Trees behind a fence

Trees behind a fence, 35 x 40 cm, oil on canvas

A small painting (35 x 40 cm), again impressionist in method. I painted it plein air, listening to Roxy Music from the car.

I am priming some board to use as a support for a series of small pictures, about A5 in size. These will be readily affordable to collectors and easy to post. As my pricing is geared to the Brazillian market the pictures are particularly good value to overseas buyers: they will cost 100 Brazillian Reals (about 55US$ , 40 Euros, or 34 UK pounds) not including post and packing. Anyone interested should simply email me for details.

I can arrange framing- it is cleap to get good framing here and worth considering. It would probably cost an addtional 50 Reals, but I would have to check.

I believe in making art affordable, and available to those who are interested.

There exists a great deal of price snobbery in the art world- even a low priced paiting is unaffordable for most people. I think this has the net effect of damaging sales, leading to lower sales overall because it dissuades potential new buyers from entering the market. It seems to me wrong and, more importantly, foolish that an educated person on an average income, such as scoolteacher or book editor, should be unable to afford to purchase original works because of the art worlds pricing structure, which exists to maintain the prices already established artists and sustain the idea of "exclusivity".

The average jobbing artist, who is not a star, then, fails to sell and their work remains in storage for years on end because the galleries, and art world in general have conspired to maintian prices and failed to nurture a low-medium price market.

Or so things appear to me. Perhaps readers have another take on it?

Second stage.

The difficult second stage: difficult, because the pictures have neither the liveliness of the first, drawing and underpainting stage, nor the quality of finish of the final stage which is still some way to come (usually about three sessions away).

Forest and Swamp - first stage

Perhaps you can detect the forms of trees and bushes in this underpainting? And on the right hand side you might be able to discern distant fields between the trees.

I shall leave this to dry for a week, then return to it. The slowness of oils is fustrating and immensely satisfying at the same time, forcing you, as it does, to appreciate more and more- what a contrast to the glib speed of photography! On Monday, weather depending, i shall tackle on of the other two newly begun pictures, illustrated earlier this week.

*

Oil primed canves allows the paint to sink and become absorbed- had I used an acryllic primed canvas, the paint would not settle into the canvas, and each layer would more or less eradicate the one previous, so that the resulting picture would lack depth and richness.

The Best Cars Are Bristol Cars

This painting is a conversation that has begun happily. Only a few alterations are needed- most obviously a tidying up of the silhouette of the Bristol cars. It's not often a painting begins well like this, it only happens when you don't give a damn, but, of course, not giving a damn isn't something you can just choose to do. You just have to find yourself in that mood somehow.

The texture of paint is particularly likable here. It comes from painting over an old canvas.

Bristol Cars are a hand-built luxury car. They have been manufactured since 1945 and are sold exclusively through their showroom in Kensington High Street, London.

For those who are unfamiliar with this splendid British car company: http://www.bristolcars.co.uk/index2.htm

I do not exist

Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to sateity
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been
contained
In the hollow round of my skull. And God said
Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live? And that which had been contained
In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:
Because of the goodness of this Lady
And because of her loveliness, and because
She honours the Virgin in meditation,
We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.
It is this which recovers
My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions
Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn
In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.
Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.
There is no life in them. As I am forgotten
And would be forgotten, so I would forget
Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping
With the burden of the grasshopper, saying

Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.

Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining
We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each
other,
Under a tree in the cool of day, with the blessing of sand,
Forgetting themselves and each other, united
In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye
Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity
Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.

This is Part II of T.S. Eliot's poem, Ash Wednesday (1930) Faber Paperbacks.

The painting is a detail of a recent imaginary portrait.

Arrangement and comparasion

Art here which is about arrrangement and the comparasion of forms across a flat plane. It's called "Anglo-Saxon attitudes".

It was difficult to photograph this, and I apologise for the quality. It is a painting that readily refects diffrences in light, and appears different wherever you place it.

It wasn't hard to paint, and his makes me think how funny it is how easy it is to paint sometimes. The work just flows, and you produce good stuff. The things that are hard work usually aren't much good, in my experience. But I grew up in Scotland where hard work is a value in itself and it's hard to shake the mindset that tells you that an easy thing can't have more value than a difficult one.

The picture is 92 x 71 cm, oil on canvas. I want to work larger.