Pre-Christmas Sale- today`s featured pochade

*

Valparaiso- beside Parque Italia, 2012, oil on card, 14 x 13 cm  - available

Today's featured work is from the charming old port of Valparaiso in Central Chile, and is in a light impressionist style.  

Pre-Christmas Sale

Unsold pictures on this site labelled pochades are for sale at the special reduced price of just 75 UK pounds each, a 30% reduction.

Postage and packing/handling is 15 pounds  for up to 4 items (up to three weeks delivery time), or 30 pounds for fast (Sedex) delivery (up to ten days delivery time). 

Please contact me for information: Tadeusz598@yahoo.co.uk or 0055 48 99967 3041

*

Valparaiso; Gran Bretaña; Painting in Valparaiso- conclusions

*

Valparaiso, shops, Gran Bretaña, oil on card, 16 x 15 cm unavailable

Valparaiso,  Plaza Waddington, dog, man, oil on card, 17 x 16.5 cm unavailable

Valparaiso, garage, Gran Bretaña, oil on card, 17 x 17.7 cm- available

This picture has some brown spots

*

Conclusions

I'd expected the trip to be good: I'd been to Valparaiso before and I knew that it would be a fine painting city. It was: it's safe, has variety of levels, nature, great architecture, few cars, sea and the people there leave you in peace. It's also quite cheap.

 The weather was perfect and I stayed in a great location.

Of the pictures, I would say that the pictures are almost all good, with two very good ones. I managed to push the method of Cloisonné (using thick dark lines to delineate forms and then filling them in, much as in Rouault's pictures) forward. It gives a rough effect which suits Valparaiso.

 Mostly, I managed to keep the colours and strokes fresh, and didn't meddle. I seemed to be able to act confidently with the brush. A sense of authority matters a great deal. One must accept that one cannot achieve all objectives. I have a lamentable tendency to say to myself when working "oh but why don't I paint that thing instead" ,or, "perhaps I should work on a larger scale",  for example. But to achieve one objective it is necessary to sacrifice others. In the aesthetic sphere, imaginative souls will always find themselves partly unsatisfied with the option they choose. 

One of the most common false criticisms is when viewers make category errors, in my case, "it is a pity it is small", which is like responding to a Chopin mazurka with "Why doesn't it go on for longer?". The mazurka's musical virtues and its concision are not seperable properties, any more than the small size of my picture is irrelevant to what I am expressing. 

I digress. Emboldened, I look forward to  Peru, in June.

*

Valparaiso- Gran Bretaña, from above

*

   Valparaiso- Gran Bretaña, taken from the Valparaiso Hundido para ariba map.

This is the area I worked in.

Valparaiso from Gran Bretaña, oil on card,  17 x 15.5 cm -  -unavailable

These two, below, are rather German expressionist:

Valparaiso, a house seen from above, oil on card, 18 x 17 cm,  -unavailable

To save bag space I`m going to try to make the carriers so that they can be used to carry two pictures, one glued onto the lid. If that works then I can more go on painting trips for longer than one month. This would be useful as I feel the trips have been rushed and superficial.

Valparaiso, rooftops, buildings across a gorge 18 x 14.8 cm  SOLD

*

Valparaiso, the sea

*

 Valparaiso,  naval vessels, rooftops,  16 x 15 cm, oil on card -unavailable

Valparaiso,  sea, oil on card, 15 x 17 cm

Ships dormant in the harbour. 

*

Valparaiso - in the centre

*

 Building in the centre, oil on card, 14.5 x 11 cm -  -unavailable

Valparaiso, shop in the centre, 14.5 x 13.5 cm, oil on card   - unavailable

Valparaiso

There are fine trolleybuses painted green and ivory. There is graffiti or, as some idiots call it, street art, and it`s nasty and disfiguring. There are schoolgirls in hideous grey uniforms which include monstrously thick grey socks. Why humiliate your children? A legacy of British influence, I fear.

There are innumerable solid little shops and to get anything you go and ask and an endlessly patient soul gets the stuff from the shelf then puts it in a bag. There is very little to choose from, making selection easy and making one feel grateful when you find roughly what you`re looking for, Then he writes the cost on a chit which you take to a minuscule kiosk about a metre away. Then you pay (sometimes its the same person that put the stuff in the bag, they`ve just walked along behind the counter metre or so). Then your chit is stamped or initialed and you return to the other counter to pick up your stuff. Obviously, this Soviet style system is extremely slow, but I suppose it makes theft next to impossible.

Neruda's house is not especially interesting, though the steep walk there is. The Fine Art Museum isn't that interesting either but does tell you something about late nineteenth century tastes and their insistence on imposing a certain cloying sentiment over everything, so that the depictions of nature are most unnatural and forced. Thus, the few impressionist pictures there come as a tremendous relief.

There are stray dogs all over the place and consequently dogshit everywhere.  The town is disintegrating- there are bits and pieces falling off buildings and everything seems to require renovation. Some of the funicular railways work and they are marvelous contraptions. People sell a bizarre array of used goods over near the bus station, laying out car parts, children`s clothes sweets or whatever you might imagine on the ground. That reminds me of Ukraine just after Communism, though the sellers faces are considerably more cheerful in Valparaiso.

The city is falling apart, for sure, but it is doing so with a certain geniality and a  Tom Waitsian style that is utterly  beguiling.

*

Valparaiso revisited

*

From Stanfords Library Series, 1912

I was so impressed by Valparaiso as a painting city that I'd had, since my visit there back in June, 2012, the idea of returning to do more paintings. So I'm returning in early April.

In many ways it's an ideal painting city: not too big and set on many hills with splendid views, great crumbling 19th century architecture and and that Tom Waitsian atmosphere of abandon. The light was clear and the people weren't annoying.

I have a feeling that I'll visit relatively few totally new places this year, there being so much pleasure in revisiting the old and capitalizing on the benefits of hindsight and the knowledge of the place that I've garnered, There is also considerable pleasure in seeing if one has advanced in any way creatively too.

But revisiting is an art in itself. If one revisits too soon, and one might as well never have left. What is nice is for ones memory to have blurred a little and for the place or oneself to have changed sufficiently to incur surprise,  to discover other perspectives, and feel delight, 

*

Three weeks in New York: Conclusions

*

This year's New York set

The trip resolved the desire to really know New York. There remain swathes which remain unknown to me, whole boroughs, indeed: the Bronx and Staten Island remain mysteries. And I have never explored the city in Winter. I also regret not having worked in Chinatown, which is very striking, visually.  But you cannot do everything.

For painting,New York good. The colours are beautiful- splendid reds, ochres, grays and olive greens- (seemingly the basis of Williamsburg's exquisite range of oils). The people are easy to understand, individualistic and bold. No-one bothered me while working and most people are courteous. The city has few hills, alas, so getting views usually involves scaling buildings. I wish I'd had more access to rooftops.

It may be the capitalist city per excellence, but isn't as materialistic as they might have you believe. No city with such dedication to art (which is still, despite what auction headlines might lead one to assume, based more on passion more than profit) can be said to be materialistic. Some of the art is rubbish, for sure. but much is breathtaking,

MoMa disappointed me. It's crowded, like a shopping mall on Christmas Eve. And the galleries are uncomfortable spaces where it's hard to sit down, or relax to study the works. There was a huge survey given to Picasso- an amazing display, but so large as to exhaust the visitor. The garden is .  and stony full of mediocre sculptures. 

Much more enjoyable were the Brooklyn Museum, which is especially good on American works, and the Neue Gallery, which had an excellent exhibition on inter-war Berlin. Of course the Metropolitan is glorious. And The Studio Museum in Harlem had a fine show of paintings by Stanley Whitney.

*

Whither?

The day long peek at the world inside the USA, which I gained at Cold Springs has made me think that it might be time to revive the New York Road trip idea. 

I shall attempt to re-visit Valparaiso in February for about ten days.

*

I am grateful as ever to the friendliness and courtesy of passing strangers, who were very often Black and old. 

I thank the philosopher J. Heald for his amusing company in Williamsburg, and for helping me lug the easel about. 

I also acknowledge the helpful presence of Lancastrian W.J. Eccleston who, for mysterious reasons, seemed to accompany me in thoughts as I wandered  in the Big Apple.

 Detail: Block, North end of Lorimer Street

*

*

Valparaiso, Chile

*

 Valparaiso, Cerro Bellavista, oil on card, 11 / 9 cm  SOLD

A smallish town, a port, dirty but striking with good old architecture and fine views from the hills above: in short a good painting city.

I spent most of my time in the lower commercial areas of the city and painting some of the many, impressive stucco 19th century very brightly coloured. There are many pleasant squares, though everything is in need of renovation and the whole reminds me very much of decaying Brazilian port towns that I've been to such as Pelotas or Laguna. The port area is very much Tom Waits territory, like so many ports, that air of dilapidation, which at times is very beguiling, at others merely squalid.

 Valparaiso, waterfront, oil on card, 14.5 / 10.5 cm  - available

Of Whistler I see just a little sign:

 Valpariaso, the British Arch, oil on card., 14.5 / 11cm  - available

I didn't work as large as I'd anticipated. For travel the intensity of that postcard size is quite ideal.

*

Back from Chile

16 from my Chilean trip.

Back after a week escape from this little apartment, from teaching English and rotting. 

Overall, I'm very happy with the trip. Chile is beautiful and fairly well organised. Santiago is elegant and comfortable to work in: Valparaiso is rather slummy, but is full of architectural interest.

 It was a pity that it rained so much on my first couple of days, restricting me to working from cafes or  the eaves of buildings, but I was able to do a couple of still lives on the worst days.

I stayed in hostels, which offer the strangest of communities: gap-year British teenagers, American and Canadian loners, Australians on extraordinarily long world trips, Germans sitting alone, and a fair smattering of friendly French. The atmosphere is very friendly: easy come, easy go.

I feel sufficiently inspired to contemplate a longer trip to Bolivia.

Two pictures - road-building; Chile

*

Tarmac, oil on card, 12 / 14cm - unavailable

Tarmac, abandoned oil on card, 12 / 14cm - available

Part of the series tracing a new suburban development in Lagoa.

*

I fly to Chile at the end of May: Santiago and Valparaiso. It is considerably cheaper to fly to Chile than to the North-East of Brasil, about half the price. I don't understand the air fares in Brasil at all: I suspect some sort of cartel.