Project Photo

I spent the Christmas break photographing most (but not quite all) of those of my paintings I have in my house and studio.  They stretch back right the way to 2014 and there were 184 that were photographed. 

There are more than this in existence.  Some have been sold (I thing over 30),  some have been given away.  Some have been painted over,  in fact quite a few. I would think at least half of the paintings I have photographed were painted over old paintings that I either abandoned, or didn't like after they were finished.  Some I didn't photograph as they are just for me and not for public display.  There are the 6 or so that are currently in progress and finally 2 that were just too big and I couldn't photograph in my limited setup.

The process was relatively simple.  I hung an old white bedsheet on the wall.  I then put a daylight bulb into a standing lamp and had that lighting from one side and the window lighting from the other.  I got a tripod for my phone and used that to take the photos.  This allowed me to get a consistent image in terms of lighting and angle, but also to avoid shaking and other issues of perspective that creep in when you photograph by hand.

For unframed or unmounted works, I put them on an easel and photographed them that way.  The quality is not perfect but it is good enough for Instagram and similar and more importantly I now have an archive, of consistent quality of almost all of my paintings.

It was an interesting and fun process.  Not only did I uncover paintings I had not seen for years, but came across paintings I had forgotten existed (and more distressingly could not find 2 I was sure did).  It helped me see developments and themes.  My work, particularly my landscape has become a lot more muted in the colour scheme.  The still life has become more experimental, drifting towards and over the edge of the frame. 

It is useful to audit work like this.  Many of them I decided to keep but 4 were assigned to the, be painted over, pile.