Feeling unsure

Imagining Vuillard's Bouquet (oil on canvas 30 x 30cm)

The first few days of my weeks feel busy with life drawing, a visit to the care home and a morning in Ipswich at the refugee centre.  So even though I draw everyday, on Thursday mornings I can feel unsure.  It's not that I have a lack of ideas, it's more that I have at least two whole days stetching ahead and I don't remember where I was and what comes next.  It would be easy to do all the other things that I have neglected but I go into the studio and I begin. 

I was tempted to paint over something I had hoped I'd finished but I stopped myself.  It felt tight and joyless but I have a habit of painting over instead of waiting or solving a problem.  I was already frustrated and I hadn't even got my brushes out. I and then, sometimes when I feel like I can't paint, I can trick myself into painting and something simple and surprising appears.

Flowers On Orange Tablecloth (oil on canvas 40 x 40)

 

With my painting, I am trying to let the painting tell me what to do instead of recording what I see.  The painting on the bottom became the painting on the top.  I think it may change again...

Carnations, Christmas Beads and Smoking Jacket (pastel on paper 6 x 6cm)

And I continue to draw my beads.

A painter of flowers and views

This summer I painted in the landscape on Cranberry Island with a new friend and fellow painter, Ahni.  Ahni and I are about the same age and so we laughed together at ourselves oohing and ahhing over a beautiful landscape and arrangement of colour, we share a love of the scenery that you find in Maine. Ahni did an painting MA not too long ago and told me how she was pulled away from her natural interests towards something less conventional.  In the time since, she has reconciled herself to 'being a painter of flowers', at least that's what she told me while we were painting some of my mother's exquisite flowers. I think we all have to paint what we see, the things that get us excited. 

These two oil paintings are 40 x 40 cm. Blackeyed Susan and Book was painted from life and Norwich Jug and Maine View was painted holding the jug, looking at two pastel drawings, a piece of a black and white photo I took this summer and inspired by a Dorothy Eisner painting.

 Blackeyed Susan and Book

Norwich Jug and Maine View 

 You can see Ahni's work at: http://new.ahnikruger.com