Lin Kerr - Artist

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Linear vs painterly

June 22, 2015 by Lin Kerr 1 Comment

Firstly I have been overwhelmed by the interest in LuSan’s project and very moved by pledges and gifts. There is now £210 in the Sponser LuSan Account plus some pledges. I will be sending this to her on 30th June for her new business. Thank you everyone.

Back to painting!

There is a theory of  Linear vs Painterly by Heinrich Wölfflin. If you think of Ingres’ work compared to Monet’s, that is it! Or Hockney vs Francis Bacon.  Almost all artwork can be neatly slotted into one or the other. Hard Edge painting or Gestural markmaking – same thing.
18-06-15 Monet and IngresIt’s much easier for me to do Linear work as you can see by these four irises. Painterly means risk taking, improvising, aiming a loaded paintbrush at a sheet of paper and hoping it lands in the right place. Anyway, as cards, linear painting works really well and these are now on my website! BUT…

18-06-15 iris cards

… to pick up on my blog post “The importance of talking about ideas” where I described how I was taught to paint in wild watercolours for a brief season at age 18; I decided to try a different way of working. You saw the painterly sketch. Below is the  painterly beginning of the Yellow Dutch iris.

I began with a loose drawing, wet areas and dropped yellow in, then began to define the white petals carefully observing, guided by the loose drawing but not bound by it. (Does this make sense?)
18-06-15 iris painterly72

What I was trying to say in that blog, was that by having the chance to chat about the way I painted at age 18, with you as listeners, helped me recall the process and made me try again. Of course so much has changed since then but still, I was pleased with the outcome, which I still need to photograph..

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Comments

  1. meg says

    June 22, 2015 at 8:20 am

    there is definitely an argument for both linear and painterly and I adore your watercolours. Generally, however, for me, painterly wins with its freedom and risk – the chances of an unusual, unintentional fabulous ‘mistake’ outweighs the lower rate of a ‘beautiful’ success – beauty is in the eye etc. As always, thanks for sharing Lin x

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