Spring is sprung in the garden. The occasional night drops below zero and we have the occasional frost but the daffodils are out, crocuses abound and everything is popping into bud. The right time to start a new piece of work and do a bit of a spring clean to the studio.
As students at Corsham each year we had to empty our studio spaces, scrape the floors and paint the spaces – floors grey, walls white – ready for the end of year show. Whilst I started off my studio with the grey floors and pristine white walls I think the space will have to be a lot worse than it is now before I’ll go as far as repainting.
The Geranium Mk 2 is done and follows ‘Honeysuckle’ into the past – in this case at insistence of OH, onto the dining room wall replacing the Gerd Winner.
Tidying is necessary though, otherwise the studio becomes unworkable, full of clutter. I bless my Other Half, who bought me this studio for the bottom the garden as a Christmas present at the end of 2013. I use the roof space of the garage for storage, just having the plan chest and materials in the studio. With two work surface I have a separate workable clear area with superb lighting added.
For the last painting I put all the used materials into a plastic box. It really needs a neat glass cube to present the process properly, and I haven’t done that yet
My working process involves a great deal of self-questioning and pacing about, and after spending some 25 years running a design studio and then an online magazine during which studio work was intermittent, the last two years have seen a gradual acceleration of application and I feel now as if I getting back into the right mind set to take things forward from where the work previously stopped. It hasn’t been a smooth path as those of you who follow my blog will have realised, but I am pleased with where I am now and the work that is coming out.
An advantage of acrylic is that the palettes can be returned easily to pristine white dinner plates again…
I use my surroundings as the starting point for my work, and the garden is an important part of that. I realise it is really the domain of the cat, so the next painting will reflect that. I also want to work again on the maps stories, but feel slightly puzzled as to where to find suitable maps given that so much has been replaced by electronic mapping., but I’ll figure out how to work around that.
The plan chest is the storage for paint and brushes not actually being used in the work
Now I have cleaned the studio up I am ready to start the next piece, the drawings for which are under way. First I will take little break in the sun to help my healing processes, having organised house and cat sitters, but I shall be taking camera and sketchbooks with me as I go again to enjoy the splendid isolation of Africa’s West Coast. On return it will be time to think about organising the next exhibition – and maybe squeeze a couple of blogs from the trip too.
All ready now
I hope you enjoy the work and my sharing working process with you. You can see more posted on my art Facebook page, and can follow me on twitter too. If you want to support me in my work, then you can buy from the Gallery/shop where every bit you spend goes to buy more pastels and paint.
Honeysuckle
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