Wooden wing

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Wing, side a

Wing, side b

 

A wooden wing.

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Armação, from the island

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Armação, from the island,

 oil on card, 26 x 28 cm unavailable

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Ground, Campeche

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Ground, roots

Nail

Centipede cask

Wire

Twig

Shell, stalk, stones

Ground, Campeche

These are "gothic" in the sense that they are like clues- concentrated and significant and related to mortality. They relate to previous series of photos such as Witchy, which is an open-ended series concerned mainly with forests.

But if they are clues, then they are clues to what? Something that happened, not long ago. Perhaps somethings no-one though consequential, but which are dramas, nonethless.

They were taken with a cellphone and I'll admit that I was not entirely aware of their contents until I started uploading them onto the computer: a process of detection.

Working with the camera allows a concentration on detail. This is something I find tiresome in painting, where I am much more involved with gesture and movement. When painting, my own psychological responses intervene with much more force, too rapidly for much detail.

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São Bento do Sul: an overnight trip

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São Bento do Sul

The countryside round São Bento do Sul  is very charming, with rolling hills and pristene small villages Moreover, it's a region of the state that I'm not very familiar with, so it would be fresh for painting.

 It's just over three hours drive away, so I can reasonably go there, stay one night, and return the next day having done some painting. I shall try to set this up to go in about two weeks time. I feel that the risk of contracting the COVID virus is low.

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Doodle, some themes

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1. detail from sheet a- face of a perplexed girl

2. detail from sheet a- tower

Above,  sheet a and below, sheet b- recent sets of doodles, done during lessons

These revisit familiar motifs- doodling is often t a leisurely perambulation round one's mind, and has an aspect of comfortable thematic repetition.

Some of these repeated motifs are:

1. the perplexed, but beautiful, girl's face; 

2. triangle, sometimes arranged to form towers or patterns

3. the severed leg and the tiny foot sock, usually sporting a short sock

As usual, I draw in black ball pen. I like a larger diameter ball as I prefer a thicker line and the occasional smudging that you sometimes get. The paper is standard photocopier paper. Doodles should be done as un-self-consciously as possible, and using nicer paper would militate against this. 

sheet a

3. detail from sheet b 

 severed leg, tiny foor with short sock

sheet b

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Plate, book, table, window

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Plate, book, table, window, oil on card,  15.6  x 15 cm unavailable

This was painted back in March, and put aside. It still works for me. It`s survived a few months. 

Still life is about a sense of place. But the kind of place is smaller than in landscape. And one has more power to decide what goes in that place. A still life painter has a degree of control that the landscapist lacks. 

A reference in this is Morandi, whose pictures are sometimes interpreted as miniature cityscapes, with towers and blocks

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Armação, rocks on a promontory

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The Splendid Rocks of Armação

Armação, rocks on a promontory, oil on card, 26 x 28 cm

I continue my work here on the rocks with their weighty, uncompromising forms. The colour is beautiful: pinks and dard reds. They darken so when wet to a dark reddish brown.

I think of a series with this title. Twelve pictures...or is that overambitious? It might be nice to have a tiny show of them somewhere.

You can probably guess that I`m pretty happy with how the paintings from down here  in Armação are going. I started visiting here about a month ago exactly. This season is subtle in lighting and my painting today is correspondingly reserved in tone, rather md-nineteenth century like Courbet. 

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