April in Britain and France: Part One: London

*

 Hampstead Heath, oil on card, 18 x 16 cm   SOLD

 Berkeley Square, North side, oil on card, 17.5 x 17 cm   AVAILABLE

The colours here are gaudier than is truly the case

 Here are my first offerings from April's painting trip, which took me from Brazil to London, then to Paris, to Scotland, Somerset and back to Brazil via London.

London is not a good painting city. It lacks dramatic landscapes. The weather is both bland and unpredictable and the season changes lack force. The architecture is often good, but is also often fussy or indecisive, as is the street plan which rarely accommodates grandeur. And the city is uncontained,  rolling lazily in from endless suburbs and shires, undefined.

At the same time it lacks the sort of street life that makes Morocco, say, fascinating. In London, the private is utterly hidden. It cannot be intimate with you. It's true that you can sometimes get interesting views into the backs of people's gardens from railway lines but its hard ever to be able to find a place to paint them. And they aren't that fascinating anyway.

I never really "got" London, though I lived there for ten years, I seldom found it mysterious or enchanting except in old books or through the eyes of others such as writers like Ian Sinclair or painters such as Auerbach, though I came to love the more obscure stretches of Kensington and Bayswater. But most of it makes me shrug my shoulders.

Princes Square, Bayswater, oil on card, 14.5 x 16 cm  - available

*

Many thanks to Lise and Felix for their generous hospitality in Westbourne Grove.

*

Clouds: framed

*

Clouds, oil on card, 15.5 x 16.5 cm          SOLD

Framed by John Eccleston as part of  his collection.

*

Antonio Carlos, view

*

Antonio Carlos, view, oil on card, 17 x 22 cm  -  -unavailable

This picture is fairly similar to previous pieces.

I've become more and more interested in big scale landscape views: it's partly because I dislike cramped spaces, and like to imagine myself in a much largr spatial context than I really inhabit.


*

Barra da Lagoa, canal

*

Barra da Lagoa, canal, oil on card, 18 x 22 cm  AVAILABLE

Frequent weather changes from rain to sun to cloud made painting difficult today.

I'm try to get used to this slightly larger scale.

*

Landscape, Três Riachos

*

Landscape, Três Riachos, oil on card, 22 x 18 cm

Painted from the terrace of a fine 1930s church that perches on a hill in Três Riachos.

*

New larger carriers

Large carrier with label

Here are some new, larger carriers. which I shall take to Europe. I`m beginning to feel constrained by the small postcard format.

 I've not painted these carriers. I wanted to go for a different aesthetic: the painted surfaces used previously do protect the carriers against rain and dirt, but I wanted to try something else with these ones.

Different sizes of support allow different things, and there are some things that the postcard size does not permit. I miss especially the physical movement of the brush, and the chance to create more complex spatial arrangements within pictures.

*

Thanks to Larry for help with the Sun image.

*

A day in Antonio Carlos

*

Antonio Carlos, landscape, oil on card, 16 x 18 cm  -unavailable

A perfect painting day with golden sunshine and a slight breeze. 

Antonio Carlos is proving to be very good for painting with long low fields, a road winding along up and down,  a river, mountains around, and fine churches.

*