'Ever Tried. Ever Failed. No Matter. Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better'

I like to exhibit my work and try and communicate with an audience, but really it’s just the act of painting, or creating something, that drives me on. This seems much more so as I get older. I like thinking about something, and then developing it through drawings and studies and other things, and then trying to make a painting. When I’ve done that, I hopefully get to the point where I believe I’ve nailed it in some way, but usually by the next day I’m thinking about the next one. Let’s face it, most paintings I make are exhibited briefly and then are largely hidden away and rarely looked it after I’ve made them. I think these feelings of ambivalence are pretty normal for most artists. I think the gallery experience often feels like something you feel you should have to do, rather than something you want to do. With these feelings in mind, I’ve been painting over a few older paintings lately, or taking them off stretchers to reuse the frames for new work.

I completed this painting last night. It’s taken about a year to complete, but I finally completely re-painted it in about an hour. It just suddenly felt like the right time.

....Norwegian Wood'

Norway. About two days before we were due to fly to Oslo I had a message from the friend we were going to stay with that he would now be going on holiday on the Monday following the Saturday we were due to arrive. A few weeks before he had mentioned that he may be going away later on that week, say Wednesday or Thursday, but I didn’t expect this. I felt a bit sick realising that the trip I had been planning for months had suddenly taken a very different shape. It seemed very unlikely that I was now going to meet any of the artists we had discussed meeting up with, visit any studios in Oslo, or source the locations I had been hoping to explore on the edges of the city with his help. After a couple of sleepless nights we flew out with little idea what now lay ahead. My anxiety was made worse as Isaac is only four years old, and this was his first trip overseas. It was not a good start to things. I felt very unprepared.

The weekend in Norway with our friends was nice enough though, and it was good to see them, despite the knowledge that it would be so brief. We drove an hour out of Oslo to their ‘hitter’ or cabin, in the forest landscape near Bastad, which my friend seemed insistent on saying was more like Sweden than Norway. The ‘hitter’ life is how many Norwegians spend their weekends and holidays away from the city and work, and there were many cabins around which looked great tucked into the hills. Our friends had two cabins: a nice large family cabin and a smaller one room place one where we stayed which doubled as my friend’s studio. With no running water, a loo (don’t ask!), or a cooker,it was a little basic. The shower was a customised bucket hoisted up outside.

I-Pad Painting

It didn’t take long to feel quite immersed in this life though, and before long I found myself sketching the surroundings and painting on my i-pad. With my other plans up in the air regarding exploring the edgelands of Oslo, I mentally made the decision that this landscape would have to be my focus for the week instead. This felt natural but also right.  The landscape seemed such a rich source for painting that it seemed crazy not to think about working in it.

Come the Monday morning though, our friends were gone by 9 o’clock in the morning, their family cabin locked up, and we were left with a kettle, a couple of mugs, a gas barbeque to cook on, and a sad sense of feeling abandoned in this foreign landscape on our own having come all this way…

A Moose Gives Birth To A Hedgehog....

I’m back today from my painting trip to Scandinavia.  I’ve been away for two weeks to Norway and Denmark but it feels like much longer. It has on certainly been an odyssey of sorts that has covered many miles, locations, and emotions: from dark forests to crystal seas and fjords; abandoned cabins and Viking ships; long drives through beautiful green landscapes and ocean journeys with naples yellow and crimson sunsets; painting by torchlight to painting in the blinding sunshine.

I had written this pre-trip blog, but failed to post it in the last minute rush of final preparations:

‘In a few hours time I’m driving to Stansted Airport for an early flight to Oslo, Norway tomorrow morning on the first leg of my trip to Scandinavia. We will be staying in a cabin in the forest of an artist friend near Bastad (unfortunately named!), about an hour from Oslo. We’re hiring a car and from this base will be making excursions to Oslo to visit some of the galleries and museums (and the Viking Museum!), and also to places such as Kristainsund on the coast, where Edvard Munch based many of his paintings. On Friday we will then travel by ferry overnight to Copenhagen, where, in another car, we will be making our way to Vejby Strand, a half hour up the coast to a summerhouse we have rented for the week. In Denmark, I’ll be meeting and working with artist Jamie Wallace and his wife, Mette Christensen, and painting on location along the coastline. This will be combined with trips to Copenhagen to visit the galleries etc, and also possibly discuss my work at The Danish University of Education.

It’s all going to be an adventure that’s for sure, and hopefully will fulfill a long held ambition to attempt to create work on location.’

Well, there is something said about the best laid plans and all that, and this isn’t really how things worked out, but I’m not going to go into it now. I thought it might be better to write a few shorter episodic blogs about the trip over the next few weeks as the mental dust settles…