Peru

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Peru, from Stanford's Library series, 1912.

Back home, bored out of my brains, and feeling very much like Richard Hanney in the opening pages of The Thirty-Nine Steps, I plan a trip to Peru. I don't imagine that it will be possible to get there before 2016, however.

As ever, the British Foreign Office site provides delightfully discouraging reading:

Demonstrations are common in Peru and can turn violent quickly.There’s risk of robbery by bogus taxi drivers, especially to and from the airports and at bus terminals. Driving standards are poor. Crashes resulting in death and injury occur frequently. There is a general threat from terrorism....etc etc.

 I think the officials in the Foreign Office would really prefer if British citizens just stayed at home.

Anyway, I have ordered a guidebook. I suppose I won't get into trouble, as I rarely do, and even if I do, I suppose there will be some way out of it.

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A dark red horse, Lagoa

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A dark red horse, Lagoa, oil on card, 18 x 22 cm   SOLD

Painted from the ridge as you enter Canto da Lagoa, a favourite place of mine to work from.

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Drawings for notional murals and sculptures.

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Drawings for notional murals and sculptures. 

Should anyone have a place to do these let me know and I will come and make them.

 Gaint cats on garden walls- one leaping the other seated

 A giant horse on a gable

 Cat`s head and cat leaping

A boy and a girl on a garden wall

These pursue themes of gigantism. I very much enjoy the simple advertising, seen in developing countries. There is a sweetness in those advertisements that I`d like to bring to some walls and I would like to do some in Belfast to replace the hateful murals that proliferate there,

The softness of effect given by a pen cannot be reproduced on a wall, so I would have to find a way of creating a gentle quality through colour.

Suspended faces.

Thes two, above and below, are either balloons, or flat representations of faces, again enormous, to be suspended by ropes from tree branches or, below,  supported by long poles.

Poles with faces.

A giant sculpture of a worthy man, with cyclist for scale.

I think tidying the drawings with correction fluid might make them more comprehensible, but they become a little uglier.

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Flowers in black

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Flowers in black, oil on card, 18 x 22 cm  SOLD

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April in Britain and France: Part Four: Somerset and London; Conclusions

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 Wiltshire, a view near Bruton, oil on card, 17 x 24 cm  SOLD

That brings me to a close. Somerset is beautiful, but the weather was inconsistent, and England in the grey doesn't make for good painting.

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Conclusions

The trip involved too many different destinations or, rather, I found my energies spent too much in lugging luggage around, catching planes or trains or taxis than I would have liked.  In future, It would have been better to have rented a place for a month and used it as a base, instead of constantly having to pack and unpack and carry bags here and there. It's good for me to paint in different places: I need variety. But the actual business of travel itself has become tiresome for me.

This is the longest period of time I've spent in the UK. It is a cold country- in April it was still overcoat weather. It is not a place on the edge of collapse as some of its newspapers would like to imply, but reasonably orderly and civilised. It is very crowded, especially in the south. Despite the foodie revolution, it is still not easy to get a good simple meal for less than ten pounds. The beer is good, however, but it is not cheap either. It is not cheap to roam around in but, thankfully, major museums are still free. 

It is a poor place for painting on account of the weather. I had a conversation with Adam Elston, the writer, and it was about whether gray days might not have their own aesthetic qualities. Of course they do, but their charms are extremely limited:  sunlight defines not just colour but form.

Paris was agreeable but not as stylish as I'd expected. The women are not as chic as I'd hoped and the place often feels dowdy, though the architecture remains magnificent.

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The pochades have grown in size steadily over the last couple of years. This makes them more difficult to carry around, and I paint fewer. I have started working with a portable easel which allows me to work in a wider variety of places, though it is devilishly heavy. There are about ten pochades from this trip that I like, not a bad percentage.

But on almost all of my trips I have been guilty of taking my subjects for granted. I mean, assuming that good pictures would flow, almost automatically, from simply being in x, y or z place. Aware of this, I've been extending my periods in specific locations with each successive trip. I shall increase my stays, and  re-visit places.

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The next foreign trip will, circumstances permitting, be to New York.

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Thanks to Jane Hodson for her generous hospitality in Somerset, and to the Ecclestons for their kindness in London.


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April in Britain and France: Part Three: Glasgow

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 Shop fronts, West End, Glasgow, oil on card, 14 x 15.5 cm  SOLD

 A close, Glasgow, oil on card, 14 x 16 cm

 A view from the Necropolis, Glasgow, oil on card, 13 x 18 cm  SOLD

A bridge near Glasgow Green, oil on card, 16 x 13 cm  -   available

Factory along the Clyde, Glasgow, oil on card, 15 x 16 cm -  -unavailable

I spent five days in Glasgow, mostly in the West End. I'd always felt very ignorant about Glasgow, having grown up and studied in Aberdeen and Edinburgh and there being a strangely exaggerated antipathy between East and West coast in Scotland, despite, or perhaps because of, their proximity.

Most of my thoughts about Glasgow were formed by a few childhood visits, by Frank Kuppner's A Very Quiet Street, and books about architects Alexander "Greek" Thomson and Charles Rennie  Mackintosh and my notions were somewhat romantic. 

I wasn't disappointed. it's a fine painting city: spaciously laid out with great views. There are few tourists. It doesn't feel like a huge museum, and yet it has a clear identity.The weather was delightful. People left me in peace to work, or were friendly without being overbearing. There are lovely little cafes and places to eat.

It's a  schizophrenic city: the West End and centre is genteel, with magnificent 19th century apartment blocks, museums and charming cafes, while the rest of the city appears to be in a post Imperial, post-industrial condition, with empty land free for construction and a sense of incompletion. This makes it a marvelous subject, and I enjoyed painting from the Necropolis, and along the Clyde.

The first picture is one of the best of this year: economical and cool.

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April in Britain and France: Part Two: Paris

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 Paris, oil on card, 16 x 18.5 cm    AVAILABLE

 Montmartre, oil on card, circa 18 x 16 cm     Available at No 31 Gallery

The two above are the result of my perambulations in central Paris: not an especially easy place for painting, given the crowds of tourists who make it difficult to work peacefully. And, as a generality, famous landmarks rarely make for good paintings, as it is very difficult to develop an original attitude to them. But I am very pleased with my Eiffel Tower picture.

I would have been better off with an easel: I have since acquired a portable one: rather heavy.

The three below are from or near my little apartment in the 12th Arrondissement, Bercy, which I found more satisfactory, partly because there is so much space to work, and partly because it is not really part of the museum city, and has industrial and railway features that, aestheticised, have a definite anarchic visual appeal.

For many painters, French painting is a touchstone: this is certainly the case for me, and a trip to France is in some way inevitably a homage, specifically in my case to painters such as Utrillo or the Impressionists. I think my picture of Montmarte has sufficient Utrillo in it to count as a homage.

Railways, Bercy, oil on card 16 x 18 cm  - available

This picture, above, has many damp spots

 Bercy, looking West, oil on card, 16.5 x 22.5 cm  AVAILABLE

Near  Bois de Vincennes, Paris. oil on card, 16 x 18 cm     AVAILABLE

Rooftops, Bercy, Paris, oil on card, 16 x 18 cm  AVAILABLE

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Many thanks to Frédéric Glorieux for his kindness in Paris.

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