A change in direction

Just when I had found a style that I enjoyed!!!! it seems that having now found a style that I enjoy painting in, something that is a little more personal and challenging, along comes the snow and everything changes, or at least that is how I imagined it until I took some photographs outside, there, out of the image I started to see the surreal world that appears in my pallet work, there I was, thinking that I was allowing my environment to alter what had seemed to be a ballance in my work when all that was really happening was the change in my surroundings were more pronounced as a painted image.


Now back home, Jessie my faithful collie following along beside me, it is straight back to the canvas. three new paintings in an exhillerating period of some hours, each separate in styles, each flowing easily. For these works all others were put on hold, I have three paintings under construction at the moment, whereas the majority of my work is completely a la prima (completed in one sitting) there are works that take me some months to complete, for these it is necessary for me to revisit a particular mind set, a particular type of music, a particular place to go,

Red Hut



only when the time of original conception is recreated am I able to continue these works, to attempt to continue when not in the mood is tantamount to disaster, there have been many pieces that have found their way either into the bin or to emerge as something completely different to that which I had started.

I dont really do sketches as a preparatory to my paintings, generally my paintings are created from within, from the feelings that I have either some time after visiting somewhere that has remained in the recesses of my mind or, as is the case today, immediately, as soon as I walk in even without putting the kettle on, the painting has to be done while the cold still sits on the end of my fingers, while the wide open spaces that the snow lying on the ground seems to bring, even while my torn calf muscles from nearly sliding and falling down an unexpected and icy slope have stopped their protestations about movement.

Fell Walk




as is usually the case, my painting for today is on the surface of another, a shortage of canvases being the order of the day though it matters not, the older painting has been fotographed and filed and serves now as the underpainting for the new work, two paintings for the price of one, cant be bad.


The paintwork for the February show is all but completed though there is one piece that I am not entirely happy with, actually I am not entirely happy with any of them but that is me, I am never fully satisfied with any of my work and know that only time and renown will allow me the time to actually spend on my works, that is something that I have enjoyed for this show, there has been no pressure to get sufficient work done having originally set myself a goal of only 6 works so that quality would take preference over quantity, I hope I have achieved this.



Jessie now worn out from the trek, her first real trip up and around the town and people and she did so well, as nervous as any collie but staying close to me, the lead hardly tightening at all, that is until some huge bark eminated from a parked car, I am sure Jess pulled me 6 feet along the ice, 2 paintings completed and one abandoned as I have run out of white paint, guess I just was not expecting the snow sufficiently in time to stock but how was I to know that the weather change would cause such a stir in my creative genes, simple, it is my responsibility to know! I shall be ready the next time around, until then however there is the transition between snowfall and the return to a landscape that i am more familiar with, that period of transition I must commit to fotografic record.