A trip to São Bento do Sul: Part 2

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 São Bento do Sul

 

This is the second picture painted here, plein air. 

 

When I travel in the interior of Santa Catarina I feel that I'm in another country altogether: an extremely conservative place.  On the Sunday I arrrived it seemed everything in São Bento do Sul was closed and I ended up eating lunch in a pseudo-Alpine tourist restaurant. And then there is a that provincial slowness...

 

The town has many winding roads which go up and down and is most confusing to navegate. It has many Germanic style buildings. And most of it is well maintained without grafitti or mess. There is a gigantic white cathedral, in a sort of Art Deco, perhaps, on a hill above the town: closed on a Sunday!

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A trip to São Bento do Sul: Part 1: a yellow house

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A trip to São Bento do Sul: Part 1

 

I stayed at Filadélfia Hospedagens, a charming hotel to the north of the town, above a district delightfully called "Oxford", in  beautuful grounds. The town shuts down rather at weekends, alas. 

The weather was perfect: sunny and crisp.

 

 

 

São Bento do Sul, a yellow house, oil on card, 25 x 22 cm

 

 

This is a simple kind of painting that I am working with: the style owes a fair bit to Morandi. 

 

 

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Lagoa, dunes; São Bento do Sul

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Lagoa, dunes, July 21, 2021, oil on card, 24.5 x 21 cm -Available through No 31 Gallery

 

 

 

 

An extremely clear day, like Mantegna.

 

 

 

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I resolved to go painting in São Bento do Sul next week for two nights.

 

 It's over a year since I left the island for more than one night.I will stay in a little country hotel. I don't really know this corner of Santa Catarina, though I have driven through it and found it enchanting.

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Dunes, Lagoa, July 2021

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Dunes, Lagoa, July 2021, oil on card,  25 .7 x 28 cm - unavailable

 

 

Detail

 

 

 

 

 

 

The picture is very grey-brown and wintry. 

 

I've been using Liquin recently and thus the paints dry much faster. I first mix up a basic palette with liquin before applying paint (this initial stage is extremely enjoyable, in which one discovers fresh new colours). I sometimes use a little linseed oil too, to get the right flow. The brushwork is rapid and consists of hatching. 

I painted a close up of some of the shrubbery about a year ago, which I felt very successful but I have been unable to repeat this for those strange reasons that govern one's interactions with the motif.

 

 Trying to recreate previous successes seems never to work. It's all rather mysterious.

 

 

 

 

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Forest Path

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Forest Path, oil on card, 26 x 25.5 cm  available

 

Forest path (detail)

 

 

The light moves around in the forest far more than is probably apparant to anyone who isn't sitting watching and trying to depict it. One has to choose one's moment of reality or else one is endlessly rebeginning.

 I worked quite easily today, but previous sessions here were trying. Thre are a good days and bad but it is never clear to me why some go one way and others another....

I like the meatiness of the paint in this picture and I like the soft chalky colours. It's all a bit Roger Fry isn't it?

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Trees in winter, Mocambique, July 2021

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Trees in winter, Mocambique, July 2021, oil on card, 26 x 28 cm

 

 

Simple tonal painting. 

It's funny how painting on consecutive days produces less successful results than painting on alternate days, or having intervals of several days. 

I believe this is not simply a question of how one percieves results but that the difference in quality is objectively determinable. 

Perhaps having time off allows the mind to relax and "take stock"?

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