Beiramar XXII, session 10, 11 am

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Beiramar XXII, session 10, 11 am, oil on card, 13 x 11 cm  - unvailable- damaged

A good session. A clammy day.

 I am looking forward to going to the mountains at the weekend. There is something wrong with the island, something that makes it unhealthy, lending it a static, moribund atmosphere.

Beiramar XX, session 9, 6pm

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Beiramar XX, session 9, 6pm, oil on card, 12 x 9 cm

 Beiramar XX, session 9, 6pm, oil on card, 12 x 8.5 cm  - available

Torrential rain here. Painted in the car.

The effect is remisicant of Ivon Hitchens  think, a painter whose work I like, but sometimes find a little facile, a little too charming and English.

On this matter, here is Anthony Blanche in Waugh`s Brideshad Revisited  criticising Charles Ryder`s Latin American pictures:

It was charm again, my dear, simple, creamy English charm, playing tigers…. I was right years ago… when I warned you. I took you out to dinner to warn you of charm…. Charm is the great English blight. It does not exist outside of these damp islands. It spots and kills anything it touches. It kills love; it kills art; I greatly fear, my dear Charles, it has killed you. 

A similiar idea is sustained in Pevsner`s 1955, The Englishness of English Art.

Beiramar, Session 6, 2pm

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Beiramar XVIII, session 6, 2pm, oil on card, 12.5 x 9  cm  available

Less turbulant today.



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Beiramar: Session 5 for 12 x 12 x12

 Beiramar XV, session 5, 11 am, oil on card, 13 x 8.5 cm  - available

There will be twelve sessions for the  12 x 12 x 12 project: at the end of which a dozen pictures will be selected for submission, one from each session.

Three more for 12x12x12: session 4

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 Beiramar IX, session 4, 4pm, oil on card, 113 x 13 cm  - available

  Beiramar X, session 4, 4pm, oil on card, 11.5 x 9.7 cm  - available

More- the weather has turned wet and grey.



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Eight songs about the same thing

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Session 1:

Beiramar I, oil on card, 14 x 9.5 cm    AVAILABLE

 Beiramar II, oil on card, 12..5 x 9cm  - available

Beiramar III, oil on card, 14 x 9.5 cm  - available

The colour in this pochade is much sutler than in the photo

Session 2:

 Beiramar V, oil on card, 15 x 13 cm

Beiramar VIII, oil on card, 13 x 13 cm

I shall visit the same location for nine more sessions, which will give me about 30 pictures altogether.

 I`ll select 12 of these for Jim Mendola`s 12x12x12 monthly creative presentation.

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A trip to Egypt; thanks; thoughts; Morocco

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  A view of Richmond from Ham, oil on card, 13 x 9.5 cm   AVAILABLE

Rose Issa will be showing the Egyptian pochades at the Dubai Art Fair, others were taken by the Union Gallery, Edinburgh. 

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I regard the quality of work from this trip as markedly higher than from the Italian trip that preceded it in September 2012,  and on the same level as the week in Serrana, at the end of 2012.

Why so? In Italy I experimented with larger sizes of pochades- the result was often to disperse a certain concentration that a smaller picture can direct. There was an additional problem, which was that I was not visually surprised by Italy: a condition that nullifies creativity.

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I want to thank those who helped me on this trip: Rose Issa, Chris and Anci, Lise Colyer, my parents, the staff at the Victoria Hotel, Cairo and, the two nice German couples -one in Luxor the other in Aswan- who, perhaps unknown to them, cheered me up immensely  when I thought things were going pear shaped.

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The next trip will be to Uruguay, followed, most likely, by Morocco and the UK.

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Ham House in Winter, oil on card, 9.5 x 11.2 cm unavailable




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