Written musings on making art and the results. Life in the slow lane
He who hesitates is lost?
I have never really thought of my photographs as art in their own right, any more than I think a page from my sketchbook is. I have seen the camera as a tool and only now am I beginning to think of them as possible art forms
Castles in the Air, Dreams Earthbound
the trip would take me out of myself and into a different landscape. Indeed the whole trip was a reminder of what a cobblers our government has made of our road system whilst reminding me of just how beautiful England is.
To Paint is to Love Again
Henry Miller wrote ‘To Paint is to Love Again’ (Cambria Book s published by William Webb in California in 1960). It is a book title that has engraved itself on my mind, and today looking at the progress in the studio I felt the first return of the joy
Canvas, Convolvulus and Carpets
The last major piece I did was based on an image of fuchsias but the recent drawings seem to be taking me away from this – although it may change when I start working on the canvas that is now on the easel ready. Nothing more terrifying than a large blank white canvas
Drawing and the Garden
The garden is endlessly fascinating. Even as a student I painted images of a lawn. Now I am working on images of my own garden again. I made a little drawing of grass, which to my surprise seemed to work well, and I have been exploring the imagery further through a series of drawings.
Sardinia Seaside Success
…downtime on the beach and a few visits to towns, including a cruise around the islands northern tip where France meets Italy, Corsica meeting Sardinia. I certainly recommend taking your glasses off before diving over the side of your boat …
Sardinia, bougainvillea and rescue
At first it was just the intensity at dusk. It made the colours fluoresce, red-violet against green with an intensity that quite took my breath away. The colours of the Mediterranean glow in the mid-summer sunlight
Tate Titillation
The Tate has followed various foibles of various Keepers through deep green walls etc., but the latest incarnation for the first time respects the original building. The architect and interior designer have allowed it to speak, holding their egos in check with quite splendid results
Roses are Red, Violets are Blue, and grass is always greener
Raindrops glistened in the grass after we had a thoroughly violent thunder and rain storm. I decided to draw outside with the oil pastel.
California Dreamin’ in colour
I had been working with the colour from the peonies I featured previously but had struggled to make anything work. This time the colour flowed off the pencils, nearly working through the page in my sketch book.
“the Channel in the mad March days”
The coasters themselves have vanished save the examples left in Museums. Now looking some 12 miles out to sea, where the westward bound lane of Channel shipping can be seen, ships passing look like huge blocks of flats laden with containers
Fools Gold?
Their colour seems short lived as petals seem to get paler over the day, and the life of a flower seems relatively short. Capturing the colour was my goal, and having filled some pages in the sketch book and taken many photographs I am ready to push forward, going with the flow, see where it leads.
Pencils and Paintboxes
As a child I was brought up in Cyprus. In retrospect this profoundly influenced my sense of colour. The colours of the Mediterranean are bleached out by the sun, dominated by Naples Yellow, Terracotta and the almost Cerulean blue of the Mediterranean sky.
Trains and Boats and planes….
I have travelled business class with BA, upper class with Virgin over the Atlantic (a one-off cheap offer) and, on this trip, in the business class cabin of Emirates. They are all brilliant. Images : propellers to jets
West Coast Harmonies
I never really thought of the Beach Boys as anything more than happy harmonics. West Coast surfer sound lacking the depth, emotional and musical, of the Beatles. They reflected the US West Coast in all its frothy entertainment world frivolity.
Diamonds not wardrobes
I lay on the beach in the hot African autumn sunshine a century later. Further north the brutal isolation of the Skeleton Coast starts, but here on St. Helena’s Bay the sand was warm and the waves lay their spume, gently, barely feet away as the sea spends its energy. The South Atlantic here is so shallow that even at high tide the waves break softly, inches high, not the cliff-devouring metres high monsters of those on British shores.
Landscape into Art
A few years ago there was an exhibition in London’s Serpentine Gallery called ‘Art into Landscape’. From the earliest Renaissance masters through Turner and the Impressionists, to Hockney’s brilliance, the face of our globe has been a source of visual fascination, interpretation and reinterpretation for painters. Our developing technologies have added an additional dimension to how we view the globe, from images taken by satellites to the experience we gain when flying.
Seeing Seaford as Home
Seaford ticked all the boxes. The beach, cliffs and Downs limit its spread, keeping it free of urban sprawl and giving a more predictable environment than elsewhere. I need to have an horizon, and cityscapes don’t give me that.
Waves and Gate Broken – in the studio
I’m working from photographs, and wanted to go take another look at the shadows. I want to do a couple of ‘Hopperish’ images and work them into a collage prior to creating a painting using the traditional ‘squaring up’ process, and working the process into the end result – a painting about painting if you like.
Of Wood, Waves and Walking
The line of London plane trees along John Islip street at the back of the Tate gave some striking images, almost monochromatic, but relieved by gleams of the gold and eau de nil colouring of new bark. Their branches drew graphic pictures against the sky, looking like knobkerries where they had been pollarded.
Sea Scours Seaford’s Shingle
It was in 1987 that the groynes on Seaford beach were buried under tons of imported gravel, brought in to boost the defences along the beachfront. The reinforcing of the shingle bank, helping to keep high seas at bay from the town centre.
Impressionism in Winter
A camera is a poor second to drawing, but when it is as cold as it has been recently, or as wet and stormy then being like an impressionist and trying to work away outside, using pencils or pastels is coming close to martyrdom. I don’t do martyrdom, although if you listen to Barry, our local Coastguard castigating photographers who get too close to the waves in taking their photographs, you might think otherwise.
Capturing the Colour and Movement of the Sea
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 enhanced by wide horizons of the Downs and the seascape
Practicing my Scales
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 get a sense of direction and purpose in my work. Sometimes this is just distraction activity but not this time – no this is just playing for the pure pleasure of being able to play again.