Shop window

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Window display

The window display suggests conflicting notions of intimacy: as pleasure, as peril, and as commercial transaction. 

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Window displays in the centre of Florianopolis really are like this: I didn't set it up, I promise.  I do wonder what they tell us about the sexual lives of the population?

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Eyeball

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Eyeball

These eyeballs are sold from a coin operated dispenser outside the local supermarket. I wonder who comes up with these glorious designs? In an ideal world the maker would receive at least a knighthood.

 Anyway, the presence of these dispensing machines and the utter pointlessness of the crap within them is, in these times,  reassuring,: we haven't yet been reduced to exclusively utilitarian existences.

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There's a colour range which I fall very easily into as a photographer, consisting mostly of secondary colours, greys and browns. It can be a little serious.

So it's nice to step outside that sometimes, and what better subject that the surreal world of sweets and toys, and I'll try to do more. It allows me to change gear. Plus, for sure, they are often rather agreeable.

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Dog, Rio Vermelho

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Dog, Rio Vermelho

The dog has found (or been given?) a tub and I assume there's something tasty inside.

In the great unceasing War between the Cats and the Dogs where do you stand?

As a child I always found dogs extremely unpleasant- the leaping, the ugly barking, the nasty licking business, the crotch rubbing,  the sudden, volatile  movements, their inability to recognize or respect personal space, their sniffing, their revolting smell, the vicious pack instinct...

Since then, I have modified my position to a less absolutist one and come to like certain terriers and a kind of small-to-medium sized yellowish dog you sometimes see wandering the streets around here rather innocently.

But in the War I am still firmly on the side of Puss with her lovely tail and soft fur.

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Woods

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Woods

 

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Moth

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Moth

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There are huge moths here, but this is a smaller one, soft and off-white. I found it dead on my windowsill. 

The sound of moths and night buffering against a lampshade terrifies me. I am not sure why. Perhaps it's because their movements seem so wild, so unpredictable. Maybe they seem like premonitions.

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Flowers

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Flowers

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Pavement; recent photography; camera

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Pavement

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Recent Photography

I've put my brushes down, and have returned to taking photos for a while. I'd been working very steadily on landscape paintings for a good few years and felt the need for a change. I started to think "this is what I can do" or "this is what I do" and with that comes ennui. The difficulty of travel because of Covid reinforces this. 

Image-making with´painting for me has begun to follow very set processes- finding a place to work, mixing colours, a initial tentative sketch, revising that sketch, then blocking the larger areas, usually with the more distant elements first, Then adding darks and becoming more detailed. 

It's nice, indeed essential, to have a method. But I started to become aware that the method is one that permits certain statements, and negates others, and couldn`t easily shift process. It became uncreative. 

Hence, photography.

I've often had my doubts about photography because it can seem too easy, to be glib. But that is perhaps because I gave insufficient attention to the decision making processes which it can involve, underestimating their possible sophistication;

These photos are extensions of previous essays- the neighborhood through it's architecture, still life, and rustic or woodland themes. Some of them create or suggest narratives, and think of adding texts to some of them.

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Camera

The camera I use is a Lumix DMC-LX7. It's small enough to fit in my pocket but has a Leica lens and works very nicely. Larger cameras are cumbersome, and their SLR feature is much less necessary nowadays when editing on the computer is so easy compared to in the darkroom .

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Princess

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Princess

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Claw

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Claw

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Steps

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Steps

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Night, blocks, Trindade

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Blocks, night

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Tongue

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Tongue

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Wooden wing

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Wing, side a

Wing, side b

 

A wooden wing.

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Armação, from the island

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Armação, from the island,

 oil on card, 26 x 28 cm unavailable

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Ground, Campeche

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Ground, roots

Nail

Centipede cask

Wire

Twig

Shell, stalk, stones

Ground, Campeche

These are "gothic" in the sense that they are like clues- concentrated and significant and related to mortality. They relate to previous series of photos such as Witchy, which is an open-ended series concerned mainly with forests.

But if they are clues, then they are clues to what? Something that happened, not long ago. Perhaps somethings no-one though consequential, but which are dramas, nonethless.

They were taken with a cellphone and I'll admit that I was not entirely aware of their contents until I started uploading them onto the computer: a process of detection.

Working with the camera allows a concentration on detail. This is something I find tiresome in painting, where I am much more involved with gesture and movement. When painting, my own psychological responses intervene with much more force, too rapidly for much detail.

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São Bento do Sul: an overnight trip

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São Bento do Sul

The countryside round São Bento do Sul  is very charming, with rolling hills and pristene small villages Moreover, it's a region of the state that I'm not very familiar with, so it would be fresh for painting.

 It's just over three hours drive away, so I can reasonably go there, stay one night, and return the next day having done some painting. I shall try to set this up to go in about two weeks time. I feel that the risk of contracting the COVID virus is low.

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Doodle, some themes

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1. detail from sheet a- face of a perplexed girl

2. detail from sheet a- tower

Above,  sheet a and below, sheet b- recent sets of doodles, done during lessons

These revisit familiar motifs- doodling is often t a leisurely perambulation round one's mind, and has an aspect of comfortable thematic repetition.

Some of these repeated motifs are:

1. the perplexed, but beautiful, girl's face; 

2. triangle, sometimes arranged to form towers or patterns

3. the severed leg and the tiny foot sock, usually sporting a short sock

As usual, I draw in black ball pen. I like a larger diameter ball as I prefer a thicker line and the occasional smudging that you sometimes get. The paper is standard photocopier paper. Doodles should be done as un-self-consciously as possible, and using nicer paper would militate against this. 

sheet a

3. detail from sheet b 

 severed leg, tiny foor with short sock

sheet b

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Plate, book, table, window

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Plate, book, table, window, oil on card,  15.6  x 15 cm unavailable

This was painted back in March, and put aside. It still works for me. It`s survived a few months. 

Still life is about a sense of place. But the kind of place is smaller than in landscape. And one has more power to decide what goes in that place. A still life painter has a degree of control that the landscapist lacks. 

A reference in this is Morandi, whose pictures are sometimes interpreted as miniature cityscapes, with towers and blocks

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Armação, rocks on a promontory

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The Splendid Rocks of Armação

Armação, rocks on a promontory, oil on card, 26 x 28 cm

I continue my work here on the rocks with their weighty, uncompromising forms. The colour is beautiful: pinks and dard reds. They darken so when wet to a dark reddish brown.

I think of a series with this title. Twelve pictures...or is that overambitious? It might be nice to have a tiny show of them somewhere.

You can probably guess that I`m pretty happy with how the paintings from down here  in Armação are going. I started visiting here about a month ago exactly. This season is subtle in lighting and my painting today is correspondingly reserved in tone, rather md-nineteenth century like Courbet. 

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