Ramsgate watercolour painting progress and a pretty bad ramble.

I did manage to get out this morning and do a bit to my painting of bit of Ramsgate behind the Harbour, yesterday it was only The Royal Temple Yacht Club, but after today’s efforts the building next door is starting to appear.

Answering questions that people ask when you are painting is one of the difficult ones.

“Are you an artist?” Consider your mind is totally elsewhere, doing whatever it does when you paint. So apologies if you have got rather an abrupt yes or no and take consolation in the fact that I think about the answer afterwards.

I suppose a lot of this is down to what is meant by the term artist at this point in the history of art, it is also I think related to what an artist is supposed to achieve.

Back in the past, when it comes to paint on paper, canvas or something flat and white, I think in the days before decent colour photographs, most artists seemed to be trying to get their paintings to look like a decent colour photograph of what they were looking at. I think this then progressed to trying to produce something like a decent colour photograph of something in their imagination.

I think they mostly did this by fitting things they had seen before together, so an artist painting a fairy or an angel, having seen a human being, a bird and a flying insect, sort of stuck stuff together.

All sorts of graphic computer programs now, so the point in doing this with paint maybe reseeding, if that’s the right word. On the other hand nearly everyone can take as many photos as they like and eventually one of them is going to be a good one.

Unlike sculpture where the artist can say they are just revealing the shape that was in the wood or stone, with paper saying you are just revealing the shape that was already in the paper seems a bit lame, although sometimes it seems a bit like that.

I am being a bit introspective here because I am trying to push my painting a bit further, perhaps into the area of developing a more recognisable style, perhaps trying to depict a bit more than I can see in reality. Sticking wings on people or horses type of kidney, or perhaps lobsters as phones.   

I feel a bit like Descartes, when he was trying to deal with the philosophical problem of does anything including yourself actually exist, could it all be a dream, type of wosisname. Of course Descartes realised that if he took away everything else and discounted it – because he couldn’t prove it existed, he couldn’t get away from the fact that he was thinking. “Is it all there?” And this meant that something or another had to be doing this thinking so he coined the phrase. “I think therefore I am.” 

With the major local issues at the moment, Manston, Dreamland, Pleasurama and stuff I have to admit to not getting very far. I’m confused because I think – I think therefore I’m confused come to mind.

The new Isle of Thanet Gazette website has appeared, see http://www.kentlive.news/thanet of course how to navigate to their coverage of the story I covered yesterday http://www.kentlive.news/world-champion-and-racing-legend-barry-sheene-s-bikes-were-stars-of-the-ramsgate-rev-up/story-29622115-detail/story.html#WpPxSEMV0sU27Loi.99 eludes me.