Paintings from Santo Antonio; working

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 Santo Antonio, view East, July,  oil on card, 17 x 20 cm

Santo Antonio, view North-East, oil on card, 21 x 24 cm

I tried to do some work here yesterday but it didn't work out. 

Whether a session works well or not is unpredictable and has a lot to do with my mood. It seems to be best if I'm a little tired but not very, so then I can settle into the motif. It helps to have to walk a little to the local. That gives something of the character of a pilgrimage to a session and focuses the mind.

 If I drink a lot of coffee before I'm agitated and can't settle. Having people around is always annoying, something which many seem not to understand. When people are watching it is irritating as what should be a ruminative process becomes transformed into a performance- I feel a pressure to oblige a viewer. Doubtless, stronger egos fare better.

It's good if the motif is fresh, but it is also good if the motif or location has been visited before, albeit far back enough for there to have been some changes either to the motifs, or to my stylistic approaches.

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When I paint still life...; Moccasins

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Moccasins, table, stationery, oil on card, 15 x 17 cm  - sold

When I paint still life I don't much like the traditional set-up with a fruit basket, a vase and a wine bottle.

 I prefer to paint the things that are lying around the house lying, like the stuff  in boxes, the mess of papers and books or the tea things on the table, or discarded clothes. I like to come across these things. I don't like to "set them up". Setting them up would be a bit like a hunter deliberately placing woodcock in a wood for himself to shoot*. I like the sense that these items convey something personal, and so finding them in their places according to circumstances other than compositional needs is most important (it's true that I do occasionally paint flowers in a very traditional format in vases, but I do find this correspondingly restrictive).

I work on small pieces of card and I prefer things that have easily recognisable profiles such as jugs, spoons and shoes, or perhaps certain items of clothing. I give these things a context such as a table top or the corner walls of a room. I use simple colours: dark reds, grey-greens and blacks and I often try out new paints when still life painting.

I usually paint standing up and I walk around a lot, hovering. I work on several pictures at the same time, then at the end of the session discard many. 

I find painting still life is very mentally taxing: I work much longer sessions than when I am working on landscape and have many negative critical thoughts that I process or combat, with considered responses:

     This is weak: Weak in which way? What might strengthen it?

   That is the same as what you did before: Why did I chose that subject before and what are its virtues? Is there something that has similar virtues that simultaneously allows a new angle?

    How boring!: boring is about engagement in this subject. If it isn't engaging then is this because of the subject (because it's impersonal, randomly chosen) or the treatment (usually it is the former) or my mental set (apathetic, tired, over-familiar with the motif)? This question is the critical and shouldn't be dismissed. 

   That looks too easy to deserve respect: what matters is delight. Children's art is unskilled but often  highly pleasurable. Contrariwise, cemetery carvings are often highly skilled but joyless.  

I also listen to music and self-help talks and drink coffee to try to make myself feel better.

* I know that, ridiculously, this is how grouse shooting is arranged in Scotland: with the grouse safely reared in wire enclosures then released a few days before the "glorious twelfth".

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Riverbank, reflections; Florianopolis; cliche

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Riverbank, reflections, oil on card, 10 x 9 cm - available

A beautiful day: the tide doesn't enter here 'till later, so no fishermen today. I stood on the bridge in the sunshine.

At weekends, Florianopolis doesn't get moving until midday at earliest: even a relatively late riser such as I can wander about in relative tranquility in the morning. It's an odd city, provincial in mood, slow moving, with a limited cultural infrastructure.

It is as if it hasn't awoken to the fact that its population has risen now to over 400, 000. At weekends the centre feels very dead, the nocturnal sectors of the population drive in search of fun to Lagoa, or to large, bland shopping centres.

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This subject of today's picture is not new, but is it a cliche? Or is it simply the sort of scene that will always appeal to landscapists? To me, a cliche is a catchphrase: it has an glib cleverness about it: I don't think the mere fact of a subject being unoriginal makes it a cliche.

It's often better, in any case not to worry about things being cliches or not, at least until after the picture has been made. That is because, I think, as artists we sometimes have to work ideas through our systems, however uncomfortable that makes us feel, or how grotesque the results: we have follow them through to their conclusions, good or bad.

Ergo, we should try to hold off criticising our work until some time after it has been made, or we will never succeed in working our more dubious ideas out of ourselves, and will fail also to liberate the better ones.