ochre paintings

latest tuseday paintings

Night Garden

 The view from my window was so fantastic last night.
The snowy white garden and the weird yellow light. So bright.
I grabed my phone and pressed it to the pane but the pictures were tiny so I ran to get the camera quickly.
Naturally  it was low on batteries so I had to start it each time between pics..(I have found that this miraculously  energises the batteries and you can get it to take some more but it cuts out after each one.) these were on auto.. no flash... I auto corrected the brightness on the computer later but that was all.

Little icons

I have been busy making the little works for the next Creative Freelance project. Discarded made beautiful.
You can see my proto types on the blog and find out more about the project at -

http://discardedmadebeautiful.blogspot.com/ "discarded made beautiful."
The exhibition will be in the spring at the Frame Workshop Gallery in Ipswich.
We had to use recycled stuff or junk and they were to be very small, and to sell for under £30

I have used the bits of wood from the back of canvases; -I never know what to do with them and have saved them for years in a box.."just in case". Old paint that I have scraped off of pallets over the past few months while I have been working, old bits of kitchen roll after I have wiped the knife and I printed the images of paintings on to discarded paper.(The programs left over from the frailty in thought project.)
I have had a lovely therapeutic time playing with gold paint and collage and cans of spray enamel...yum!

Key Arts

ugggghhhhh!
I find out Key Arts- the Artist led space has been disbanded.
nooo!!!
Key Arts cannot finish. Apparently at the  Key Arts AGM last night the group was disbanded.
as soon as I heard I was on the blower!!!!! I have had informal chats with a few people who are right behind me.
An Artist led space is vital to Ipswich.
We have all made great work there and we should keep it going so we and others can continue to make great work too.
Over The last 5 years key arts has had 73 events...
wow!!!  lets build on that not throw it away!!!!
I am happy to continue on. I will be chair.
watch this space...
Zoe can come and do 108 doors there!!! fab!

zoes next performance

108 DOORS
Zoe Redman
Mark Lockett
Jacob Redman

la performance multimedia
SAMEDI 6 NOVEMBRE  18HEURES 30
   La Coopérative
Centre d'Art et de Littérature
11170 MONTOLIEU Village du Livre
tel : 04.68.78.96.29

Check out the link.
http://lacooperative.perso.sfr.fr/montolieu_html/montolieu_la_cooperative.html

latest studies

 heres the one we will be working on for a couple of weeks.

I thought I would do some in acrylic on paper...(I was trying to save money as I'm not selling anything - and can't get some new gallery's either, - too contemporary or not contemporary enough- same old story...grrrr)  but now I wish i had used canvas and oil...Don't you just love that red....




ooooh I am enjoying thease loose studies.Here are some more..

 

I have finished the last painting...the one I was experimenting with.

and I have been reworking some of the paintings from the May show at Southwold, I think they now have more oomph!!!

 

 

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back from Zoes place at Le Moulin de Conche

Back, rested and inspired.- Zoe is getting on well. I could be very bossy and command her back to bed to rest. - well we have been friends since we were eight or nine..phew!!!
We had fresh figs for breakfast, veg from the garden and water from the source...not bad eh?

some pics for you.
I took some photos to use in the earth paintings,- woman yearning and friendship!!
I'll show you in a few months when they are starting to happen.
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Its hard going at the moment

Well finaly got up and after much divertions walk the dog, empty dishwasher, etc draged myself to the studio.
It gets like this from time to time. Painting is such a crass, empty,  self indulgent thing to do....you can interlectulize it all you like,- "you talk for people, create a spiritual language for them to identify with... etc, etc", Its still self indulgent. - but staying in bed is even more crass and self indulgent so up I get.
I have taken some photos of H n I  in the throes of passion.. they are quite nice really, I like the idea of oldish lovers...usually depicted lovers are young and lithe- and I have printed them out and bunged them on the wall to mull over.
as I sold nothing from the last exhibition I'm looking at some of those paintings again and re working them, you have to face the fact that although there is a recession and I cant expect to sell as many, - one a month to none is a big drop... The paintings were nice as  a group but individually perhaps some have no oomph!! so I'am going over them..
I'm off to visit an old friend of mine in the mountains of France next week, She has been poorly and I'm going to help her lift wood..Ha! that's my excuse anyway. I can't wait. Mountain air and her great company in her  beautiful interesting home, and lots of art chat too. See you when I get back.

Exploring the backgrounds

 

Here I have started working over the white gessoed area with a knife and then have made the background mauve.

With this one I have worked quickly over the meauve pre-prepared background. I have made some more canvases in different colors, ready to do some more gestural expressive paintings from the model. As I was quite pleased with the mauve results, I have prepared a large expressive background, paint, plaster and glue, ready to work the entwined lovers paintings,- which is part of my new Earth stuff.

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Shadow place at shotley

On Saturday we performed ‘Frailty in Thought’ again. 

It began with a procession across the fields down to the river, then as the the daylight faded the port of Harwich lit up,- this created a dramatic backdrop to the performance which took place on the beach.

Then there was soup and bread then we read  Ians  poem about an ancient queen by a roaring fire. -Magical.

Developing the work

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oooh its so hard to develop.
Its all a bit contrived at the moment but I feel I must push the work along and I have found this a good process in the past. Its all a bit fake and then it gets assimalated and works.
After the drippy painting last week I prepared a couple of large canvases to work on. - One was a plaster base mixed with earth colors and ground up leaves and another was a light mauve layer of expressive paint strokes. ( I see earth as mauve sometimes.)  I decided to work on the plaster one. But I left the drippy paint one for reference.

I worked on the plaster one.. It wasn't working at all, and the truth for me of the body, the strength, the  texture of the skin etc was a bit  lost in the 'earth ' bit. -

 so now its dry I have gessoed over it to creat a smoother surface to work on and using  the drippy one as  a reference I can work on it in the models absence. I still want the earth feel, but more subtle as underlayers I think. anyway we shall see...

Surface, texture and drips.

I am using my work from the Figure each week to explore and develop my latest ideas.
I want the paintings to be large, expansive, (these are 90cm x 90cm) drippy, groaning, melting, merging, raw. This is the first one. I will prepare some different surfaces and paint some more from the same viewpoint for the next few weeks, layering and developing. - I'm excited by process once more.


I have been looking at the way to prepare the canvas, to texture it.



I am looking at earth.The Figure emerging, pushing through, so the layers of drips meld and merge with the surface, being born of the earth.

For the last few years my work has been about the light.
It comes in to the interior and bounces of the figures and objects within.This light has been all around the world, It has no "time" it links us all to every one before and after.
Before that I was looking at the figures made of air.


before that I was exploring fragility and working with glass paints on perspex

Influences at the moment

The very wonderful Hughie O'Donoghue. Monument in Rouen. His work is magnificent, monumental, Huge pieces. layers and montage and ooohhhh!!!


Ansolm Kiefer.Rods



Bernard Piga who I came across at an exhibition at a little chateau in France a couple of years ago,- large scale and very emotional paintings.



Francis Bacon




as ever the great
F A

next direction

ooohhh Its so hard to get going on the next stage.
I have a feeling for how I want the work to develop but how to get there... and how not to put up barriers before I have even begun.
I want to work on emotion, whats inside.. I have looked at this before of course but I want this work to be bigger than before and more abstract.
I'll show other artists who are my influences as I go on.
the drippy traumatic paintings from my life studies excite me. They are the way I want to go this year.I found that little project from the summer very interesting.
I'm thinking, earth, parched dry, expansive, earth colors, pigments, rocks,
that the figure is part of the earth. drips, melting, merging.
lovers entwined, fusing, old, eternal, whats love? not the surface but in and under, beneath.
woman beaten down, exhausted by shouting, screaming, but never beaing heard, throat parched, dry earth.
loosing, loosing, frustration, empty, full.

back from france

helloooo I'm back from France now..
Well the open studios was a unmitigated flop, I put up little expo signs and a huge banner and the very lovely flags I had had made.
- but there was no new La Route des Ateliers d’Art en Suisse Normande flyer this year.
-Perhaps something was lost in the translation - I thought that there would be a new one and the organizer thought that not enough new people had joined and there were lots of flyers left from last year so...
Anyway it meant we sorted out the room, and the other people in the village seem to be pleased to have their very own artist and some of them came to look. I also had two weekends in the little gallery at Thury Harcourt, oooh how slowly a couple of hours can go, but I got a couple of little bits in the local paper..