33 days

Exhibition paintings done and varnished today. Left the house, and the white spirits fumes, to cycle to the studio. Dropped off another bucket of masonry paint for tomorrow when I have to be there from 7am to 6pm waiting for an Argos delivery. (yes, 7am!) So lots of wall painting, working on some web stuff, possibly watching BSG too. That's a lot of hours for me to be in one place. But then I'll have my snazzy new shelving units, a glass tabletop to serve as a massive palette, and some storage baskets. If they arrive early I can hop over to Screwfix and buy trestles too.


In unrelated personal news I got the all clear on the results from my surgery last month (removing CIN3), not something I shared via the blog but it all has been a weight on my mind and affected my working since December. Hope you don't mind, I'm sharing the happiness! :)

Studio Afterglow

• 2.5 litres of masonry paint
• overalls
• roller
• aluminium ladder
• computer churning away at 1gb Photoshop file rendering
• mobile broadband dongle
• Indigo Girls on the iPod
  

Love my studio, even empty. First layer of paint on walls. Ah, happy day.

So tired now.

Studio space space and more space!

Picked up the key today!











Psst, only 36 days to go ...

43 days ...

43 days until my solo show at The Calder Gallery!



Surrounded by nearly-there canvases. To the left, to the right, behind me, even on the floor! Help! Hoping to finish Lulworth Cove, the storm, and the Portland Cliff paintings by the end of the month. Then varnishing.

Art Lust

Is it strange that I rather like Donald Judd's work, but Richard Serra doesn't float my boat?

Odd that I appreciate elements of Antoni Tapies, can enjoy elements and even apply ideas to my entirely different approach - but I still don't quite "get" Rothko despite a constant comparison?

I can become engrossed in Motherwell's writing about art (his and others' and general philosophy of abstraction) but actually his paintings leave me cold.

Put me in front of a Klein Blue and I'm in heaven despite whatever the intention was, however facile a premise it might play on, because I find it beautiful (info about the artist here) - but Dan Flavin's lightwork can't hold my interest (though I think it's anything but facile).

Appreciation isn't enjoyment. Admiration isn't adoration.

Art is a fickle lover.

Red Nose Art

Get your red nose on for the weekend and help me raise money for RED NOSE DAY with any painting in my Etsy shop that has RED in it! (raising money all weekend too)
http://www.rednoseday.com/


You can also browse lots of UK sellers who are raising money for Red Nose Day by browsing the sellers listings in this thread in the Etsy forums.

Imminent paintings

Today I'm working on the paintings for the Royal Academy summer show entries - two 8" canvases that will be put in deep frames.



Since I'm not as sensible as other friends I never plan ahead for the RA and then forget how quickly the deadline comes around. The RA requires first payment for how many entries you want, then the entry form with full details (titles, prices, etc) posted back, then we bring in our work the first week of April. And each year, every bloody year, I'm unprepared for sending that form back! So this post is to inspire those artists who seem to think I'm terribly organised. ;)

So I brainstormed titles by browsing through my coast photos, the maps from my trips, and general "sea" terminology online. This year I quite enjoyed reading about the Met's shipping forecast. As I went I jotted down place names, words, ideas on my desk - which is covered with a large cardboard box lid. As you can see that comes in useful.



The winning titles were "Imminent" and "Near Durdle". In fact I'm doing smaller versions of some Dorset ideas, particularly the surf on the beach at Durdle Door and the rougher seas I've been playing with on the large canvas already.

I might also have decided my Calder Gallery show title but mum's the word for now!

3 miles?

I have been pondering a title for my show at the Calder Gallery at the end of April (through May). Having watched QI late nights recently I saw an episode where Stephen Fry mentioned that the horizon is approximately 3 miles away. I loved that little tidbit!

So now I'm thinking of using '3 miles' in the exhibition title somehow - since my paintings are mostly horizons on the sea. The paintings of cliffs seen from out at sea will have to fend for themselves.

But I'm coming up empty at the moment. Finishing the paintings, getting new pieces ready for the Royal Academy, and week 2 of no exercise (had minor surgery in Feb, not supposed to do much yet) is leaving me without mental energy.

So I'm turning to you, my faithful collectors and readers! Can you incorporate '3 miles' into an intriguing title?



(The image at top is a detail from "St Andrews, Calm", now available in my Etsy shop as part of the Build the Walls project!)

50 days...

Countdown to Hebden Bridge solo exhibition...


The Calder Gallery
Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire
Opens 28th April
Private view (with the artist!) 6-8pm

Day 7 or 1? Just painting

No idea if it's the end of last week or the start of this week, but nevermind! More layers on the Lulworth painting.



More violet on top, both dark and light, and started lightening the 'water' half with a soft blue grey. In preparation for cerulean blue. (The 5" study is for sale here.)

Day 5 of a Studio Week - Guest Studio!

Today stars the studio of Jo Oakley, painter printmaker extraordinaire. Jo invited me over for a printmaking session, Anji Allen was working down in the gallery and took some photos of us in action. And Annie Allen even stopped by! It was a bit like the old gang back together. (we all used to have studios in the building)




After printing a few of the larger linocuts (the image shown is the successful working of one plate, the multi-plate seascape didn't quite work so have to think about that one a bit more) I played around with two-plate monoprints of horizons against a texture. Just combined random lines/horizons from one lino on top of a background lino. I like some, others not so much. It feels like the background print needs a stronger texture of some sort. But they're fun and I might put them in random groups. Will create some more next week and explore the idea.

Day 4 of a Studio Week - violet paint and linocuts

Violet paint! Wheeee! On the Lulworth Cove painting...

Afterwards I finished carving a couple of the linocuts, including this 3-plate one. It's only 2 parts in the image - sky and land/water - later I sliced the bottom half into 2 parts too with the land on the left, sea on the right). I rub on charcoal to see the dark/light contrast as a sort of preview of how it will print. This one will actually be a 3 colour print.

Day 3 of a Studio Week - Printmaking

The Printmaking Box!



There seemed to be a conspiracy during the past week:

• First a post by Katherine on Making a Mark about printmaking contending as the "new daily painting" of the recession.
• Then a fish printing series on the Watermarks blog ("gyotaku" - read here and here)
• Then my housemate went on a printmaking class for primary school teachers and brought home some cool reduction-cut style paper prints so I got to chat with him about collographs and stuff.
• Then my former studio neighbour Jo Oakley called me and invited me over for a printmaking day on her press!

Is the universe trying to tell me something?

So I decided to have a rummage. I probably won't use Jo's press but if I can carve some blocks I'll go have a nice social day printing with her (I prefer to print by hand with a baren on Japanese paper).

Found a lot of my old blocks, though with age they can get brittle and unusable (one block of the Gypsy Moth print cracked). So I might reprint some of those, but really what I wanted were the uncarved pieces that I knew were in there somewhere...



I've been doing printmaking for a long time really, originally Annette taught me oil painting and printmaking of all sorts. I even found a spooky resemblance between my sketch of the cliffs at Lulworth Cove in January 2009 and a linocut from Glen Nevis back in the 90s.



My sketchbook of line drawings was the perfect inspiration for some linocuts. And some subjects work really well in line, maybe better than as painted colour fields. Places like Dungeness and the cliffs at Portland. So drew a bit with watercolour pencil (since it doesn't create an oily resist like graphite pencil) and started carving. Very therapeutic and already doing a different kind of work is giving me new ideas for my current paintings.

Day 2 of a Studio Week - Lighting and tiny paintings

It's a bit dark today, ah yes that immortal cry of English artists! So here's another sneaky look at my new red painting (it's actually quite dark) "Bracken by Little Sea" next to the standing lamp (one blue daylight bulb, one halogen bulb).



But I've finished up the 5" canvases I started yesterday and tidied a bit. Unfortunately I have to go out for the late afternoon and collect my paintings from Skylark Gallery (which I've now left) and then meet my friend Toni McGreachan to help her photoshop some images for a competition entry. (I just redesigned her website last week, what do you think?) Of course artist meetings require a coffee in the Picturehouse cinema bar/cafe so who am I to argue?



The new Tiny Horizons shown will be added to my Etsy shop tonight and tomorrow.

Day 1 of a Studio Week - Art photography

New tripod arrived - a Manfrotto 055XDB for those interested - so played with it to see if I could get a better photo of my most difficult-to-photograph painting yet. The white "Scale Nab" cliffs painting from the Yorkshire coast series. (upside down on the easel above, close-up detail below).

Should be even better when my shutter remote arrives!



This painting is now available here in my Etsy shop.