Taking an idea through

Stalking Spring, oil on canvas, 50 x 40 cm

Today I think I finished an oil painting. I haven't been painting in oils for months, maybe even a year or more. I love working in oil but getting started with it just seems to be a big commitment. I hate cleaning my brushes, I get paint all over me in a way no other media does and I have to move furniture to set things up to paint at an easel. I work in so many different media and lately it has felt like I have needed to work in those, for upcoming exhibitions. OIl has taken a back seat.  

I have heard myself telling people that what I like about egg tempera is that it dries so quickly and you can layer in the space of minutes, not days, like with oils. It isn't smelly and the clean up is simple. On Saturday I sat next to an RBA exhibititor at the dinner and she did intricate paintings with 'wet on wet' oils. I had already started this. I think I got out my oils because my last egg tempera felt like it could work better/needed a bigger scale. But after taling to Sue, I has a different attitude to the layers and the oils were different, not more cumbersome.

A5 oil sketch

 Before I began on the first day, I decided to do a small oil sketch on gessoed paper.  I have agreed to donate a few pieces (A5) for a fundraiser, to aid the animals that were affected in the Australian wildfires. I thought perhaps an oil sketch work.

working bigger

 I worked form life.  I realised I needed another motif on the left side, so added a bouquet on the second day to balance out the colour and shapes.

egg tempera Composition and Saint

This was the original idea,  painting.  I used a photo of a bowl/cup to imagine an alternative composition.  In the painting I have done the same.

Here we go again… It's time to choose between three!

Colour After Frost, egg tempera on panel, 23 x1 6 cm

Dahlia for Remembrance, egg tempera on panel, 26 x 20 cm

We Three Kings II, egg tempera on panel, 26 x 20 cm

If you follow my blog you will know that this summer I had two pieces selected by the RBA.  The selection process has come around again very quickly… they have moved the RBA's date back to its usual slot.  For the RBA, this change back was desireable and that means I need to choose something to submit by the end of this month.  These are my three most recent egg tempera pieces. I can submit more than two pieces but I have 'capped' my submissions at two. Which two do you think I should submit? 

Self Portrait in a Still Life

The Happy Couple and some of the Collection, pastel on board, 24x18cm

The things that I use as inspiration and motifs are part of me.  About thirty years ago my mother hooked me a wedding rug.  It is in our bedroom, underfoot.  My sister's is on her wall.  Mine is worn.  My sister's is pristine.  I know mine by touch. 

There's alot to think about when composing a drawing or painting.  The first thing is WHO IS THIS FOR? Although I do the occasional commission, for the most part my work is for me and then to show.  If I am lucky and I really like what I'm making, someone else usually does too.  My audience likes different things so I have scope to experiment and work in different media and motifs. Yesterday i wanted to have fun and steep myself in some of my favourite colours.

What I am working on begins with a question, or a puzzle or a delight or some colours that I need to fix in time.  Yesterday (and today's) drawing was about me, for sure, but it was also about where I came from, who I am here with and what I like, mostly.  As I chose objects I wanted to create a window into my life, how I see myself.  I began with the rug. I found a way to make a backdrop of the rug, first, then I began choosing objects. They were about eye height… boxes stacked on a plant stand with a piece of ply on top and then fabric, scarves, stuff.

My still life was going to be colourful, a bit whimsical, maybe frivolous but also solid and dependable (the apple and the book).  The story would be convoluted but pleasant with a little repetition and lots of pattern. It was so much fun to make!  My mother had made the aesthetic decisions in her rug and I was collaging the beautiful objects that are in my life already to compliment them.

This year's red pastel painting

Hibiscus Tea, pastel on board, 19 x 22

My garden in autumn gets very red.  There is raspberry, tomato, magenta, salmon, fuscia, rosehip, hibiscus…you get the idea.  So when I pick bouquets, inevitably it's difficult to work around red and pink. I arranged this still life a week ago but hadn't had time to draw it until today. Yesterday, hoping I would have time, I re-picked the bouquet. I have been looking at it all week, longingly. 

At the start of drawing ( I spent about six hours on it) it felt impossible to use the colours I saw to describe what I saw.  They were too intense, too overpowering. As I perservered and found the correct value, pattern and form the drawing needed it got more peaceful, that was my objective… to reflect back the joy and elegance of an autumnal corner of a house.

Low footfall, why not paint?

I thought about making badges during the down time of my open studio today.  That was the plan but when it came down to it, I wanted to paint or draw.  My flowers are starting to flower and it seemed to me that it might be interesting to visitors if I was doing something that reflects my current interests. While I was working on my little egg tempera, Fiona Camp, a fellow artist and sort-of neighbour came by. She was interested in egg tempera and had even done some herself.  She watched me paint, something I never really understand, but was willing to do. I was fine. I haven't finished...  something to do tomorrow if it's not too busy. I was pleased that I was integrating the various strands of what I am doing: portraiture, still life, egg tempera, painting on the spot and story telling.

What was also intersting about the day was that the picture I almost didn't frame was the favourite of three people. - an egg tempera of Lyra and Patrick on a cold morning. Who knew?

Little sketches in cracks of time

We had a lot of rain in Maine and as my mum had injured her back there was just that little bit more to do in the garden...so this year so I drew less and had less 'headspace' in general for imagery. I carried my altered sketch books to Maine, so was determined to use them when I could. Hopefully I will use these notes later.

We went off the island to do chores. My mother and I collected new vessels from Goodwill.  Back home when it rained, we made bouquets from whatever we could find in the garden. The hellebore was the star of the counter.

One of the things I did in my 'spare time' was to renovate my travelling pastel 'kit'. The pastels have been in saggy cardboard boxes that were falling apart for the past few years - all held together with elastic bands. This year the elastic bands broke in my hands and my backpack was a big grey mess. At the workshop I took with Felicity House, I discovered the power of using rice to keep the pastels from turning grey so I searched for some new clear screw-top holders and it is like magic! It was so hard to say goodbye to this new system that on the way to the airport I stopped to buy another set and have replicated it here.

Back home I'm just coming out of catch-up mode. In the 20 mins when I should have been heading to the house to get on with dinner prep, I paused and drew the stuff at the other end of my studio. One day I went to draw with the IBBAS artists at Old Hall in Southwold. Yesterday Christopher Lucas came by and sat for me.  When I have a chance I will return to the egg tempera portrait below. Today I called into the Handmade shop.  The work by our trail looked fabulous!

Fig comes back tomorrow and It's Suffolk Open Studios soon so it will be a struggle to find even little cracks of time to sketch in...

As Spring Becomes Summer

Tulip Blossom Pear, egg tempera on panel, 27x24 cm, 

I find that so much of what I begin with feels intuitive but may actually be intentional, even though my mind hasn't caught up with what I'm responding to yet. 

I picked some flowers from the garden, wanted to use the dress I'd impulsively bought at a charity shop that was a great colour and had a great pattern but that I would never wear. I liked the idea of the IBBI bowls inside one another… As I was matching things, trying to get the balance (without thinking about it) I chose some similar blue items with bits of bright red on them. I needed height and structure to work, orange, green, more fascia.  The last few items and re-arranging them always takes the most real looking and nudging time.  The green cup on the right came towards the end of the painting, not part of the original still life at all but necessary in the end.

So what's it all about? Why did I gravitate towards those colours in the first place? I'm not sure that I can answer truthfully now that I am done but it was starting to get hotter, the tulip and the figure has a blossom feel, it's all making me feel exuberant... but is that language or what I was looking at? It felt wholesome and fecund, how do you show that, create that mood? 

Which of the players in the arrangement did I want to focus on, what does that say about my mood, the season, my thinking?  Is it really just a case of nostalgia or that thing that I love about pattern and colour? You tell me.

Spring and the Still Life

Ibbi Bowls and Green, pastel on paper, 29x29cm

Lifetimes ago when we were living in Rome I went to the market and bought some peaches.  It must have been the summer.  I had a tablecloth of blue and white that I got at an off-cut supplier in Warwickshire and apparently it was the same upholstery fabric they'd used in the BBC studio.  It was calm and perfect for our table in Rome.  The peaches spilled out of my bag and I noticed the most divine still life. I brought my drawing pad into the kitchen and drew the scene in pastel and later painted it adding some made up china. 

Today I woke ready to incorporate the divine bowls I was sent by Claire McAlpine from IBBI interiors. Claire discovered my work on Instagram and ended up buying two pieces.  She sent me the bowls after an aside comment I made about loving their china. As I started putting together my set up, I couldn't help feeling the excitement I felt with the peaches in Rome.  I sold that painting to Lena and Hennig so only have the memory of it.

Last night I was in Colchester at a talk by Charlotte Verity.  Her work is beautifully spare and she explained that her still lifes are not just still lifes. I'm not sure mine are more but I think I do my best work when I feel enchanted by what I am looking at and like Charlotte sometimes my subject becomes a portrait. Perhaps these bowls were my people this time. 

Digressing, this morning Henry Finkelstien was talking about Chuck Close's comment,  “Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just go to work”.  Everyone commenting disagreed with that. I think I remember Charles Williams or maybe Jason Bowyer saying he doesn't value 'work'. I know what he meant, the struggle is a particular way of being an artist. Then there's the playful thin. I know I'm for inspiration. and if you want to call my work nostalgic, and sometimes playful that's OK.

January objects and artifiical light

What I found in January, pastel on tinted paper 16 x 16cm

When I picked a little bouquet of what I had in the garden it occured to me that I wanted to make the shapes of the hellebores stand out from the background.  I have a cupboard in the studio with cloth (clothes and pieces of fabric) and most of it is pattered and highly coloured. I don't have many solids and I don't have any velvets. That was what I was hankering after.  When I started, the colours were actually quite light and punchy.  In the end I migrated towards local colour, although the colour and light were never the same yesterday and again this morning - they were  grey days and I needed to turn on the natural light lamp before long. This drawing was a puzzle and when I finally introduced the ceramic lemon squeezer for balance I felt I had found the January feel of stillness indoors, and had done as much as I could with this arrangement.

Domestic Bliss

Nectarine and Dahlia 15 x 17cm

So I am back in the studio! The garden is full of flowers and before I went to Maine i reorganised the place and can remember where I put everything! That means I can find my stuff and have the time to arrange things and draw them.  My objects speak about domestic bliss, perhaps? 

Life drawing group began again today so the morning was devoted to that but yesterday and today I made these two pastel drawings. I used some prepared paper that I found in a sketchbook and a box of Jaxell and Rembrandt pastels.  Nectarine and Dahlia was made after e next few weeks I hope to make a series of drawings with the aim that I will find a few to submit to the Pastel Society exhibition. 

Echinacea Autumn Tea 15 x 17cm

Bigger and looser

I painted for a few hours on these four canvases that in total make a 60 x 60 cm painting. It took me about an hour to arrange the set up, with four canvases in mind, and yet it is a very similar arrangement to the series of pieces across media that I began at the start of the week.  Mostly I have shifted the colour. Last night was the opening of the SOS show at the Apex.  It was a fine event and I was impressed with the scope of the work. Seeing the variety along with the recent rejection seems to have freed me - long may it continue as I march towards resolution.

The land, the land!

Turqoise of Barn, pastel on book page

I'm recently back from Maine where I go annually to rake and dig and weed and haul garden debris with my brother, sister and mother. The weather was mostly fine this year.  We had the gamut: downpours, incessant rain, sun, whitecaps and overcast sky. One night Ben photographed an amazing sunset that I missed because I was glued to the news coverage. The temperature was really quite cold to unseasonably hot. I tend to draw early or just before I begin preparing dinner and I chase the light across the grass. 

Suffolk Pink and Rapeseed, Akua Intaglio on paper - monotype 10 x 7.5cm

Back in Suffolk, those intense fields of yellow rapeseed are now leggy and fading. There is a prevailing scent of brassicas and it's warmed up here, now.  But I remember the yelow! This is my first monotype in a while and it feels bolder and brighter than usual, less subtle, but maybe that's the rapeseed?

Kantha, Limes and Daffodils, pastel on book pages

 On the morning after we all arrived in Maine, before we had even reached Cranberry, we stopped at the Job Lot store (a family tradition). I found a haul of vintage kanthas and we bought a few.  The patterns and colours provided me with a backdrop for this visit.  There are plenty of objects to draw, but I was restricted by the flowers available.

Kantha and Rhododendron, pastel on book pages

Kantha and New Vase, pastel on book pages

View from the island, pastel on book pages

Still Red Room

Still Red Room, pastel on fabriano 64 x 46 cm

One reason I love to work from life is that I can create something that reminds me of a place.  When I put together a still life I am inventing a place and trying to get it to feel real.  This time, without meaning to, I put many barriers in my way to success. 

I was determined to use some yellow lillies that two of my Albanian friends, who I know from Suffolk Refugee Support, gave me as a present.  I have spoken about having a hard time making yellow and red work for me, in garden and in drawings so by choosing a red, a very red, backdrop I was bringing this to a head. There were also some flourescent orange roses in the bouquet and again, that was troublesome. Additionally as I worked I realised, there were too many open cups and something too small in the foreground of the set up; so with a mix of invention, addition and seeing colour differently to the way it existed in front of me, I think I found a way to resolve things. For me, the overall feeling of this is quite still, maybe serious in a camp kind of way. Perhaps I could have varied the marks a bit more, but in order for it to be believable, this was what I found.

I'm going to get some new flowers later on so that tomorrow I can begin on the six canvases!

Returning to still life

I've been reading a Matisse book on and off since January and on Monday I picked it up again. It's a fascinating book based on a show I never saw, which apparently was in London about ten years ago. The book focuses on the versions of paintings that Matisse carried out - canvases of the same size  but in each canvas Matisse would address a different interest.  I suppose if you're Matisse you can do that.  

On Monday Sue brought  a new decorative cloth to life drawing - it was great to have new pattern to consider next to the model. By the afternoon I had set up a still life in the studio to paint from full of colour and pattern.  It is one of my new 50x60cm canvases.  

As an after thought I used the painted paper from the first session's left over palette paint to do little (3 x 3 inch) quick colour studies imagining objects moving and colours being different.  

How do I draw?

On Wednesday I will be giving a demonstration for the Bury Art Society. It will be a combination of slideshow, demo and hands on activities for participants. In preparation, I have been trying to consider my own process so that I can say or do something useful. The problem is every time I begin a new drawing, I feel as if I don't know what I'm doing, that I have no process. This week has been about pushing myself in lots of different directions and then just drawing. This is the final result. You can tell that Nancy Delouis is in my head.