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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Coins, and some small ceramic scarabs on a table

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Coins, and some small ceramic scarabs on a table

 oil on card, 14 x 13.5 cm unavailable

I don`t quote directly from, but I like very much the placing of objects on a board in certain games, such as solitaire. 

A slightly irregular laying out of objects is very pleasing. I am not sure why. There is a nice book of photos illustrating this pleasure: Things Organized Neatly: The Art of Arranging the Everyday by Austin Radcliffe.

Apropos Boice, and working methods. I continue within the constraint of an hour but reduce the number of pieces  being worked on to eight. This is less pressurised.

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One of the rooms in which I live

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A view into a bedroom showing a table and shelving,

oil on card, 13 x 17 cm -  -unavailable

I think an important aspect of Boice's approach is that one does not immediately act upon disappointment, which is so often -perhaps usually?- a corollary  to ones own creative efforts. One lets that disappointment sit and coagulate in the mind into a sort of resolution overnight.

An aspect of my approach is that it includes repetition. The idea is that one confronts monotony. The risk is that one creates it.

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Plants, a chair, a keyboard, wires, bowls and pots; Robert Boice and working processes

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Plants, a chair, a keyboard, wires, bowls and pots

 oil on card, 18.5 x 15.5 cm - unavailable

I am experimenting with very contained periods of work- exactla an hour. The idea here is that one will not tire for the next day, and that one will learn to work more efficiently, swiftly.

Boice and A Working Method

I am an efficient worker. I`ve almost never had creative block. But I was reading a review of Robert Boice`s Professors as Writers: A self-help Guide to Productive Writing, and thought it might be fun to experiment with some of his principles.

To summarise, he is rather sceptical of "inspiration" and believes that writing should be the product of daily sessions, which should neither overrun nor fall short of, their alloted time. 

 My time is exactly an hour and my process is as follows: I work on ten pictures,  one after the other in a rolling sequence. Thus, I work on the first for approximately two minutes before moving onto the second, and then the third and so on, until I reach number ten and then I return to number one.

This allows me time to view each picture afresh, and allows the paint time to settle. Also, it forces me to suspend judgement over pictures, so that I don't immediately jettison or revise works that might at first appear unsatisfactory.  This way my critical instincts are held in check for at least 18 minutes. 

At the end of the session I look over the pictures, and usually discard the one or two obvious failures. Then, over the next days, I look over them again, getting rid of more: usually I keep one,  sometimes I keep few. 

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Guarda do Embaú, with distant hills behind; working outside -palette

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Guarda do Embaú, with hills in the distance, oil on card, 18 x 22 cm Sold

This painting is available on Saacchi Art

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Palettes

Working outside forces one to use easily portable equipment, and that includes palettes. This forces one to be very clear about what colour range one intends to use. 

I mix the basic colours in advance then adapt them where necessary as I work on the painting. It`s delightful to see how the colours open out when mixed with white. It`s similar to the way in which, when cooking, spices reveal their scents when you put them into hot oil.

Of course,  at times one mixes a set of colours and then during the working of the painting realises that another colouristic approach would be better. Live and learn!

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A settlement near Palhoça; new easel

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A settlement near Palhoça, oil on card, 16 x 18 cm   AVAILABLE

This was painted using the new easel- it's less sturdy than the old one, and it is a disadvantage not being able to lay the tubes of paint out so easily. It toppled over once, and the wind caught the picture.

I think I can deal with such challenges but I might have to find a way of painting more simply than previously, using fewer different colours or perhaps pre-selecting them prior to working.

Easel- at times wobbly

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Central Park, New York

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Baseball, Central Park, N. Y., oil on card, 15.5 x 14 cm  - available

 Yellow tree, Central Park, N. Y., oil on card, 15.5 x 14.5 cm  SOLD

I am very pleased with this one (above) which seems to have a certain freedom about it.

 Bridge, Central Park, N. Y., oil on card, 17 x 17 cm- available

A boat on pond, Central Park, N. Y., oil on card, 17 x 15 cm- unavailable

 Trees , Central Park, N. Y., oil on card, 16 x 18 cm - unavailable

Dog, cyclist, Central Park, N. Y., oil on card, 16 x 13.5 cm- available

This is quite a nice set. I relaxed when working and the result is apparent. It's so important to be in a certain frame of mind when working. 

It's a characteristic of dilettantes that they wait for that mood to arrive and do not work towards it from whatever mental set in which they might find themselves. I suppose this is a truism for all jobs that require psychological sensitivity or imagination. Of course there will always be days when things really aren't going to go your way and it's better to give in and go to the cinema, but those days are few proportionally speaking and usually such negative moods can be "worked through".

Nonethless, environment matters: painting when someone is watching you is not helpful or fun. Observation doing any activity will  turn it into a performance, making it much more difficult, even impossible for the subject to follow whatever trains of thought they might have.

With this in mind, I am reconsidering going to Morocco, as the level of nuisance and scrutiny from passersbys there is unpleasant, and doesn't help me at all. Instead I might do further explorations of Scotland.

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