exploring

Just had to write.
struggling with moving on, developing etc....
So, got a book on abstraction.
Did the stuff with my Wednesday night class.
I am sooo resistant to this.
Have added elements to the work on the easle over the past few weeks but....
Not enough.
Anyway, decided to pretend I'm on a course.
Work through the book.
Its crap, the pictures are vile, - but they are excersises, no one is looking...
Must shed this barrier.
cleared the walls, cleaned the palets.
Sat again, worked on them again.
Its crap, They are vile.
Wrote on them like an angry adolescent... swear words...
Added blood red paint, scrawled crushed black charcoal...wow soooo liberating,
this must be the point..
I am allowing all the vile, unseeable images to flow...know one will see, know one will judge,
therapy man... yey!!!
CAN'T WAIT TO HAVE ANOTHER GO TOMORROW!

The Ghosts of Landguard Fort

Finished my little 12" x 12" paintings, The ghosts of landguard fort.
I did add figures in the end.
They are called, the kiss, the hero,  the letter and the rescue.

ghostly figures

does this work???
I have an image of a victorian young woman reading a letter to try,

Back in the studio, Phew!

Well, I have started working with a vengeance as they say...
the Landguard Fort studies are coming together,
I want them about the building, the decay, with ghostly images overlaid, how it has been there for centuries, but the people come and go.
This of course is a huge departure for me.
The photos have sat on the wall for over a year.
Sometime in the spring I began to work on the studies, (50cm x 50cm) the same idea, but extended to other buildings with a history too. Sort of expressive colour studies. Then I decided to just do the fort.
I left it for the summer, then on looking at them again, in september, I decided to make the studies very solid, so that the ghostly images will be transparent.- Maybe not ghostly, maybe use the twisting type of thing from the figure studies...(I had this in mind when exploring the figure in the space earlier during the year.)
I'm thinking of using collage, for some trials on paper. Images include first world war soldiers, soldiers carrying a stretcher, girl receiving a letter, perhaps multiple images.

I have been looking at Bacon, O'Donoghue and Burra...the usual suspects, to see how they resolve this.
I have explored one of woman doing washing using a line drawing...
after looking at that I now think the rooms should be more simple again, but I got caught up in the peeling, crumbling plaster, so I will do one like that to get it out of my system...

Enough rambling here's the pictures so far...

Orlando playing the guitar

About ten years ago I painted a picture like this, which in a moment of madness I put into an exhibition, and it subsequently sold.
 Although I was grateful for the money I regretted it. Hudge said I could always paint another but I don't like doing that. As the years past and Orlando grew into his large and bearded self, I missed it more and more.
So, when Woodbrigde art club asked for a demonstration in oils in February this year I decided to paint another.

I know lots of people work from photographs so I thought I would show them my process.
I did two pictures for them. The first one from the  gridded up, empty canvas. I drew the figure etc with green paint, and then added the under painting for the first stage, that needed to dry before I could work further  so I then worked on another version that I had started at home.
They asked me to go back in August and finish it. I did that last week,  but it was still far from finished, so I completed it in the studio this week. Its more photographic than usual, but I am trying to capture his expression.

here are a few images of the earlier stages.

starting to work again

It has been so difficult over the past year to work at my painting. Cliche as it is, inspiration just wouldn't come. It still is lagging...I have been working at my writing so perhaps that's it, I am not very good at multi tasking. I know as a woman I am supposed to be fab at it, but not me. I have tried out a few ideas, and I am still fiddling about with some of them but no real absorption, no challenge.

Of course I was still painting and drawing from the model once a week, a life line to other artists, and practise for me and I was pleased with the exhibition at the Buckenham Galleries in April, a culmination of three years hard graft. But as ever, no sales, not much feed back and all those lovely paintings have had to go back in the storage cupboard. I have tried, I have applied for shows, but no joy, I guess I'm not exploratory enough, just too figurative.

Well the time had come to move on, take a break from working from life, from the model and try something else. I worked hard at the paintings  and I think resolved lots of things there, but I felt I was hiding behind that. So wrench as it was I cut the apron strings as it were and empty days loomed ahead.

Months have passed, the studio has been full of students, and the kids furniture. Malcolm gave me some frames and they have just sat there, mocking me.... will I ever work again, I feared not.

But today I have cleaned it, and put on the Mozart. I have started to work on the landguard fort paintings, trying to push the work in a new direction... oh joy to be moving paint around again. to have a clear head, no expectations, no dead lines, I feel a little tingling of interest, a spark that might grow. Oh I hope so, I do hope so.

Will I or won't I???

Sell a painting....
a lady came to look at some paintings in my studio so I had to go to Pin Mill and strip their walls. (replacing them with these three .)

She came, she saw, she went away again... her car was small. perhaps she will yearn for one over the coming weeks. This is often the way, after all when I buy a dress or shoes I take weeks of looking and deciding.