fate.

Each of the few people she had known had by now disappeared from the city. She starved a little more each day, the money had run out and everything worth anything at all had been stolen from the ravaged rooms.

At last she was befriended by a soldier who brought her food and broke up the shutters and doors for firewood. They lay in the flickering light clinging to each other. Her pale straight hair spread out over the pillow while she thought about how she might have died silently in the dark with no-one left to mourn her passing.

The Photograph of Peter c. 1938

Photography, Portraiture

I had meant to post the photograph which inspired me to paint the watercolour of my uncle, who sadly I never met, or if i did meet him I was to young to be cognisant of the fact. Here in this tiny black and white poor quality print, he sits in the back of a boat perhaps somewhere off the devon coast with my mother and an unidentified relative.

Reflections

Architecture, Photography

It was sunny on Sunday – at last, I walked around the newly refurbished Cutty Sark in Greenwich. The hull of the original ship has been enclosed by a protective glazed gallery affording lots of weird and interesting ghostly interior views overlaid with reflections on the outside.

Canary Wharf in the distance.

Portraits of Peter

Art, Painting, Portraiture

I have been looking through all the versions I have made of this watercolour painting, of course I wasn’t organised enough to date them as I made them but they are roughly in the correct order below.

There is one more day left to either frame this most recent one or paint yet another version before I deliver it for a competition.

The first four are mere practice versions, testing out technique, paper quality and colours. The nose looks very frostbitten in the first one.

I think on balance the most recent one has in it that I am happy with than any of the others, it feels like I made a big leap forward in the last two or three versions, I felt I knew the contours and how to handle the paint the way I wanted. I tried a faint wash over all the background in No. 8 but decided I preferred the cream paper left alone in No. 9, although I have lost the bright edge to show the sunlight falling on the top of the hat. I think I might just add a little more shading to the lower lip and try to define the tip of the nose better.

I have enjoyed doing these paintings so much, I don’t think I will mind when I receive my inevitable letter of rejection! It’s all about the doing not the winning. . .