Tree with yellow leaves, Itcorubi

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Tree with yellow leaves, Itacorubi

oil on card, 26 x 28 cm -unavailable

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Creek, framed

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Creek, Florianopolis, oil on card,  29.1 x 23.5 cm, framed  SOLD   

Thanks Peter for sending me the framed picture

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Botanic Gardens, tree

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Botanic Gardens, tree, oil on card, 28 x 25 cm SOLD

Today when I was working the aphorism, the perfect is the enemy of the good came into mind.

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Trees by a pond, Botanic Gardens

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Trees by a pond, Itacorubi, Botanic Gardens

 oil on card, 29.5 x 23.5 cm  unavailable

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A line of trees, Itacorubi, 2010

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A line of trees, Itacorubi, oil on card, 82 x 13.1 cm, 2010 - available

This was painted nine years ago and, for some reason, not posted.

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Tree, botanical gardens, Itacorubi

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Tree, botanical gardens, Itacorubi   unavailable

 oil on card, 30 x 24.5 cm

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Creek, Florianopolis

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Creek, Florianopolis, oil on card,  29.1 x 23.5 cm  SOLD

I painted here before. It`s nice to return to places and compare work.

 I continue to work on a larger scale.

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Three recent landscapes

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 Landscape to the north of Aguas Mornas, oil on card, 13 x 14 cm

Aguas Mornas, oil on card, 18 x 16 cm    -unavailable

The first is in my neighbourhood; the other one from the continent. 

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It is starting to heat up here and in a month or so it will be quite intolerable. So it`s important to decide what to do about the Summer: most likely I shall try to go to Europe and Morocco. I haven`t travellled anywhere much for ages and I could do with some different scenery to paint.

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A boy with a kite, Itacorubi

 A boy with a kite, Itacorubi, oil on card,  14.5 x 16 cm   SOLD

A boy with a kite, Itacorubi, II, oil on card, 15 x 16 cm -  -unavailable

Painted not far from my apartment.

A tree; Salvador

A tree

Taken near my apartment.

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I am off to Salvador for a week. I hope it isn`t too hot, nor too criminal.

It`s the second most popular city for tourists in Brazil, and the old central part is, supposedly, well preserved, so perhaps I shall be able to make some nice paintings.

The road to Itacorubi

The road to Itacorubi, oil on card, 12.5 x 12 cm

A very pleasant day for painting.

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I have bought tickets to Minas Gerais, where I shall pass Christmas, and Salvador, where I will spend some days in late January.

Fir trees, Florianopolis

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Fir trees, oil on card, 12.5 x 14 cm  - available

Painted in the wooded area between Lagoa and Itacorubi.

This picture is in Aberdeen.

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Looking up

pic

Sometimes all you have to do is...look up!

Looking down

 

 

With thanks to André Kertész.

The back of a filling station

Thee back of a filling station, Itacorubi, oil on card, 8 / 11.5 cm

I came here before and wasn't happy with the results: I'm still dubious.

I'll come back again another day. There's something in the combination of modernist optimism and low level squalor that I haven't managed quite to capture. Also, I didnt quite get the range of tonalities as well as I'd like to have.

Nocturne: night walkers' song

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Night-walkers' Song

 oil on card, oil on card, 11.2 / 14 cm - unavailable

The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night walkers' song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.

From Byzantium by William Butler Yeats 

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Confusion

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Confusion, oil on card, 10.2  8.7 cm   AVAILABLE

This was painted behind my block: in the foreground is a bridge crossing one of the drainage canals in the area.

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Sapling on a riverbank; David Sylvian; tourist pictures; getting into my stride

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Sapling on a riverbank, oil on card, 7 x 9.4 cm  - available

 

 

 

The creek cuts through from bridge to bridge at the back of Itacorubi, and I've found a little path, much overgrown. I went along it, passing a couple of fishermen. 

It`s a great place to work- tranquil. I might think of myself there working as John Crome, great Norfolk painter of discreet places. A thread connects all the artwork I've done, regardless of style or medium: the revealing of secrets. Finding and depicting obscure or hidden parts of Florianopolis is a way of revealing secrets, showing an intimate and private relationship with a hidden or un-noticed place. 

This is a theme that connects many artists I love- photographers such as Atget and painters such as Utrillo or Morandi. I first became aware of my attraction to this theme through music, specifically songs by John Foxx, or David Sylvian: 

  Once again I'm hiding in backwaters Running this way and that Trying so very hard to please (beware of hidden snares) Rushing to bite the hand that feeds me Running this way and that (there are always other possibilities) This way and that 

Backwaters, David Sylvian, 1984 

 Given the themes of secretness, hidden-ness and exploration so animate my work, I wonder if the idea of making the London Tourist paintings, and, in November, the Italian and Maltese ones is such a good idea? 

Such pictures of monuments and given views are surely against my every instinct. But perhaps it is good to oppose ones known instincts from time to time. 

 

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Above are some pieces of card being prepared for paintings. I'm very happy with this small format, which suits my working speed and also keys nicely into the idea of "revealing secrets", as outlined above. It took me a couple of years, however, of fairly steady work to get into my stride- to locate myself in the aesthetic- the first little pictures were generally underworked and to my eyes now, sloppily crafted, sometimes painted on badly primed supports. 

As I have worked steadily, I've managed to develop critical axioms, and raise the general level of my work. I'd say of every five pictures (a usual week), one is an outright failure, two are mediocre, and two good. Usually in twenty there is one which I love.

 But I have good patches and bad: now is a good one, though I scarely dare admit that for fear of jinxing it. 

 

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Tree by a riverbank

Tree by a riverbank, oil on card, 7.7 x 5.8 cm - available

The river, or creek as I call it sometimes, cuts through the back of Itacorubi and Corrego Grande. It's only possible to walk along some bits of it.

Little tree, wet day

Little tree, wet day, oil on card, 11 x 13.5 cm

Painted from the car parked in the semi-developed residential area behind Iguatemi Shopping Centre: rain: everything wet:

Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown

T.S. Eliot, from Little Gidding (1942)