The visit

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The visit, acrylic on card, c. 80 x 80 cm

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Birch Tree, Fop, Standard Lamp

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Birch Tree, Fop, Standard Lamp, acrylic on board, A1

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Probably from around 2008

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Drring! Drring! A Telephone Call

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Drring! Drring! A Telephone Call -1, oil on canvas, 2009

Drring! Drring! A Telephone Call -2, oil on canvas, 2008

The date is a guess. 

I wish I had done more paintings like this as they are enjoyable- light and unself-conscious.

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Pavement; recent photography; camera

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Pavement

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Recent Photography

I've put my brushes down, and have returned to taking photos for a while. I'd been working very steadily on landscape paintings for a good few years and felt the need for a change. I started to think "this is what I can do" or "this is what I do" and with that comes ennui. The difficulty of travel because of Covid reinforces this. 

Image-making with´painting for me has begun to follow very set processes- finding a place to work, mixing colours, a initial tentative sketch, revising that sketch, then blocking the larger areas, usually with the more distant elements first, Then adding darks and becoming more detailed. 

It's nice, indeed essential, to have a method. But I started to become aware that the method is one that permits certain statements, and negates others, and couldn`t easily shift process. It became uncreative. 

Hence, photography.

I've often had my doubts about photography because it can seem too easy, to be glib. But that is perhaps because I gave insufficient attention to the decision making processes which it can involve, underestimating their possible sophistication;

These photos are extensions of previous essays- the neighborhood through it's architecture, still life, and rustic or woodland themes. Some of them create or suggest narratives, and think of adding texts to some of them.

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Camera

The camera I use is a Lumix DMC-LX7. It's small enough to fit in my pocket but has a Leica lens and works very nicely. Larger cameras are cumbersome, and their SLR feature is much less necessary nowadays when editing on the computer is so easy compared to in the darkroom .

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Ground, Campeche

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Ground, roots

Nail

Centipede cask

Wire

Twig

Shell, stalk, stones

Ground, Campeche

These are "gothic" in the sense that they are like clues- concentrated and significant and related to mortality. They relate to previous series of photos such as Witchy, which is an open-ended series concerned mainly with forests.

But if they are clues, then they are clues to what? Something that happened, not long ago. Perhaps somethings no-one though consequential, but which are dramas, nonethless.

They were taken with a cellphone and I'll admit that I was not entirely aware of their contents until I started uploading them onto the computer: a process of detection.

Working with the camera allows a concentration on detail. This is something I find tiresome in painting, where I am much more involved with gesture and movement. When painting, my own psychological responses intervene with much more force, too rapidly for much detail.

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A photo from Bucharest, becoming an artist

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Bucharest, 2002

Here I am over twenty years ago in Bucharest in 1992. I had graduated from Edinburgh University two years before and was teaching English in Bayswater, London.

I'd taken the decision not to continue making art but to focus on teaching to make a living and get on the career ladder. That decision showed a failure of self-awareness, albeit an understandable one: I can teach, and that offered a much more secure financial future, but it wasn't a first instinct in the way making art is.

 

In addition, I'd thought that the pleasure I got from travel was just a phase, and that I could happily develop a life in London as permanent fixed resident, with all the usual stuff and relationships.

So, instead of accepting my nature- that of a nomadic and creative individual- I waged a campaign against my instincts and tried to force myself into a condition I did not suit, throwing moralist arguments about the "good of society" or, "duty" or "career" at myself. I had had some ideas that "happiness came not from pursuit of suit of self interest but in the fulfillment  of duty" (which is not a direct quote from Saint-Exupery, but could well be).

In short, I'd thought that  making art could be relegated to the status of a hobby and tried to suppress my desire to make it.

Eventually I came to my senses.

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Praia Mole, August 2015; Andrew Marr on Churchill: Blood, Sweat and Oil Paint

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Praia Mole, August 2015, oil on card,14 x 22 cm   SOLD

Today was a particularly lovely day at the seaside with a delicate, flickering light.


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I enjoyed very much Andrew Marr's BBC programme about Winston Churchill as a painter (Andrew Marr on Churchill: Blood, Sweat and Oil Paint).

 The programme focussed, rightly, I think, on how painting helped Churchill to deal with stress and depression. It conveyed well the sense of escape that Churchill must have gained through concentrating on his craft, patiently working in Morocco or the South of France, and the energy with which he worked,

The art of painting is akin to cooking in that it offers many relatively simple activities, such as mixing colours, which are soothing and sensual. The actual manual skills involved in painting are generally slight, so that persons with disabilities- such as Marr, a stroke victim, can work successfully. Contrast this to writing, where concentration has to be almost absolute, and which is utterly a-sensual; or, playing a musical instrument, where manual skills must be honed through repeated exercises if the artist is not to alienate his audience.

There is often something odd about Churchill's work- particularly with regard to spatial descriptions and his acidic colours. It is curious how highly intelligent people often cannot paint well: despite considerable dedication and the advice of excellent teachers Churchill's pictures are often awkward, and now seem dated. I find them, nonetheless, very enjoyable- they are so self-evidently a product of genuine enthusiasm.

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The Beasties

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We live in a big place that was once in the country but is now between a ring road and some yellow cul de sacs. But there are still some big old trees to hide us.

 

Every day I get up at 8.00am. I do that because I've found it best, it makes me feel better, because when you're lying there the beasties come, their antennae can be long and they’ll take advantage of your langour to invade and crawl. But my habits sometimes are broken out of desire for experimentation, or perversity and I'll seek to test the beasties and I lie there half asleep half awake and allow them to get close, some of them red and six-tailed: I want to see how close I can let them come without dread-sickness overwhelming me.

After breakfast I stroll in the garden.I see James in the garden with his stick. He's got a hole, which he's been poking every day now for two months.  "James" we each ask, "may I poke it?". He replies, "no no no! it is my hole!" I can see from the cringing way he speaks that he knows this is selfish.

I do not mind. I have my own bed and a mop which was discarded in the old road leading the the suburb. I have often wondered how it got there, because it is surely useless to mop the street. The mop has limited funcionality, the head is worn and matted and its purpose is more ceremonial, and at times the fancy takes me to stand at the gates bearing it, at attention when guests arrive, like one of the palace guards.

I have also a wardrobe which I can lock and several things within, a good deal of French soap and shoes made of brown calfskin, very soft and tender friends, which I caress before wearing, they are shiny and trustworthy. There are other things too which I might tell you about another time.

After breakfast I may stroll or pay visits. I sense the town is changing, oiks in training shoes with thick soles of coloured plastic and fat laces encroaching from the yellow buildings of the cul de sacs, with their tv culture, their chicken McNuggets, their obesity and bad English. Thus, my ambulations have poignancy: I inspect old fences and the roots of trees, touch the damp leaves of elms and smell moist bark or earth. 

I lunch with the others, it’s just after midday and everyone is animated: even Teresina has awoken and is inspecting her cutlery with extraordinary devotion. I think the beasties then are at their weakest, they can't be seen, they fear the daylight and the our healthy appetites. Neal tells bawdy jokes, everyone laughs; we eat more, greedily slurping bean soup, devouring prawns cooked in garlic butter, rick cakes, a glass of Chablis, then a Graves with the Beef Wellington.

I doze in one of the easy chairs after, or assist Frank with his model Cutty Sark- there is not much I can do to help, in truth, but I sit beside him earnestly sanding the edges of a balsa wood piece. Or I might go and recline in one of the giant sofas, dozing and half reading the newspaper. Or I might lie down, I might lie on my bed and weep helplessly like a girlchild abandoned in a wood, whose mother cannot hear her because of the traffic noise Zoom zoom! from a nearby overpass.

We take tea at 4 o' clock. I'm not having a good time of it and the beasties have been back. No one talks abut the beasties, and it's pretty obvious why, which is that there isn't anything you can do about them anyway, and because, contrary to common understanding- specifically the common understanding of the female mind- talking about things doesn't make them disappear.

Also, when we were taking tea and, somehow, in the conversation, the beasties were mentioned, Evrett became agitated, shaking, in his easy chair and cried. Seeing Evrett cry was not good, it made us all feel ashamed, diminshed.

There are days when it is good to take the bus to another place, only to be there and see things and sense the differences, such as how the air is soft close to the sea, or the business on the supermarket, how the people love to put ready meals in baskets then cars and then to drive slowly in a metal queue with their radios playing to their brick suburbs where they have children and store their cars and x-boxes and wear clothing marked by stripes or slogans.

Today I walk to the town. I go to the butcher, to the fruitier, to man in the antiques shop who is always angry. I go to the library and watch the books being scanned in an out by a woman who is always nervous.

In the evening there might be a meeting in the old ballroom to discuss a programme. Then, under huge cut glass chandeliers we sit on chairs of plastic which can be stacked with a harsh metallic sound. Someone is standing on a dias speaking, Neal is making a braying sound, and James is inspecting his stick. Frank is staring at the walls: I follow his gaze with my eyes: the walls are not still, their surface tone is modulating, changing crisply like thie pixels of a faulty television. I peer more closely, then I can see, it is the beasties, how they are crawling on the walls, their black bodies reflecting the crystal lamplight.

 

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House, Randolph Crescent, Maida Vale, London, oil on canvas, 50 x 60 cm

Probably painted ten years ago. There is a heaviness to the painting which I am not sure if I really like, as if I was unable to say anything without over-stating it.

At the time I was interested in getting commissions for "house portraits": and I think I felt the product had very much to show evidence of "work".

The idea of doing house portraits was a nice one: I love architecture, and I love painting.

But it took me years to recognise fully that I loved painting because it offered a chance to record spontaneous subjective impressions and therefore that the whole idea of being an artist who accepts commissions could never suit me (why this wasn't blinding obvious to me is a mystery, though there was a masochistic element: I felt that being an artist was airy fairy and justifying things on purely subjective terms somehow invalid).

I did pick up ne or two commissions but was never happy either with the results or comfortable with the process.

Governador Celso Ramos: two new paintings

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Woodland and Hills, Celso Ramos, oil on card, 12.7 x 12 cm  - available

Sunshine- Governador Celso Ramos, oil on card, 16 x 10.2 cm  - available

Two paintings made recently during the VI Festival de Artes Plasticas de Governador Celso Ramos, an event which provided the chance to meet many Brazillian artists, mainly from the South of the country.

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My living room, Florianópolis

My living room, Florianopolis, oil on card, 12 x 10.7 cm

One of a run of little interiors that I shall be doing. I suppose this could conceivably be No. 8 from the list created on Sunday 23 May.

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I'm off to a hotel in the country where they are running various art courses, including etching, which should be jolly. I hope the others there are pleasant. Anyway, I shall not be posting for a few days, therefore.

Trees on the heath - Homage to Nick Drake

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Trees on the heath- Homage to Nick Drake, Oil on card, 13.5 x 8.2 cm  - available

I was thinking about Nick Drake's song "Fruit Tree", while painting.

 

Maybe the fact of my being there on the little patch of heathland in Lagoa unconsciously reminded me of Drake who was photographed for his last album, "Pink Moon" on Hampstead Heath, London and who had a flat in Belsize Park, near the heath.

I won`t  go to the heath for a while: I feel that I've exhausted it. The seasons don't contrast sufficiently to make frequent visits to the same location creatively fruitful, unlike in the United Kingdom.

A path in the woods; paintings for sale

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A path in the woods, oil on card, 10 x 13.1 cm

Today's picture is straight from yesterday's list (no. 4).

I was totally undisturbed while working except by some midges who seem to hang about in a great clusters near these trees. They are very attracted to black clothes for some reason.

I don't think I have been so happy in the last few years as when painting outside. Meetings with others are so often marred by tensions. My increased inability to handle commonplace social tensions and my consequent preference for solitude is the sign of a failure on my part.

Today's picture looks set to be quite popular and I might do another, looking in the opposite direction.

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Almost all the pictures on this site are for sale; the prices for these little pictures (labelled "postcards", or "pochades") are about 55US$; postage and packing is an additional 10$.

I can take cheques or direct transfers from UK or Brazillian buyers, or SWIFT payments from other places.

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Some trees, Itacorubi; ideas for the days ahead

Some trees, Itacorubi, oil on card, 11 x 11.7 cm

Here are some of painting ideas for the days to come:

1. Barra de Lagoa, the bridge or the boats
2. Still life of boxes, cds and other bright objects
3. Estreito: more views of buildings there
4. Path in the woods (park, Corrego grande)
5. Some of the buildings in the centre of Florianopolis, especially the old bus station
6. Favela construction in Saco dos Limoes
7. The Hercilio Luz Bridge and the road bridge
8. The cds and books here piled up
9. A coat or a coloured shirt hanging up
10. The heath near Lagoa
11. A self portrait
12. The bed
13. The tyre shop, Itacorubi
14. Florianopolis seen from the continent
15 . Nocturne of the entrance to an apartment block
16. Nocturne depicting a white wall and a streetlamp near here.

I'd like it if the next bunch of paintings were brighter and used more primary or secondary colours, instead of the greys which dominated my palette over the last month.

But of course when one arrives at a place it's very often the case that the idea one had is less interesting than something that catches ones eye: I'll always discard the original idea. if that's the case.

I don't much like being watched when I'm working, so if a location turns out to be busy then I'll often go to a side street or more isolated place. This means that I tend to paint places like Estreito or the centre at the weekend when everything is shut.

And if it rain threatens, then I'll chose a covered area to work from.

Estreito, Street

Estreito, Street, 15 x 11 cm, oil on card

I think this week at some point I'll make a still life arrangement of bright boxes and bottles.

This one feels a bit like a Utrillo, an artist whose work must have gone totally out of fashion as there don't appear to be any monographs on him currently in print.

Flowers, parrots, mess

Flowers, parrots, mess, oil on card, 9 x 8.4 cm  SOLD

Another "colouristic" picture. It's nice to use the oil paint like watercolour letting it play on the surface, transparant. I intend to focus more on making bright little pictures like the one above: I've had my fill of subtle greys for a while.

Garage, Trindade

Garage, Trindade, Oil on card, 9.2 x 8.8 cm

I'd hoped to be using bright colours today but the weather turned out hazy.

I'm using a technique in which paint is removed after application by blotting the card with paper: suggestion being a more forceful tool than statement; something I learnt from the symbolists, and a mentality that seems to be a staple of etching.

Pylon, rain

Plylon, rain, oil on card, 11.6 x 9.6 cm

Painted from the car in the heavy rain in Santa Monica.

This picture has a sweetness that I'm wary of. It just came out that way. There is also something about the composition which I find too easily picturesque; hackneyed.

Balcony/ Sacada, Florianopolis; daily painting

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Balcony/ Sacada, Florianopolis, oil on card, 10.6 x 13.4     -   available

Today's picture is a very Bonnard-ish.

They are supposedly constructing or planting a botanical gardens there, where my view depicts though, apart from a large sign, I have seen nothing to indicate any work taking place there over the last year. These things take forever here. This can be most de-spiriting.

Now I think of it, the theme of the garden is really central to Bonnard- the oasis or haven, and this theme finds its domestic internal analogy in his pictures of bathrooms and bathing.

I previously commented ironically on daily painting, as if there were something excessively worthy or laboured about the idea, but I find that I have myself begun to paint daily. Some people might think this takes discipline, but the opposite is true: in daily painting, painting becomes a sort of anchor, and the day feels incomplete or strange if I haven't worked on any pictures. Painting comes to assume some of the ritualistic qualities of church on Sunday- it solves the problem of what to do, thus making one impregnable.

I think now if I were living in the UK, I'd consider attending church on Sundays just for the amusement of it, though it would have to be a church where the sermons were extremely brief, as I find them irritating. Actually, I find most aspects of religion, apart from the songs and the architecture, annoy me so I am not sure whether I'd really manage to sustain the habit of churchgoing (even in the Anglican church which is famously- magnificently- open to all-comers; even those who are quite openly just there for the aesthetics).

Estreito, Miles Davis E.S.P.; grid plans I have loved; disorder

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Estreito- shops/ lojas, oil on card, 9.5 x 11.7 cm   - available

I drove across to the continent and worked in Estreito, a district with it's own atmosphere redolent of San Francisco because of the grid plan, and the way the roads undulate, sloping down towards the sea, but with the sense of decay, disorder and chaos that seems so characteristic of Brazil.

It isn't necessarily unpleasant: as I drove I listened to Miles Davis' E.S.P.: modal jazz seems analagous to the grid plan: a simple clear rythmic and harmonic plan underpinning individual solo expolations, and Davis' 1965 lp had a mood very appropriate to the hazy cool day: laid back, percussive.

The shops and street furniture are jammed together chaotically- using colour to compete for attention.