A seated figure watches, oil on card, 12 x 12.5 cm

Painted some time ago, then put on the uncertain pile, I think because I was uncertain about its level of completion. But i think it speaks for itself as it is.

Yellow wall, dormitory town, man in hat

Yellow wall, dormitory town, man in hat, oil on card, 18  x 14.5 cm unavailable

Painted somewhere, I`m not sure quite where, but somewhere on the continental periphery of Florianopolis.

Portrait session with Carlos

 Carlos (head in profile), oil on card, 15.5 x 11 cm - unavailable

 Carols seated, oil on card, 17.5 x 13 cm

 Carlos 1, oil on card, 18  x 12.5 cm

Carlos II, oil on card, 12.5 x 18 cm - available

An excellent session with a a very patient and talented model, Carlos. The secret is to forget that you are doing a portrait and just walk through the  session- but that is the secret of succeeding in life in any situation isn`t it?

Rows of Houses, Ituporanga accepted by Royal Academy, London, for their Summer Show

Rows of Houses, Ituporanga, oil on card, 16 x 16 cm.  SOLD

I`m pleased to announce that this picture was accepted by the Royal Academy, London for their famous Summer Exhibition.

The animals in our homes

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Pelican

Surely everyone knows about the ghosts that haunt ancient castles in Europe. Sometimes, in former lives, they were victims of  terrible cruelties, and now their fate is forever to wander stone corridors and stairwells in search of justice.

Fewer, however, know about how even ordinary houses have entities that represent things that happened in those buildings.

For example, a friend of mine lived in a house that was once the home of a doctor, in a pleasant but unexceptional East Dulwich street and every morning when he raised his head from his pillow his eyes encountered a pelican, great and white and walking from the bedroom to the kitchen. But when my friend got up and followed through to where the bird had walked, he saw nothing. He concluded, naturally, that he had merely become confused by a strong dream.

Things like this happen often, and usually we dismiss them as temporary hallucinations, waking dreams. I had an aunt and she lived in a huge house that a hundred years ago was home to a famous fish merchant.

He was a very kind man, and the parts of fish that he could not sell, or that were too small for custom. he gave to the neighbourhood cats, and the cats would accumulate, waiting for their dinners every night. This became quite an event: by the time a year had passed over a thousand of them from all over the region, would sit in the yards where the fish crates were unloaded waiting for their repast.

 He died, and the famous dinners ended with him: the cats no longer visited. But sometimes, at night, when my aunt is in the living room she looks from the window and sees cats, innumerable, sitting silhouetted  in the moonlight.

A final example is more extreme, and perhaps more difficult to believe. In this case the deceased was a carpenter. He had an aggressive character, and scared everyone with his foul moods, his moments of furious anger, often abusing  his assistants and apprentices.

He lived alone in an apartment in a lower middle class neighbourhood of Paris. He died, and the apartment was sold to a young couple. At first,  they were happy in their new place. 

But later they began to notice how often things were broken- each blaming the other. You broke the vase that my mother gave us, said one, you left coffee stains on the Chinese Carpet, replied the second. And so on until one, hearing a sharp cracking sound, woke up in the night and saw in the living room a baboon taking a porcelain cup from the dresser, inserting it between its teeth and biting it with full force.

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I am writing this in in my living room. White muslin curtains flutter in a gentle breeze, their soft shadows sweep across my ivory wall. Two small finches, one blue, one yellow, keep me company. They talk but about what I cannot say. Happy they seem.

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A visit to São José

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São José , broken bridge,oil on card, 18 x 14.5 cm  SOLD

 São José, bicyclist, oil on card, 12.5 x 17.5 cm  SOLD

São José, Rio Manuim, oil on card 18 x 17 cm - unavailable

Well, here were are in  São José, on the continent, a separate municipality but now one which bleeds into Florianópolis.

It has the usual dreadful Brazilian mixture of dilapidated and occasionally charming, hand made, improvised structures; mainly from wood and clay tiles. There is much miserable modern- which looks as it it were made of painted cardboard in half an afternoon- and a few good Portuguese inspired structures, almost Moorish in feel. There are concrete blocks disproportionately large for their contexts, there are no gardens. Everything is a little dirty.

The bridge above, broke in a flood a few years ago- now a pier good for fishing.

  

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A selection of pochade carriers.

A selection of pochade carriers, with a coin for scale, including "The wanderer over Brazil (the red kite)" and coin for scale.

As you can see, the carriers are getting bigger as I prepare for the Uruguay and New York trips. I am going to use black for the interiors, as the paintings stand out better then.

The wanderer over Brazil (the red kite)

The wanderer over Brazil (the red kite), oil on card, 18 x 14.5 cm  SOLD

Painted at the the back of São José- the roads rise and fall and curve  beautifully, magical in the sun.

A delight of Brazil are the kites which children make and fly- the telegraph lines sometimes festooned with their tail ribbons. Sometimes this causes fatalities, and sometimes the authorities attempt to discourage kite-flying near the lines by putting up notices and distributing leaflets.

New York: can you help?

I`m going to New York in October. Meet me there if you fancy.
Three things:

      1. I`ll need accommodation - so if you can think of anyone who`d be willing to rend a room for 2-3 weeks to an itinerant Scottish painter do let me know.
  
      2. Also...if you know of any art people there that I could contact (dealers, gallery owners,  assistants, collectors, enthusiasts) that would be great- it would be delightful to have a show in NY or to sell work though dealers there,

      3. If you can recommend any galleries suitable for work such as mine (small impressionist/ expressionist plein air painting in oils).

Any help or advice would be most gratefully appreciated.

Tadeusz Deregowski

In the interzone

On the continent, Florianopolis, 12.5 x 16 cm, oil on card

Painting again in the interzone. A car`s place, Ballard`s place: drive in hotels and drive in take away restaurants: a solitary pedestrian, obviously poor, traipses along the side of the carriageway.

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Tomorrow I shall drive to the country.

The yellow bird; the fox; bestiary

The yellow bird, oil on card, 17.5 x 12.5 cm

Alas I suppose there is some of Picasso (not my favorite painter by any means) in this: I love painting animals, so did he,but my regular landscape work doesn`t often accommodate this. So I will paint things like this from time to time. 

I recall a children`s book called The Painted Bird (perhaps I misremeber the title?) beautifully illustrated about a painter and how a bird he painted comes to life. I`m not referring to the 1965 novel by Jerzy Kosiński.

 The fox, oil on card, 16 x 11 cm

These two are the first in a bestiary, which I hope you enjoy.

Pedra Branca; New York and painting cities.

Cmbirela with Pedrs Branca, oil on card, 14.5 x 18 cm unavailable

Pedra Branca, lost dog, oil on card, 13.5 x 14.5 cm

I watch with a mixture of bemusement, horror and a sort of perverse admiration as I see another town being constructed here. Brazilians have heard of planning, they even have a planned capital, and very striking it is too, and a planned state capital called Curitiba, but plainly urbanism isn`t something they really want to spend too much of their time bothering with, like the British with cooking and dance.

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I am trying to set up my New York trip for October. If you can advise on any art contacts, dealers, or galleries that might like my work please let me know.

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My painting trips have aways confounded my expectations- generally the better I think it is going to be, the worse it is. And the more preconceptions I have about a place, usually garnered from books, films and photos, conversations. the more the reality surprises, or disappoints me.

Generally small unknown places are best- you arrive there without preconceptions, style uncrampted and after, when looking at your pictures no one can respond- Oh but that`'s not how I remember suchandsuch!

I dislike both shoebox modern glass architecture, and molten wax baroque: neither are fun to paint.  Deco is good- so is austere Scottish Georgian. Both have a clear geometry that catches the light. But Po.Mo is nasty. I agree, if one likes Deco one should probably like Foster and Stirling, but somehow they are displeasing, in part because of their awful palette and insistence on humour (groan).

Trashy make-it-up-as-you-go-along Brazilian slum architecture is fun too, with bright colours. jumble, and blurring between interior and exterior spaces, so the private and the public are not so harshly distinguished. And there is still a street life here, at least in poorer neighbourhoods, something which has been virtually banished from the UK.

My notions of New York are founded on a distant memory of the three day trip there back in 1992, books by Singer, Paul Auster, Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker and Joseph Mitchell; photos by Steiglitz and Feininger and Weegee; films by Woody Allen and Scorsese and songs by Lou Reed.. I.e a peculiar mixture of the sinister and the sentimental and down at heal, or downright squalid, and mostly located between 1920 and 1979.

Much of what I paint in a city is conditioned by where I can comfortably sit, preferably without either traffic bums or salespeople bugging me. Ergo, waterfronts are good, as are cafes at corners and places which are high up. Were I a photographer, my subjects would be considerably different, with much more movement.

May Day, Pedra Branca

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May Day, Pedra Branca: children, dogs, kites, oil on card, 12 x 16 cm   - available

It seems to me that these little towns with their dirt tracks an dogs are as pleasant a place for a child to grow up as any. Certainly life seems inordinately more interesting in them than in Britain's sterile suburbs.

The children love to fly kites: the telegraph wires are festooned with ribbons from their tails.

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