A quiet street

A quiet street, oil on card, 10.2 x 14.2 cm  - available

I had originally intended to title the picture "a boring street". I'd walked past it and thought, how spectacularly dull, I must try to paint it!, but of course as soon as I came here with my easel and started looking the more I found of interest. The little road leads to various research institutes each featuring rather anonymous buildings and, as with many academic institutions, there is a very particular atmosphere of "hush". The road curves round, undulating slightly.

This is one of the oddities of boring things: that is, when you start studying boring things they very quickly stop being boring. Martin Parr's collections of "Boring Photographs" illustrate this very plainly.

There is a tense stillness in paintings by Alfred Sisely, especially apparant in his paintings of floods at Port-Marly. This is one of the most Sisely-ish pictures I've done for a while.

Of the Impressionists, I feel the greatest connexion with Sisely: he isn't syrupy, like Renoir, or heavy like Pissarro, and he doesn't have Monet's inclination towards epiphany (which I don't give two hoots about, not having any mystical instincts whatsoever). His sensibility seems sensibly British: phlegmatic and free from melodrama and I love the sense of harmony in his works, which usually are constructed using a simple grid system.

The theme of silence, of boredom is very late nineteenth century: I suppose it relates to the often idle leisure class of the time and its evasion of social responisbilities.

Courtyard

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Courtyard, 6.8 x 10.8 cm, oil on card  - available

This is the contemporary Brazillian equivalent of those courtyards found in apartment blocks in Paris or Budapest: strange, silent places; half public, half private.

Apartment blocks here usually consist of blocks grouped together which are then enclosed by fencing to create a secure space for cars and occasionally for swimming pools and other residential facilities such as children's climbing frames or tennis courts. There is little that is charming about the architecture, and there are seldom gardens: a very narrow idea of functionality is represented.

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I used to enjoy the glimpses of private gardens from suburban trains in London: the gentle private civilization that the orderly street view disguised.

Near UDSC, Florianopolis

Near UDSC, oil on card, 15.5 x 8.5 cm

There is a good modernist church here, distantly influence by Corbusier's Ronchamps, I suppose, and I'd originally intended to depict it: instead I give you the curves of the road, the trees and that created by the garage in the distance.

I'll go back and do the church later.

This painting looks very much like 1930's painting to me: a generic sort of forties painting, maybe Edward Hopper, maybe Rex Whistler, maybe Balthus.

Shops and block, Itacorubi, Florianopolis

Shops and block, oil on card, 16 x 17 cm

A bigger picture than usual, today, and with a much lighter, sunnier atmosphere than usual. It was painted on a red ground, which lends the picture a somewhat pink tone

House on the corner

Houses on the corner, oil on canvas, 16 x 16.3 cm

Painted fast near here. I have more time again so I shall start trying to paint every day this week.

The nosepicker

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The nosepicker, ballpen on paper

He's lost in pleasure, indifferent to society and its conventions.

The finger explores ever deeper, squeezing into his nostril. He sensed a bogie on the wall of that fleshy chamber: it irritated, he felt it protrude, provocative from the nasal wall, an insolent presence. He tried to blow it out- to no avail!

So he inserted his forefinger into the orifice, speedily locating the offending piece of dried snot: now he must concentrate and, focussing all his mental energies, he carefully twists his fingernail round to catch under an edge of the bogie. Then, patiently, as not to tear it and to recover it in one satisfying piece, he levers the bogie from the nasal wall, prising it gently off with an exquiste sensation that is ever so slightly ticklish.

It is the assured performance of a skilled nosepicker: economical, swift, stylish.

Days, months, years

Ball pen on paper

This is a self-portrait showing how I am lying down.

I did this while waiting for my student to show. I have to repress the instinct not to doodle during lessons: the desire is especially strong with beginners who can be very tedious indeed. It's suprising how difficult learning a language is for most people, and it's surprising that people often don't realise how difficult it is, so they start language lessons with incredible optimism. But, unless they are motivated by the possibility of gain- such as the chance to study or work abroad, etc- they usually give up fairly soon on.

Anyway, lack of storage space means that most art I make now has to be small or disposable, which means the doodle is now re-habilitated as an art form for me. The internet has made looking at images, usually diminished and always pixillated, the norm and little works of art seem to suit the scale of the computer screen and its intimacy well.

With the internet much is lost- scale, texture, weight; but some things are gained- concision, accessability, speed. I miss the physicality of big painting, but I cannot add to an already big storage space problem by painting more.

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If anyone wants anything of mine from here or my Flickr site then drop me a line: the prices are so low they're almost shameful!