Category: pastels
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Honeysuckle Sun
First step always these days is the camera, which I use instead of drawing. This image was taken with a Canon 100mm macro lens, which is stunning for flower pics. The range of colour is wide
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Grid Lock
We use grids daily. Sometimes we don’t recognise them as grids, such as in a car park. Sometimes we label them with other names such as ‘cells’ when in a spreadsheet for example, or ‘apartments’ in a block of flats. Pixels in digital imagery work as a grid. Grids provide a framework for colour
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A Waiting Game
The gallery is unusual with at its heart the 13th century wine merchants ‘shop’, or at least the cellar he used to deal his wines from. Looked after in part by English Heritage its flint rubble walls proved to make a fine background to my work.
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Cut and Run
I’ve been playing with cutting up and collaging imagery. I have been using an Albers-like square to explore colour in plants from the garden. Sometimes I have been mixing the mark with imagery directly, not in the sense of filling colour into the image but treating image and colour as separate and complementary parts of…
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Hanging About
I rarely drive across a drawbridge. Especially one where the door have to be held back, their ancient bolt heads securing the planks barely an inch either side of the car (contains stunning flower images)
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Frigid English Beauty
The French say English women are beautiful but cold, maybe because they don’t all go in for two hour lunchtime trysts (funch to American apparently) as French women are reputed to do. If true of course, then these images of frozen roses are a great representation of England.
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A Reaffirmation of Life
About exhibiting: Having work framed up to present formally to an audience can be intimidating (as well as expensive) but is an essential part of the creative process. After all unseen work is like the proverbial falling tree in the forest – if no one sees it does it happen? The purpose of art as…
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Art is a Language
In the same way that a new play or poem re-uses language so art re-uses the visual work of others, extending knowledge through pushing ideas further. Thus Hockney continues to develop an understanding of the visual world through the use of cameras and drawing that enriches our understanding of the world around us. The language…
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Putting The Pain in Painting
The large format oil pastels drawing culminated in one exploring the colour of the California Poppy, drawing no. 5 in this metre square series. I thoroughly enjoyed making the drawing and I think they were all very successful.
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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
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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.
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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…
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