Society of Scottish Artists: 30 x 30 online exhibition

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This is a link to the Society of Scottish Artists online showing of small, 30 x 30 cm or smaller, works. 

I am showing a Moroccan picture.

https://sca-net.org/event/ssa-30-x-30-online-edition/

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Trees near a church, Trindade

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Trees near a church, Trindade, oil on card, 26 x 28 cm

It is getting very hot, and even when painting in the shade one returns sun-dizzy.

 It may be time to start painting still lives again, perhaps flowers...

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Segments of rock

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Segments of rock by Doces Campestrini

These are small sections of sticks of rock. I had already chosen and bagged some sweets, but then I saw these, so beautiful next to the cash desk: I had to get them too. 

The flavors are okay. They really belong to a pre-modern, pre-clinical age of sweet manufacture, and are a little unsophisticated. The orange is acceptably Kia-Ora orangey- slightly fizzy (like Spangles, if you remember them?). The green is convincingly apple-ish. The white one has a buttermilk flavour that does take one a little by surprise. Best is the pink which does a solid sex steamy strawberry kiss: a real behind the bike shed snog to boast about on the bus home.

Like many sweets you want to chew them the instant they arrive in your mouth. Usually I'd counsel against this but with these sweeties I'd suggest that this was the right way to go about extracting the best flavour: to crush them between your molars in a prompt, unprincipled manner. 

The thing that got me, really got under my skin and made me impulse buy was the green. That emerald green really just hit me smack in the eyes and I was smitten,  helpless. I became quite stupid and I had to take these sweeties home. 

You don't, these days see this colour often,. It's a bit out of date, and very fin de sciecle like peacock feathers or hippy communes in bottle green velvet jackets and  floppy fedoras. I love how it combines with the citric yellow and I love the nearly but not exact geometricity of it all, which reminds me of stencils. And, of course, broken gemstones.

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A dog going somewhere

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A dog going somewhere

There is a short story here.

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Docile's Maxmallows

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 Maxmallow

 

Shape and colour

The shape is architectural, a joyful spiralling, very Coney Island. It seems to date from the oh-so-distant days when postmodernism might have promised hope.

The colour, likewise, is purest seaside resort: Brighton, Blackpool and Skegness in four glorious sun-faded pastels. But does it convey the vital ingredients of any seaside day trip: easy pleasure, plastic tat and a kiss-me-quick hat, a snog or more with a stranger, fish and chips, cheap music, cheaper beer, and more than a dash of seediness? All serenaded by a thudding hangover the next day?

The Oral Experience

At first the Maxmallow is very soft, like the faintest brushing of a butterfly's wings on your cheek. It's flowery, floury. A dry kiss. Aloof... or shy? 

Then, stealthily, the Maxmallow melts sweetly. You run your tongue up its twisting grooves, removing the sugary dust. And it gives itself away with gracious pacing, an adagio by Ravel. It is first spongy, then (yes!), more compliant, dissolving, melting but still somehow airy. It mesmerises, it is Redonesque, indeed -the Odilon Redon not of brooding Noirs but the lofty Chariot of Apollo. And thus brings to mind not so much the the carnal pleasure-seeking of the English working classes but the refined escapism of opium scented salons.

 

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Praia Mole, trees near the sea

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Praia Mole, trees near the sea

 oil on card, 26 x 28 cm   SOLD

 

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A road and bushes near the university, Florianopolis

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A road and bushes near the university, Florianopolis- available

 oil on card, 26 x 28 cm

Does the plein air painter go out and respond to the world with paints?

Or is it like this: the artist goes out and finds a motif. This motif is like a key which opens a door in their mind.

Behind the door is a pre-existing image which the artist then reproduces, albeit usually adaptng it so it corresponds wih the scene that they are, ostensible, depicting.

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