A View Shared
with Vin Jelly, Hon. SWAc
What do artists do all day in lockdown? (Part 1)
(Scroll down for youtube video - Vin Jelly Paints: Watercolour Demo of a Busy River Scene)
No two artists are the same, and individuality is what helps to mould us as people and as artists. So how are we all coping in this dreadful pandemic lockdown? More or less since the lockdown began, the weather has been rather nice - which is a double edged sword. After being cooped up for weeks during one of the wettest winters on record, most landscape painters have been itching to get outside for a bit of therapeutic plein air work - to gather reference or to simply enjoy working outdoors in fine weather once more. So the lockdown has been most frustrating - but, as ever, artists are resourceful if nothing else. We are used to creating something from nothing and working with what we have got. About a year and a half ago, I started making films of my plein air trips and set up a YouTube channel to document these trips as well as some of my studio pieces.
At first I thought the camera would be a big distraction - but I soon found that it was like being watched and I think it actually made me concentrate harder. Not only do I have to make the painting work but I also want the video footage to be useful, so it doubles the creative flow.
So what has all this got to do with lockdown? Well, I find I can no longer teach my watercolour classes properly through the various channels such as Zoom or FaceTime - but I can still paint and I can still make films. I’ve retained a few of my students and give a weekly on-line ‘inspiration’ session, where I set them a challenge and then give them a crit the following week. Teaching has pushed me into painting a lot of things I would never have painted - which has been a great learning curve for me and has helped me to develop my own practice. So, the once-a-week Zoom session that I still retain keeps me thinking about new challenges for my group and thus I keep my hand in too.
(continued below)
Bringing them Round by Vin Jelly (watercolour)
Making videos got me used to ‘performing’ for the camera and I find that I can put together a short video quite quickly - as long as the painting I’m featuring works out, of course.
‘‘It’s a moment caught in time - but imagined of course.’’
Lockdown gives me, in theory, more time to make films and paint - but, so far, it has had to be using reference I already had, which is not always ideal. During the last week I have been revisiting a favourite theme of mine, which is the river Exe at Topsham. I lived there in the 1980s when I first came to Devon. I did a large ceiling painting for a local resident - and part of that involved me drawing just about every boat on the Exe for reference. I’ve done a few small watercolour demonstrations of river/ harbour type themes before, and someone suggested I should make a video of something along those lines. Being up for a challenge on a subject dear to my heart, I looked through my old sketchbooks and soon found myself drafting out a new composition. The theme is a couple of small fishing boats about to set sail and just outboarding themselves into the channel. It’s dreamy stuff with wind, choppy water, wet in wet paint and hazy smoke puttering from the outboards. Great fodder for a watercolour subject! Atmosphere and movement were high on the agenda - so I ‘set to’ with hazy grey washes, suggesting the church and buildings on the shore. As viewers, we must imagine we are on a boat too and caught in the little swell churned up by the boats. It’s a moment caught in time - but imagined of course. I made a little video to record it in time-lapse and you can see that if you follow the link. I’m toying with doing a series - so watch my channel in case there are more...
Born in South Yorkshire, Vin Jelly has lived and worked in South Devon since 1982. He has exhibited widely at home and abroad. A member of the original founding committee of the Southwest Academy of Fine and Applied Arts, he was elected Academician in 2000, has served as a trustee, and was elected Honorary Academician in 2011.