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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Carnations 5

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Carnations 5, oil on card, 9 x 10.5 cm   SOLD

The final of this series, a tribute to that most delicious line in French painting which runs from Delacroix through Courbet, Manet, Fantin-Latour and ends, I think, with Matisse.

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Painting in Orvieto

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Orvieto, looking north, oil on card, 16 / 14 cm unavailable

Orvieto- looking West, oil on card, 18 / 16 cm unavailable

Orvieto is an amazingly situated city with a stunning Gothic cathedral, all very well preserved or maintained,

I tried to do the sort of tourist painting in the cathedral square that almost seems the raison d'etre for travel, but never really enjoyed it. Better were the fantastic views. The second, Orvieto- looking south,  is a sort of impressionism which isn't, in truth, really my bag. I'm a much meatier, heavier and more expressionist painter, much more interested in lumpiness than light. I've always felt a little self conscious about this, the heaviness in my pictures. I want to make this more of a virtue as it is in, say, Morandi or Courbet.

I may shift the average scale up a bit in future trips.

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