Without the Frame

Lately I’ve been painting from life rather than photographs, and it has changed far more than I expected. For a long time, I assumed I would find painting from life more difficult because there was no ready-made frame around the subject.  A photograph has already made so many decisions for you. The crop is fixed, the proportions are contained within a rectangle, and the whole scene has been flattened into one image.

Standing in front of a real setup feels very different. There is no obvious beginning or end. I have to decide what belongs in the painting. Surprisingly, that has made me feel much freer.

One thing that has helped enormously is making small thumbnail drawings before I begin. They’re very quick and deliberately simple, but they seem to organise my brain for the painting. I can try different crops, change the amount of space around an object and see how the larger shapes relate to one another before paint becomes involved. The thumbnail gives me a frame, but it is one I have chosen. By the time I begin painting, I’m not starting with the question of where everything goes. I already have a sense of the structure.

Painting from life is also helping me simplify. When I work from a photograph, there is always the temptation to zoom in. Suddenly I can see every petal, every edge, every small shift in the surface of an object. And because that information is there, it is very easy to feel as though it should somehow find its way into the painting. With the real setup sitting a little distance away, I simply can’t see everything with that level of detail. What I notice instead are the larger relationships like the dark mass of foliage against a pale wall, the shape of a jug against the tabletop, a warm area beside something cooler, a large shadow connecting several objects. I’m seeing shapes and values before I’m seeing details. For the kind of paintings I want to make, this feels incredibly useful. I don’t want to describe every part of an object. I want enough information for it to feel present, but I also want the painting to retain its simplicity, its colour and its larger structure. Working from life seems to encourage exactly that.

It also feels more energetic. Nothing is completely fixed. My viewpoint shifts slightly. The light changes. I notice one thing and then another. The painting becomes a collection of decisions rather than a transcription of a frozen image. And perhaps that is the biggest difference. Without the photograph telling me exactly where the edges are, I have to decide what the painting needs. What stays, what disappears, what becomes larger, what can remain just a shape.

I’m beginning to realise that the lack of a frame isn’t a problem at all. It gives me room to make one.