The Hours....

oil on panel study, 8 " x 10", current work

I hobble down the long garden to the studio on my crutches each morning, the dog faithfully following me, hoping I will throw the ball, jump precariously up the step into the space, set up my speaker and Bluetooth to either some music (this week: ‘Here It Is- A Tribute to Leonard Cohen (I can’t recommend this enough), and ‘Communication’ by Karl Bartos, former Kraftwerk member, whose 600 page autobiography I’ve just completed (brilliant read) or a Podcast ( lately lots of ‘The Rest Is Politics’ with Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart, and my favourite a new run of The Adam Buxton Podcast), and climb up on my high stool to the desk easel, palette and paints set up on the high table, take another reference photo as a starting point, and a fresh, primed small painting panel, and then set to work for a few hours. Once I’m actually safely in the studio it feels like the only thing I can do that easily at the moment, but as it’s painting, that’s not so bad is it? 

oil on panel study, 10" x 12", current 

oil on panel study, 10" x 12", current 

In fact, I’ve been painting 2-3 paintings a day these last two weeks and I’m really enjoying it. As I can only work sitting down, I’m forced to work small, but these limits are liberating. As most my paintings start from primary reference photographs but against the limits of time, I’m enjoying the opportunity to dig a lot deeper into these photographs and try and unearth some new ideas, particularly in the ongoing development of my painting language, experimenting, always experimenting. 

oil on panel study, 8" x 10", current

oil on panel study, 8"x10", current

oil on panel study, 10" x 12", current

At the moment, I’m hooking into something much 

looser, more abstract, but not abstract, and continually thinking about my use of colour and the light in the paintings. These elements have become much more central in the last 2 years to how I concieve the paintings. I’ve made some new motorway studies, which are dynamic and offer some nice ideas for compositions, but also some new studies of the local woodlands and the common which have a very different feel, and present more difficulties in a way, in trying to do something more original with scenes like these, but I remain committed to both subjects. I’m just playing around, making stuff and trying not to over think it at the moment. 

oil on panel study, 10" x 12", current

I’m thinking about doing some portraits and still lives next week….