Highlights from Zakynthos

I won't bore you with endless photos of beach shots. Suffice to say we went to Maistrali in Tragaki, the same place as last year and it was truly fantastic. I picked out a few that capture the holiday pretty well.





Rumour was there were sharks in the pool....


Actually just J, looking for his paddles.

No holiday at Maistrali is complete with out some Greek night dancing. M joined in with far more enthusiasm than most, but I have to admit it was great fun once you got going....Lots of spinning involved. lol.

We hired a jeep for the day to explore a bit and visit the turtle (caretta-caretta) nesting beach at Gerakis. We decided it would be fun to try and find "that restaurant we went to last year" which is perched on top of one of the mountains. Picking one, we proceeded to drive up very steep inclines and when I observed that the road was more goat track than anything we drew to a halt. It was then I looked out the side window to see these...accompanied by gathering angry bees...


Zakynthos is famous (and rightly so) for its gorgeous honey but we didn't wait around and after what seemed like a 90-point turn on a road barely wider than the jeep with a 1000ft drop on one side, we made off in a cloud of dust.

We eventually found the restaurant, in Gerakari. This taverna sits at the top of the mountain, in the highest point of the village overlooking the island. The terrace where you eat is a balcony which is built so that you have a panoramic view of the island. I think the owner must be keen on flowers and crochet....In the beautiful gardens I came across this fellow...And for once, clean and fed (at the same time rather than one or the other) children. Yammas!

Race for Life

Thank you to everyone who gave their support and sponsorship for Race for Life. I managed a respectable 35 mins for 5k. (Not bad considering I had just got back from a fortnight's "training" consisting largely of ouzo and greek meatballs).
Here I am pictured before the race, with my friend MissT.

That was the artweeks that was....

After a frantic couple of weeks painting, followed by artweeks, I thought I would share some photos (courtesy of Julie at the Emporium). I took my paints along to do some demos during the exhibition. The best bit was getting kids having a go at acrylics, and Emma if you read this...please get in touch !! Thanks to everyone who came along. You can view some more examples of what was on display here.

Study in Red

I mentioned earlier that I had been working a lot in red lately.

This was for a sizeable commission for an Oxford client and the brief was to put some zing (and red) into the room. The design is based on a diamond painting I did last year. Slightly cubist in style and making full use of colour and juxtaposition of shapes. I had 4 huge canvases to work with. Two are 3 x 4 feet, one 2 x 5 feet and one 2 x 3 feet. My client has kindly allowed me to show you what they look like in situ. Its one thing to see photos of canvases, and quite another to see them in context, so its a rare treat for me to be able to share. I hope you enjoy.

Susan Daisies

Art Weeks is nearly upon me. I have 2 nights left and 2 paintings to go.
This is Susan. 12 x 24 inches. Acrylic on canvas.
I've been working on a lot of reds lately (pics to follow) so this one felt very refreshing to do.

First painting for April

This one is destined for Artweeks exhibition. I wanted to portray fabric using paint....and gold leaf.
Every now and then I like departing from my usual compositions and style just to experiment with something new. Works like spring cleaning in your head.
I really love this time of year. The light is better. People are happier. And the cricket season and long sunny weekends are just around the corner.

I have gone and done it now by mentioning cricket which probably means it will rain constantly throughout May.....hey ho.

"Qui audet adipiscitur",

I am working in what can be said is more than a handful of paintings at\the moment

Pain (in the knee)

As opposed to the neck.
I have managed to sprain some ligaments in my knee. No walking. No standing. Certainly very little painting. I am very fed up. Today, a random door caller turned up selling oil paintings. They were extremely good. He was french and represented a number of artists in a collective who preferred to sell their art (very cheaply ) in this way.
It was such a ray of sunshine in my enforced recuperation to meet with and look at other peoples' stuff...and it was all good too!

Bugger. I want to be back in my studio.

Disclaimer: Please forgive this somewhat self pitying post. I have been confined. And for someone who never sits, thats torture.

Spring greens

Colour at last!!

Blocked in this morning. I am painting a series of exotic flowers from more unusual angles on 10" square canvases for Artweeks in May.

Ne me quitte pas

Sunny day and some Nina Simone.
My submission for the RA Summer Exhibition is finally finished, after many many hours and a lot of silver leaf on the studio floor.....mobile....laptop.....
I will be a little bit wistful to see them go, after they have kept me company in the studio awhile.

Update

I have decided to remove the studio cam as it was so s- l-o-w-. Webcams in studios are a nice idea in principle, except that sometimes there is little activity worth watching and so it rather does become a 'watching paint dry' exercise.

That said, you can always video call the studio when i'm online and painting to see whats going on. Using MSN. My MSN address is in my profile.

What a difference a scan makes....

This is a digitally remastered crop from a painting done some time ago. The original was in black and red...

Steve Taylor at Art Fusion did this for me and we are going to experiment with putting this image on different media. I would like to see this on a sheet of metal.

The whole idea of revisiting work using digital techniques opens up a mind-boggling number of possibilities and you'd be hard pressed to know when to stop. There are so many tools at your disposal these days, makes you wonder if the days of brush and canvas are numbered....

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.
Aristotle

Background

Some work on the background this morning. I think I am almost on the home stretch with this one. I have really enjoyed the exercise of painting in 2 colours...but I have some exotic flowers on the go with lots of bright vibrant colours which I'm looking forward to splashing around with later this week.

I am not convinced about the circles.....I am half tempted to paint them out again and blend the background with just a few bright highlighted spheres here and there. What do you think? C'mon you lurkers....

A mornings work

Finished off filling in the cloth (I have always avoided painting material in the past and now I remember why...). And done some on the body of the child. I'm aiming for a 'rough' brush work feel to this. ..rather than smooth and realistic. I want people to have to stand back from this one to see it. How on earth I am going to get it to London on the Oxford Tube doesn't bear thinking about at this stage....

I used my webcam to take this picture as I was too idle to go back into the house to fetch the camera and plethora of wires required to upload to the laptop...and I'm quite pleased with the photo. I might more use of this video cam in future.....

All you need is love

Working on the clothes this evening. If technology doesn't let me down..you should see this on the studio cam....if I disappear...its because the other half wants to check the footie results.....

Up close and personal....studio cam

O the wonders of modern technology. Thanks to those clever peeps at ustream, you can now see into my studio when I'm online.

Also if you click on the Verve link...you can see blogs from all over the world and what they are up to.

Technology rools.

Serendipity

Out last night for the Arts Group meeting. I was lucky enough to get picked out of a hat to have some work digitally fiddled with (for want of a better term) by Steve Taylor at Art Fusion. He creates the most fantastic prints on whatever substrate you can think of, then paints in some more, and photographs them again!. The end result is amazing. This is one of the samples he has to play with. Exciting stuff.

"Adventure is hardship aesthetically considered"

Barry Targan

Only vegetables are happy

As if I don't have enough already! Meet Ronaldo and Cootie, 7 week old boy rats. They like the studio.

"People need trouble - a little frustration to sharpen the spirit on, toughen it. Artists do; I don't mean you need to live in a rat hole or gutter, but you have to learn fortitude, endurance. Only vegetables are happy"

William Faulkner

Flesh on bone

Did some more on the RA painting this morning. I am exploring a new technique with this one. Using acrylic more like oils. I have still a long way to go but I am pleased with how this one is shaping up. All I am using is titanium white and mars black. To give you an idea of scale, this canvas is 30 x 40 inches. You are probably best off clicking on the image to get the best view :-)

Too tired to sleep

Visions for those too tired to sleep,
These seeds cast a film over eyes which weep.

Amy Lowell

The latest offering from the studio. A christmas day commission

Thought for the day

I found I could say things with colour and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for

O'Keeffe

Proper work

Enough taking the mick out of the late night wine-induced ramblings of a fellow artist, I have actually done 'some' work today.

Toast

Just for Graham.
Heh heh heh

One more....

Project that is.

You may have been following the progress of a little wodden box. Well this is where its at. A fair few layers still to go, but you can picture the final piece now I think.

Projects

January...and now February, have been unusually busy months for me. January saw the Open exhibition at the Modern Art Museum in Oxford.

This is also the time of year when work for the 2008 Artweeks needs to be planned. This year I am exhibiting alongside photographer Karen Foster at the Eynsham Emporium.
I really urge you to take a look at Karen's work.
As well as Artweeks, which kicks off in May, there is of course the RA Summer Exhibition. At least I've made a 'sort of' start on that, but have some more ideas in the pipeline.

Of course there are the commissions...and the latest one I will be sharing here. It is for 4 abstracts in a predominateley red and modern theme to match decor.
These are the paintlets for the project so far....

This is a 36 x 48" landscape:

This is a diptych, one panel 24 x 36" and the other 24 x 60"



And this is a 36 x 48" vertical



They are all inspired from the diamond painting I did last year.....

Some of these canvases are so large, I am going to need to modify my easel tp take them. For instance, the two canvases in the diptych need to be painted alongside each other. I feel a trip to the local DIY shop coming on......

Man Made

Is the theme for this year's Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy. I love the ritual of entering this prestigious competition....pondering on the composition, the reverent trek across London town to hand deliver your offering...the weeks of waiting....and for the vast majority of us, the rejection letter and the 'ho hum it was fun anyway' and return trip to fetch your work followed by a self-consolatory pint in the Glass Blowers' Arms.

I have pondered awhile on the theme for this year: Man Made. When I think of this, it conjures images in my head of suffering brought about by man's inhumanity....dark certainly, appropriate probably and it fits in nicely with my long unfulfilled ambition to do a mother and child portrait. Maybe this latest idea...which only crystallised this afternoon, has been brought about by me and M posing for Lorna yesterday....but once the idea formed....I couldn't get it down on paper quick enough.

This may sound trite or even pompous, but it was as if the sketch ran away with me and I know I should have used a softer pencil but that would have involved stopping to fetch one from the studio and I dared not.

So here is my idea. Acrylic. Big. In black and white for impact. It isn't nearly finished as a drawing, but it has all the elements in place for me to start considering the actual painting.

This drawing is A4, done in HB, white and black crayon and black ink felt tip.


I have been playing around with ideas for a border for this painting.
I envisage it being around 3 x 4 feet in size. What do you think of this? Its just a software created border, I was thinking along the lines of blood red marks as if made by fingernails...perhaps in a texture similar to that used in the Sun Shadow painting last month. ..

I need to be sure one way or another as the border would be painted last and if I didn't like it, it will have effectively sabotaged the entire work.....but I kind of like the semi-destructive nature of the scrathing round the edges..... Hmm