Angela's Little Red Digger

The last time I entered the Black Swan Arts Open Arts Competition, I did so years ago, with an oil painted specially for the event: a double-portrait of myself, blindfolded, with brushes in hand, being led down Vicarage Street by one of my models, who is wearing nothing but a big blue bow in her hair. In the words of the centre manager, the work was not so much 'rejected' as 'not selected'. The fine distinction was lost on me at the time and I remember feeling suitably stung for several months. I was a local artist, after all; I'd even put the Vicarage Street abattoir in the background. The episode served to persuade me that competitions and awards were not for me; that being a winner meant conforming to a jury's idea of merit and that true artists did not seek prizes.

This February, I entered for a second time and this time, I think, for a better reason. I wasn't out to impress or win a prize; I just wanted more people to see the painting than had seen it so far.

Angela's Little Red Digger is the centre-piece of a series of paintings of my hometown, Frome. The others depict various, well-known corners of the town and as a foil to the quaintness of the buildings, each one features one, two or more young men wearing white hoodies and baseball caps. My idea was to bring the topographical painting of Paul Sandby up-to-date. In his views of Windsor, for example, there is often an old loafer in a soldier's jacket leaning on a lump of masonry somewhere. Today, the white hoodie is ubiquitous throughout the market towns of England and is often regarded as an emblem of antisocial behaviour. The wearers are considered to be ill-educated, uncouth, given to trouble-making and vandalism.

The idea of Angela's Little Red Digger was to place these Frome pictures in a wider context and to contrast the anti-social behaviour implicit in them with the kind that is condoned by society in the name of progress. To research the painting, I ventured five miles out of town, walked for half a mile, tore my jeans on a thorn bush and arrived at the rim of one of the biggest holes in Europe. I felt like Frodo Baggins when he has his first glimpse of Mordor. The day was still and hot, there were buzzards circling overhead and there at the bottom of the quarry was a lone, red digger just asking to go into a picture.

Now the little red digger did not find its way to the bottom of that quarry all on its own. It got there with the aid of a fleet of trucks that are on the road day and night; a private railway line; high explosives; the annihilation of a village community; the compromising of the hot springs at Bath, and as the quarry operators venture below sea-level, the possibility that the Mendips will be heathland in twenty years time.

Angela Yeoman CBE, who sold the quarry recently for £300 million, is influential in many committees, trusts and clubs within Somerset. She is also Deputy Lieutenant of Somerset, a former High Sheriff of the County and is well-known throughout the region for her philanthropy.

Angela's Little Red Digger was selected by the judges of the Black Swan Arts Open Arts Competition and won the Bax Fine Art Award.

Bridging The Gap

This painting hangs in the corridor of the Birthing Unit at Frome Community Hospital. Continuing the theme of the Tree Of Life, which runs throughout the Hospital's decor, the challenge for me was to make a satisfactory composition from a single acorn on a 1.8 metre canvas.

Knowing that it's going to give me a lot of trouble, I buy two canvases and work on two paintings at once. My thinking is that I can play safe on one and takes risks on the other. The hospital will get whichever one that works. But what do I mean by 'works'?

As I begin to put acrylic onto each long canvas, I become aware of two things. First of all, painting is hard work. I'm full of admiration for the sheer physical achievement of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel - here was a man, after all, who could work his way through a slab of marble the size of a garden shed; secondly, there is an aching gap between the picture in my mind and the thing that is appearing in front of me.

After a couple of attempts, this appears. The acorn is suitably egg-like but I feel as if that is all I'm looking at. It's a riot of over-charged hues, too.

On the second canvas, I begin working with unnatural colours, so that I can concentrate more on the forms that I am creating. If I can just get the shapes to work on their own first of all, the colours can come later. When I look at this stage of the painting, now, I believe that a more courageous artist would have stopped right here. But at the time, I press on, because I'm pretty sure that the midwives and ancillary staff would rather look at emollient greens than hospital pink and meconium yellow.

A thin glaze of phthalo green makes the thing look more natural, but the life goes out of it in the process. I'm stuck. If I do any more, I'll cover up all those loose brush marks that are giving the painting its energy.

So I return to the first canvas.  The acorn is better proportioned but the shadowy greens are overwhelming. And there's another consideration. The entrance to the Unit will be to the left of the picture and I feel that in this orientation, the image is turning its back on the visitor.

And so, I return to the second canvas, yet again. I decide that if I'm to keep my colours consistent across such a long stretch of canvas, I either need to mix up huge dollops of pigment or underpaint the entire thing. Underpainting will soften my colours and homogenise them at the same time. I also like the idea of being able to concentrate on an image that has a massy, sculptural quality to it. This isn't to be an attempt at a real acorn, after all, but something more iconic. After the carbon black and titanium white underpainting, I apply thin glazes of phthalo green, hansa yellow and pryrole red to the canvas with a sponge. I mix the colours with equal parts water and gel medium to improve colour flow.

Once it's up on the wall, there are a few complaints:

It isn't big enough; there aren't enough leaves; there should be a branch; one of the leaves is painted incorrectly. 

There is also a suggestion for improving it:

A Lowry-esque stick figure pushing a baby buggy across that empty horizon.

Another aching gap opens up.