Hummocks, dunes, Lagoa

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Hummocks, dunes, Lagoa, Florianopolis, unavailable

 oil on card, 25.7  x 27.7 cm

Perfect painting weather.

 

 

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A married couple

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 A married couple, monotype, 41 x 61 cm, 2009

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

detail- seated man

 

 

 

 

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What it's really like

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What it's really like, Monotype, 45 x 61 cm, 2009

 

 

 

 

 

detail

 

 

 

 

detail

The pianist is distantly modelled on a picture I remembered of Paderewski, minus the hair, of course. The fellow arriving is, perhaps, a detective. The weeping lady might be Diana, Princess of Wales but I am not sure.

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Killing a giant slug

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Killing a giant slug, Monotype, 45 x 61 cm, 2009

This is from a  series of three monotypes from 2009, entitled, What it's really like.

 

 

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A trip to São Bento do Sul: Part 4, Campo Alegre; Videira

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  A trip to São Bento do Sul: Part 4, Campo Alegre

 

 

 

 

 Campo Alegre, houses and trees, oil on card, 28 x 26 cm  available

I painted this quite quickly. I'd like to do more like this on a  larger scale. I was inspired partly by those Hockney paintings of Hollywood Hills from the 1980's, such as "Nichol's Canyon". I love how the landscape is piled up in these pictures and  how you can trace your way along roads snaking across the bright painted surface.

 

 These are huge paintings over 2 by 1.5 metres. My efforts must be more modest: I simply don't have the space to store large paintings.

This was the last painting on a very intense painting trip: I hadn't been off the island painting for over a year. I've been using painting to explore Santa Catarina for a few years now- a process that can never end. But I feel I can gain at least a loose familiarity with much of the state.

Videira is the next likely destination. It's about 7 hours drive though. This a trip would have to take about three days to be at all worthwhile.

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A trip to São Bento do Sul: Part 3, Campo Alegre

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 A trip to São Bento do Sul: Part 3, Campo Alegre

 

 

 

 

Campo Alegre, fields, oil on card, 26 x 28 cm unavailable

 

 

 

Campo Alegre is even more German than São Bento do Sul, with a stillness about it, and I think all talking there is done in whispers. Actually, I often sense that stillness in the German towns in the interior: sometimes it feels like an absence. I wonder if anyone else feels that?

There are two exquisite small churches and a funny cafe with little booths, a throwback to the 1950s.

 

 

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Four Painters for Inspiration

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 Four Painters for Inspiration

 

 

 

 

  Sholem Schwartz

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sir Duncan Smith, Landscape near Antibes, 1930 -4

 

 

 

 

 

Luc Tuymans, 23 October, 2014

 

 

 

 

 

Idris Murphy

 

 

Sometimes, when I am a bit confused I go on Pinterest and see where my curiousity leads. Going online is no substitute for visiting museums, of course. The dramatic loss of scale, as well as the distortions in colour and disappearance  of texture make online a very secondary way to experience art. But it's what I can do at the moment.

Here are four artists whose work I feel a strong kinship with. Alas, I don't have the dimensions of any nor full title information on Murphy or Schwartz, though the former is a contemporary Australian, and the latter from St Petersburg and was probably mostly active in the seventies. Tuymans and Smith are both well known, the former a Belgian, and still going strong.

 All are quite bold. The brushmarks are evident, the effect somewhat ragged with textures: a rustic, unpretentious. I love the bright, dense colours. And I like the sense, most obvious in Schwartz's portrait, of caricature and wry humour. In all, the artist is very present, and joyfully even  in Tuyman's more withdrawn work.

Also, I'd speculate, without knowing the working processes of these artists, that these painters have produced works which are "lucky". I mean, they teeter: they could be very unsuccessful amateurish paintings but they seem to succeed, to pull them off. I like that sense of risk.

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