Tag: Art

  • It’s all a Performance

    It’s all a Performance

    Art is a language and all language is about communication. It takes a transmitter and a receiver, and all art need s an audience as without an audience it is like a proverbial tree falling in a forest… so the website is my new stage on which my performances in the studio can be critically…

  • A Reaffirmation of Life

    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…

  • Art is a Language

    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…

  • Constable clouds and Stella stripes

    Constable clouds and Stella stripes

    So the drawings continues to develop as I work at the same time with the photographs that combine with colour notes in the sketch book to form the base from which the ideas are developing.

  • The Art of Remembrance

    The Art of Remembrance

    Three of my relations died in France, and one of my partners. Grandad, I was told, suffered the after effects from a gas attack until his death in the 1960’s. OH and I have bought one of the ceramic poppies in memory primarily of her Australian antecedent.

  • Snow white?

    Snow white?

    When a student in the 60’s I had a series of lectures on colour and perception. One in particular sticks in my mind. A series of panels of white paint were placed under the light from a slide projector, in front of a black background. As each panel was added it made the previous panel…

  • Putting The Pain in Painting

    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.

  • He who hesitates is lost?

    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

  • To Paint is to Love Again

    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

    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

    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.

  • Tate Titillation

    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