Chrysanthemums

Chrysanthemums, oil on card, 13 x 13 cm

The chysanthemum isn`t my favourite flower, because of their funereal associations, and also because I prefer more clearly defined shapes. Next time I shall buy roses. I should also buy some new vases- things such as second hand vases are much harder to come by here than London because everything is so recent.

Carnations 5

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Carnations 5, oil on card, 9 x 10.5 cm   SOLD

The final of this series, a tribute to that most delicious line in French painting which runs from Delacroix through Courbet, Manet, Fantin-Latour and ends, I think, with Matisse.

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Carnations again

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Carnations 3, oil on card, 12 x 14 cm - available

A follow up to yesterdays`s picture. I shall try another tomorrow, I think I`m on a roll.

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Carnations 1 & 2

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Carnations 2, oil on card, 9 x 12 cm   - - available

One of a pair of flower paintings which I completed today while it poured, miserable, outside.

For some psychological reason I cannot work on still lives unless the weather out is foul.

 

Beiramar, session 12: final session

 Beiramar XXV, session 12, 6pm, oil on card, 14 x 12.5 cm - available

 Beiramar XXVII, session 12, 6pm, oil on card, 14 x 8.5 cm  - available

 Beiramar XXVI, session 12, 6pm, oil on card, 15 x 11 cm  - available

These are the final paintings for 12x12x12.

 Doing a thematic run like this is a good way of forcing oneself to experiment, and I have ried to use it to play more with brushwork and paint.

Beiramar XXII, session 10, 11 am

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Beiramar XXII, session 10, 11 am, oil on card, 13 x 11 cm  - unvailable- damaged

A good session. A clammy day.

 I am looking forward to going to the mountains at the weekend. There is something wrong with the island, something that makes it unhealthy, lending it a static, moribund atmosphere.

Beiramar XX, session 9, 6pm

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Beiramar XX, session 9, 6pm, oil on card, 12 x 9 cm

 Beiramar XX, session 9, 6pm, oil on card, 12 x 8.5 cm  - available

Torrential rain here. Painted in the car.

The effect is remisicant of Ivon Hitchens  think, a painter whose work I like, but sometimes find a little facile, a little too charming and English.

On this matter, here is Anthony Blanche in Waugh`s Brideshad Revisited  criticising Charles Ryder`s Latin American pictures:

It was charm again, my dear, simple, creamy English charm, playing tigers…. I was right years ago… when I warned you. I took you out to dinner to warn you of charm…. Charm is the great English blight. It does not exist outside of these damp islands. It spots and kills anything it touches. It kills love; it kills art; I greatly fear, my dear Charles, it has killed you. 

A similiar idea is sustained in Pevsner`s 1955, The Englishness of English Art.