Tag: oil pastels

  • Bridget Riley at the De La Warr Pavilion

    Bridget Riley at the De La Warr Pavilion

    The exhibition at the de La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-0n-Sea explores Riley’s development in a linear way from the initial disturbingly disorienting black and white images through more disturbing curvilinear colour work to the calmer more lyrical recent works.

  • Honeysuckle Sun

    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

  • Grid Lock

    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

  • A Waiting Game

    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.

  • Hanging About

    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)

  • Frigid English Beauty

    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.

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Mythmaking

    Mythmaking

    The importance of drawing. It doesn’t pay to cut the mythmaking short, neither for the colour transitions nor for the line drawings.

  • 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.

  • 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