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Written musings on making art and the results. Life in the slow lane

  • Beauty and the Creative Process

    Beauty and the Creative Process

    … It’s not exactly watching the world go by sitting in a garden, but visual curiosity is the engine driver of my creativity and there is so much to see in the daily changes in a simple garden.

  • The Death Sting

    I walk with a camera, sometime with my partner, sometime accompanied by a man and his dog but mostly alone, looking for the delights of man and nature. My painting is paused whilst I try to figure a way of working that will not challenge my body. I think of Matisse working in bed aided…

  • You Can See the Seven Sisters from Newhaven

    So Newhaven slumbers on, the most exciting development being where industries have left because of the failure to move with the time by the authorities, and where the latest investment has gone into the refurbishing of the giant Palmerston fort guarding its entrance

  • Storm Winds

    I snuggle under the duvet and remember when I once stood watch as a volunteer in the coast watch tower further along the coast. That day was a real storm, blowing hard, wind howling through the railings like a demented banshee as we climbed the steps to the tower.

  • …And the Sea Steamed

    The colour of the water, paler for quite a way out from the Cuckmere River mouth as fresh water entered the ocean, was indeed steaming.

  • An Edge to Reality

    In my work documenting decay on the English South Coast I walk with a camera and record what I see with a view to taking it into the studio to process into paintings. This is a developmental path well known since the 19th century, flowering in the 20th in the work of many artists

  • Stalled but engine running…

    In my last post in November, I wrote of my mental confusion and the twists and turns I was making to find a way forward with my work. Since then, I have done plenty of work with the camera, but the problems remained unresolved. I am beginning to realise that many of the problems stem…

  • Moving Forwards?

    For a couple of months, I have struggled in the studio. Drawings based on Gropius’ house in Dessau fill sketchbook pages. Images of the trees around the ‘masters houses’ of the Bauhaus, printed out, litter my worktable. My ‘bag’ is colour of course, and like most war time images the photographs I have taken in…

  • Autumn Clocks In

    As October drifts to an end so we change our clocks – or not, depending in part on the clock. Clocks on computers change automatically, supposedly the car is linked to house Wi-Fi so should change with the computer but won’t, so will stay on French (or wherever) time until I can be bothered to…

  • Living is Easy

    One of these mornings you’re gonna rise up singing. Yes, you’ll spread your wings, and you’ll take to the sky. But ’til that morning, there’s nothing can harm you.                                                                                                                                      Gershwin In my last piece I wrote how being away with the faeries led to the fall – not into the devil’s hands but a…

  • Away with the Faeries

    Bore Da as they say in Wales. Good morning Some of us honour our roots, our predecessors and their construction of the Judeo-Christian culture in which we live. It expresses itself in many ways and yesterday I went on one of my favourite memory walks through a copse. This small strip of woodland, almost a…

  • Mark Making

    There was only radio for entertainment for many of my early years. I have written before of how my father taught me to draw. My formative years were spent in physical exploration  of  woods and fields, making model aeroplanes and filling books with drawings. Aged six I spent months living with my grandma and going…