Groundhog Day

 (I’m having really difficulty completing a second part blog post to my experience of Landscape Artist Of the Year so I thought, in the preferred spirit of looking forward not back, I would prefer to write briefly about some of the work I have made since the start of the New Year….)

'Winter Walk', oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, 2021

Having completed a large painting at the end of the 2020 in the series of pylons in fields I wanted to draw a line under this work at this point. I was feeling a bit exhausted with the theme for now, but had no particular plans for anything new.

When the New Year started and we soon sadly entered Lockdown 3 and I found myself working from home again, remote teaching, I ordered 10 small canvasses (50 x 60cms) with plans to experiment with  trying to create some new paintings based on some photographs I had been taking with a new DSLR camera I had for Christmas (a fab present!) on my familiar lockdown walks. I was interested in trying to capture something of the feel of the winter from photographs in which I have been trying to teach myself how to use the camera  and try to understand how to manipulate exposure using only the manual setting to explore mood and atmosphere through light and colour.

'Winter Walk', oil on canvas, 60 x 50cms, 2021

'Winter Walk', oil on canvas, 50 x60cms, 2021

I am really enjoying using the camera, but the paintings I created through January where I used some of these photographs as a starting point, particularly with the colour and light, were less successful and I found myself constantly re-
painting most of them to seek something that spoke more to me about these walks. The most pared down ones are the ones I’m eventually happiest with and will keep, but I’ve been struggling with painting the woods and fields, although I find them very beautiful to look at. I’ve found it hard to ‘key’ in to ways of painting the scenes that I’m happy with. As I worked on them I thought the motif of the path, which I continually find myself on day after day, was a good metaphor for the lockdown situation and it’s groundhog day feeling.

'Winter Walk', oil on canvas, 60 x 50cms, 2021

One afternoon, after some of the heavy snow we had fall in the area, I went out with the camera to try and take some photographs as the light faded from day to evening. I took some good photographs in the local edgeland woods, but as I came back onto my estate some of the parked up cars, covered in snow, and the snowy paths and roads caught my interest and I took a few photographs of these and printed some of these photos off. On a bit of a whim last week I created a small painting from one of them, rich in violets and blues from the snow in the twilight and ‘Bingo!’ I felt very excited and something creatively seem to open up, much more interesting than the landscapes I had been slogging over, and with much more potential. 

oil on canvas, 30 x 45cms, 2021

oil on canvas, 45 x 30cms, 2021

oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, 2021

oil on canvas, 60 x 50cms, 2021

Over the next few days I created five more paintings of these scenes. They seem very evocative and moody, and also capture something of the lockdown with their sense of expectancy. Most importantly they feel much more me and more distinctive. I feel back on the road once more…

oil on canvas, 50 x 75cms, 2021