Praia Mole, August

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 Praia Mole- headland, August, oil on card, 12.5 x 11 cm  NOT FOR SALE

Praia Mole- August,  oil on card, 12.5  10.5 cm  unavailable

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Going to Joaquina

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Going to Joaquina, oil on card, 15.5 x 16.5 cm- unavailable

A lightly romantic picture.

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Santo Antônio de Lisboa, little tree

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Santo Antonio de Lisboa, little tree, oil on card, 13.7 x 11.7 cm - available

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Digital submission for the Society of Scottish Artists, 2016, Annual Open Exhibition

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Red car, woman, oil on card,  17.5 x 15 cm

Forest being cut down, oil n card, 18 x 18 cm   SOLD

The two pictures are from Puno and Canasvieiras. I wonder how they will get on in the digital selection stage.

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In Trindade, motorcyclist

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Rua Alvaro Ramos, Trindade, Florianopolis- motorcyclist - available

oil on card, 12.5 x 14 cm

Tree, Rua Linhares, Trindade, Florianopolis, oil on card, 10.5 x 13 cm  unavailable

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Rio Tavares, meadowland

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Rio Tavares, meadowland, oil on card, 11 x 15.5 cm - available

An underappreciated aspect of painting is surface: especially the surfaces of supports- canvases, card, wood, glass or aluminium, each of which bring specific qualities and meanings to a painting. I paint on card which is primed first with linseed oil-heavy paint, then coated with a lighter later of thinned paint which dries with a brittle surface that ensures a good tooth.

I will re-use these cards when the pictures painted on them are unsatisfactory, and the process of re-priming them lends them distinctive qualities. These qualities affect enormously the final piece: they are the point of departure. Some of the cards are brilliant white- good for very bright sunny days, Others are slightly toned down with various greys, light ochres and yellows. 

One can, of course, cover the whole card at the outset of a picture, and, Renaissance-style, construct picture from layers, thereby obliterating and sense of the underlying surface.  But I think more fun is to use the  particular texture and colour of  a card as a compositional element in itself- much as Chinese,watercolourists, and woodcut printmakers do with paper.

A double carrier with two card supports. 

They are glued to masking tape. 
To remove card simply pull the masking tape tags. 

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Two black and white paintings

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 My Living room, oil on card, 14 x 15.5 cm - unavailable

The room in which I do most of my stuff and sit around in is really two rooms which have been knocked together, an arch dividing them. If the arch sounds rather dated and seventies and dated, then perhaps it is, but does it has the pleasant compensatory effect of making me feel like an observer of the other space. 

  Things, oil on card, 10.5 x 12 cm

Some of the objects are- a camera, scissors, sardine tins (they sell tinned sardines in these lovely silvery tins. I have started to eat these sardines simply to accumulate the delightful tins. I have four), two small bottles one of Tabasco the other of correcting fluid, sunglasses, and a stapler.

I painted several versions of these pictures, destroying the weaker ones.

I like best when the visual vocabulary is very simple- a fat line and a thin, and little tonal range. A comparison might be with those pieces of Baroque music where instruments are paired to pursue a music structure whose simplicity allows their qualities to be contrasted.

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