by Patrick | Feb 9, 2014 | art, Environment
I always used to hammer it into students that a sketch book was their personal idea library. Not a scrapbook, as so many lecturers allowed them instead, but a place in which you record manually your response to external stimuli, through using eyes and some form of...
by Patrick | Feb 2, 2014 | art, Environment
The Impressionists went to the south of France for the light. English artists found their vision at home, Constable in Suffolk, Turner in Sussex. Sussex is now my ‘home ground’ and the light is startling in its clarity, cleansed by sea breezes and...
by Patrick | Jan 26, 2014 | art, drawing, Environment, painting, pastels
Musicians practice their scales hour after hour, and play practice pieces over and over again, seeking perfection. In my new studio I too am practising my scales – my colour sense is being subjected to physical testing, using different media to play games and...
by Patrick | Jan 18, 2014 | art, Environment, Lifestyle, Remembrance
The news that London is the most popular tourist destination on the globe will come as no surprise to Londoners. It comes as a mixed blessing for those who have to endure never ending crowds of rubber-neckers, people carrying rucksacks larger than themselves on the...
by Patrick | Jan 12, 2014 | Environment, Lifestyle, Travel
I’m very lucky to have relations in South Africa. This makes travelling to the Dark Continent relatively affordable, but generally tourism to Africa, especially safari tours, is an expensive activity for a European or American. Yet over 40% of tourists to SA...
by Patrick | Jan 4, 2014 | Environment, Lifestyle, Remembrance
I wasted two days this week searching for missing photographs of Verdun. In my new studio I was finishing a triptych of drawings based in the colours from the images taken on a visit to this killing ground of WW1. In Verdun birds still don’t sing. Over half a...
by Patrick | Dec 28, 2013 | art, drawing, Lifestyle, painting
English artist Bernard Cohen talked of the balance between personal myth making and ritual. Myth making occurs through drawing and preparatory works. Here an artist indulges in activities that clarify the vision he is pursuing, that set up potentials for the...
by Patrick | Dec 21, 2013 | Environment, Lifestyle
Many people look AT the world rather than looking INTO it. I suggested previously that “many have no visual memory because most people simply have never been taught to look”. When my father was teaching me to use the wood/graphite interface we owned no...
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