Dunes, grasses, bushes

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Dunes, grasses, bushes, oil on card, 26 x 28 cm - available

 

 

 

 

 

Dunes, grasses, bushes - detail

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A very nice painting day. 

 

I work much better after an interval of a couple of days than when working on consecutive days. I paint with immense efficiency after a break. But the next day I'm more hesitant, uneasy. And the third will be quite impossible, with false starts, endless fussing and a cross mood.

 

 

 

 

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Hummocks, dunes, Lagoa

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Hummocks, dunes, Lagoa, Florianopolis, unavailable

 oil on card, 25.7  x 27.7 cm

Perfect painting weather.

 

 

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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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Houses near a canal, Lagoa

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Houses near a canal, Lagoa, oil on card, 26 x 28 cm - available

Here attempting to take advantage more fully of the greater freedom with brush movements and marks that a larger scale permits.





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Above Lagoa, July, 2020

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Above Lagoa, July, 2020, oil on card, 26 x 28 cm - unavailable

I painted the same view some years ago, in June 2015.

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Trees and houses by a lake, winter, Lagoa

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Trees and houses by a lake, winter, Lagoa   AVAILABLE

 oil on card, 25.8, 28 cm

An example of the blocky style, bold and almost poster-like. 

I started working in this way when I began working on a larger scale. The methods I'd used previously were fine for a smaller size, but become fussy when I moved up in scale. I wanted the work to express very simply the strong immediate feeling you get when arriving in a location, and wanted to to do so using big brushes and strong colours. 

I pinched ideas from Travel Posters of the 1930s, children's art, Japanese ink drawing and German expressionism. 

The style is hard to get right, you can easily over-work. Or one of the colours will have got dirty and when its complete you wonder if that matters and should you just start again? Or sometimes the light changes so that the reference for the immediate sensation that inspired you is lost, and with it the painting.

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Lagoa, houses and trees by a lake

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Lagoa, houses and trees by a lake, oil on card, 25 x 20.5 cm

An expressionistic pochade painted plein air by the lake.

The sharp sunlight invited ice-cream colours, a palette I love but rarely use. The combination of hot yellows and palce blues and greens is lively. 

I try to limit the palette when working plein air, usually mixing the colours in advance. This limited palette is partly because my palette is not that big, and because having a large choice of colours would make painting rapidly more difficult.

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Grasses, dunes

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Grasses, dunes, oil on card, 19.5 x 23 cm - available

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The dunes, heavy cloud

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The dunes, heavy cloud, oil on card 20 x 26.5 cm

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Lagoa, viewed from the dunes

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Lagoa, viewed from the dunes   AVAILABLE

 oil on card, 24.5 x 29 cm

This is a painting from one of the two series tht I am am currently engaged in- the dunes- which is a revisiting of an earlier set. This painting shows the very edge of the dunes. Other paintings will depict the heart of the dunes.

The other series features views from the road to Cacupe.

One of the nice things about working in series is that one doesn`t have to think too much about where one is going to paint. The work is laid out. That can be rather a relief.

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Release for a little exhibition in June in Lagao at Think Art Tattoo Gallery

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Rio Vermelho, oil on card, 21.5 x 24 cm SOLD

  Muquen, oil on card, 25 x 29.7 cm

Ingleses, Novembro 2018, oil on card, 21 x 24.5 cm

Above, three of the nine or so pictures that I`ll show.

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Recent Paintings from the Island of Santa Catarina, Exhibition June 2019- Release

Tadeusz Deręgowski is an artist from Scotland. He has lived in Florianopolis for the last twelve years. He graduated from the University of Edinburgh and Edinburgh College of Art twenty five years ago and travels and paints in Latin America, Europe and North Africa. He has exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh and the Royal Academy Summer show in London.

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These pictures were mostly painted on the north of the Island of Santa Catarina - in Rio Vermelho, Santo Antonio, Ingleses, and Praia Mole and celebrate nature. But there is also an urban painting from Trindade and there are paintings from Guarda da Embaú and Tijucas.

All are plein air, in oils.

The paintings mark an increase in scale from the previous years work as shown at BRDE Gallery in Florianoplis last year. They are also brighter and more colourful, thus responding more fully to Brazil`s strong light.

However, they deal with the same subject- the necessary subject of plein air painting in an age of easy photography- notably, the feeling of being are in a specific place at a specific time, as opposed to rendering very specific topographical or botanical details. They are stylisitically connected to such artists as Eardley and Bonnard.

T. Deręgowski, Florianopolis, May, 2019

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Lagoa- houses on an incline; Urban Sketchers; photography and social meetings

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Lagoa- houses on an incline, oil on card, 17.5 x 19.5 cm -  -unavailable
 

The Urban Sketchers group seems to focus more on taking photos of their work and each other than actually producing work.

 Actually this is an observation one might make about many social gatherings here- that the taking of photos is their real function- the stated objective of a meeting being merely to provide a vehicle for the narcissism that is endemic in Brazilian society and which Brazilians feel no shame about.

The effect of the picture taking is to disrupt any flow that social exchanges might have, and to impose a very limited and specific interpretation on the meeting (happy, positive, glamorous, fun, in which all attendees are comfortable together, etc). This robs any true spontaneity from meetings (though, ironically, the photos are often posed in a pseudo-spontaneous way). The photos are put on social media and our and our recollections of how things truly were is distorted or rendered questionable. 

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Fields above Lagoa

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Fields above Lagoa, oil on card, 16.5 x 20 cm - available

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Landscape above Lagoa

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Landscape above Lagoa, April,  oil on card, 17.5 x 15.5 cm  sold

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Canto da Lagoa

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Canto da Lagoa, oil on card, 15.5 x 13.5 cm - unavailable

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Lagoa, haze; Dufy

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Lagoa, haze, oil on card, 22 x 18 cm   SOLD

A Dufy-influenced piece (specifically his San Giorgio Maggiore), painted near the docks in Lagoa.

I'd always been suspiscious of Dufy, finding his work easy, but now I feel it has something to offer me.  Sometimes, in painting,  the greatest challenge is to say just enough. At times I feel like the subject at an interview: desperate to prove myself, I babble. Dufy gets the right balance, often. Maybe I should have painted with a sharper brush, however.

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It's difficult to work with people around me, I need to be alone to work, and I need to find places which allow me to work me in peace. This is not as easy as it sounds. Brazilians are extremely sociable, mostly pleasantly so. But it isn't easy to work when people are watching and trying to talk to you.

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Dunes - from Lagoa

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Dunes - from Lagoa, oil on card, 18 x 22 cm -  -unavailable

It`s amazing how quiet, ethereal indeed, it is just over the sand ridge from Rendeiras.

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A dark red horse, Lagoa

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A dark red horse, Lagoa, oil on card, 18 x 22 cm   SOLD

Painted from the ridge as you enter Canto da Lagoa, a favourite place of mine to work from.

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Canto da Lagoa, large tree on a ridge

Canto da Lagoa, large tree on a ridge, oil on card, 15 x 18 cm -  -unavailable

Painted close to the where other "ridge" paintings were executed: there is a lot of interesting subject matter here: the road curls and undulates happily and there are still small farms despite the encroachment of suburban developments nearby.