I am looking back at my creative year and goal setting for 2017. This is helping me keep track of the way my work is trending. I'm very keen to work at contemporary landscape this year and with this in mind, took numerous photos of one of our daily views which I titled 'The Lone Tree' - actually an isolated clump of trees on a large hill, or barrow. The site is called Brightwater Barrow and it is next to Wittenham Clumps. My format for this series will probably all be square with a 'Big … [Read more...]
Reflections – My year in paintings 2016: part 3
Here are some bits and bobs before I move to part 4 with my landscape studies. While exploring my art direction I toyed with the idea of doing naïve paintings of buildings. The Chilton Post Office was done as a commission at the end of 2015, and the other two in 2016. I enjoyed doing these but they are really labour intensive, so would only work for me as commissions. I also designed a series of cards for the UCARE project. The book 'Your Best year Yet' by Jinny … [Read more...]
Reflections – My year in paintings 2016: part 2
Each year I do a whistle-stop-tour of my entire creative oeuvre. This is for my records really, but blogging it files it neatly and gives me a chance to share. Part 1 is devoted to my 'daily paintings' which ended up being more like 3-day paintings. Here are the big vases that I started out with, lost my way on No.4 and came back to in December with something quite different. Looking at them now I can see what happened. I had an idea that I wanted to express - a concept of a large beautiful … [Read more...]
Large vase paintings
I have always felt that a still-life needs to exude a sense of presence - or stillness - and beauty. When I pick up a beautiful bowl I want to caress it and enjoy its texture and shape. it is an object that is sensual. this is what I woudl like to convy in my large still-life paintings. For this reason, I chose vases and decided to show them as if they are museum exhibits. The background is birchply with a thin wash of white oils and it is carved to create texture and flatten the … [Read more...]
White Parrot Tulip
I painted this so that it could be a companion piece to the Open Tulip and I felt that the background needed to be a little different but still dark. Initially I had less Alizarin and more green in the background, but it was so cold and lifeless, that I re-painted it. The green (although it is a Phthalo green), is called Permanent Green Deep in the W&N range. Complementary colours make very rich dark tones as opposed to black. The White Parrot tulip is altogether cooler than the Open … [Read more...]