Sailors and Cowhands

Cowboy songs and sea shanties collided this week; a strange combination of land and sea. While cowboys control vast herds, sailors confront a power much stronger than their own. However, in my mind there is a link to the places that are the background to the songs we listened to this week. The sea and the great plains seem like strange and lonely environments and to me the songs provide a way of dealing with this loneliness, as well as an aid to their singers' works.

I wanted to create a painting of two contrasting parts, as I saw the separated environments of land and sea. However, I tried to give a sense of continuity in the repeating form of the circle. I'm satisfied with this painting to a point. While I like the strong black against orange of the desert half of the painting, I would like to work further upon the sea's colours. The top of this painting is at the moment too unresolved for me - the form needs to be less confused and more defined.

Chicago Blues

Didn't nobody seem to know me
everybody pass me by
Mmm, the sun goin' down, boy
dark gon' catch me here

This weeks painting was the most instant reaction I've based my work on so far. My colour association with these city blues wasn't actually blue, but purple. To me, purple fits sadness and joy equally well.

After painting this piece, I stopped to look at it and saw many references to the songs and story that were probably unintentional. The thin scraped lines appear as a river-like form while the vertical brushstrokes reminded me of skyscrapers. To me, the painting represents a solid realm, a definite place, overlaid with a ghostly spirit form. I made this painting to be a pure representation of a musical sound, yet its interesting to me that I still read this as a landscape. I think it's more interesting this way, as the city is so inextricably linked with the music it produced.

A few weeks after listening to the Chicago blues I visited Chicago itself. Here are some photographs of the city which I took on my trip:

Woody Guthrie

I'm a dust bowl refugee,
Just a dust bowl refugee,
From that dust bowl to the peach bowl,
Now that peach fuzz is a-killin' me.

This week is in three parts and I didn't really expect that to reveal as much about me as it did. My work here came together in many unexpected ways. The pencil portrait was my first attempt in this class to look straight at history, a Walker Evans photograph of a 'dust bowl refugee' and capture an expression or strong personal feeling, which can so often be diluted by the passing of time. The collage is more expressive in its fragmentation. The disembodied legs, the blue jeans, the listening at the keyhole.. This leads on to the overpainted piece, which I now see as a nod to the Leadbelly painting last week. These two parts were loosely based on This Land is Your Land. It's such a beautiful song, but I didn't really believe the sentiment. After learning that this song was intended as a kind of parody, it seems bittersweet the way in which it has been appropriated as a bastion of American patriotism. 

In the Pines

Tell me where did you sleep last night?

According to the Alan Lomax, Lead Belly learned In the Pines from an interpretation of the 1917 version compiled by Cecil Sharp, and by a 1925 phonograph recording made by a folk collector. Even though Lead Belly's version is an interpretation of an old Appalachian song I was struck by the complete rawness and power of his playing and singing. The forest is often seen as a metaphorical realm of enchantment and terror. In this song, the depth of the woods seems to express forbidden sexuality, death and loneliness. It is a shadowy place, echoing the things we reject and suppress within ourselves.

In the pines, In the pines, Where the sun never shine

I shivered the whole night through. 

The sun, an ever-present symbol of truth and goodness is absent here. The shivering can be seen to speak of jealously driving you mad.
I found it very difficult to paint this week. I repeatedly tried to paint a figure into my mess of tangled trees, but the figure would never come and by scraping it away I destroyed my forest. Life definitely interrupted my art making when painting this, but through the frustration I found a way to connect with this song which I didn't expect. 

Let The Mermaids Flirt With Me

When my earthly trials are over, carry my body out in the sea. 

Save all the undertaker bills, let the mermaids flirt with me.

Mississippi John Hurt's version of this song is charming, yet as with many other songs we have looked at, it's about death and sadness. He sings of his desire to float amongst the mermaids at the end of his life. However, I imagined the sea and its creatures, untouched by Hurt's 'earthly trials' being inflicted by his 'troubled and worried mind'. 

Barbary Allen

Sweet William died for me today

I'll die for him tomorrow

Barbary Allen speaks of the cruelty of lost and unattained love. I wanted to try to resolve this is my painting - perhaps because of the idealist in me. Barbary Allen and Sweet William are joined together in my painting, entwined within each other as in the rose and the briar, in an imagined landscape. I was thinking of a deathly yet beautiful place. The white sands and gentle colours suggest a peaceful afterlife. The couple are suspended gently above the contingencies of space and time. They are placed in a space which is intangible and out of reach but joined together eternally. 

I wanted to take the song back home to England, so I found inspiration from some polaroids I took in St. Ives. I love the feeling of small British coastal towns, the sense of loneliness and separation, slight mystic qualities of the sea and the rain, the flow of the waves and the (sometimes) peaceful blue of the sky and the water.

Banks of the Ohio

I took her by her lily white hand

And dragged her down that bank of sand

There I throwed her in to drown
I watched her as she floated down

My paintings this week tried to address an opposition I found in the Appalachian songs. I began listening to the music and was immediately drawn into the warmth and the collective joyful spirit of Will the Circle Be Unbroken and Banks of the Ohio. However, the lyrics to these songs addressed dark subjects of death, funerals and murder. I chose to paint my impressions of Banks of the Ohio. I had strong associations with colour. The yellow evokes warmth, the happiness experienced by walking along with someone you love, whereas the deep maroon colour of the second panel links with a feeling of being overwhelmed and betrayed. The river, seen flowing in the first panel, consumes the viewer in the second.