Just before Christmas

 Just before Christmas, I was making this concertina piece.

They left the nest

 At the weekend these two pieces left the nest and went to live in a new home. I am very pleased

They were made in November 2022.

The first is part of a long series of works about living next to the canal, and especially during covid and lockdown. It is not representational but is a sort of abstract landscape. I feel the water, reflections floating leaves and late autumn.. I took this photo just before it was finished. It is mostly collage but a lot of painting in acrylic. It is about 40 x 40 cm

Again a mixed media collage abstract. It is not representational.  approx 50 x 40 cm

I have always made abstract paintings, indeed the first painting I ever sold, about 1958,  was a small abstract, I am very happy about this new turn in my work.  tell me what you think?

Winter trees

Another canal-side painting 

Dark, cold, skies and stark silhouettes of trees looming over the towpath

mixed media on watercolour board  305 x 254 mm

Canal again

Two more from the same walk

 

Ghostly hands, or is it the reflection of pollarded willows in the cold water?  Mixed media on watercolour board 356 x 254m

Canalside trees and a winter sky. mixed media on watercolour board 305 x 254 mm

For images of a more colourful  and abstract nature, later in the year, see the post before last 

 

Fruits of lockdown.

 I know we are not technically still in lockdown, but I feel it has been almost two years of living like a hermit. At times I have painted and drawn a lot and then the paralysis sets in. I am in that state now. So I thought I should show you some of what I have been doing., in the hope of spurring me on!  I live next to the Bridgwater/-Taunton canal and walk there most days.

This quick sketch, from the towpath, is a bleak day in January a year ago.  Acrylic on watercolour board  305mm x 254 mm. It feels lonely and cold and I was!

The Sky shines in the canal. painted October 2020

Covid has had varying effects on me. Lutje and I have been in different countries since March. I t is not easy. I try to keep to the house being especially vulnerable, partly from my age but mostly from medical conditions. Also since I had to give up my car 13 months ago I cannot stray far!

I have tried to do lots of painting but it doesn't always work. But sometimes I have a burst. In particular, the canal next to the house and Victoria Park have been my inspiration.  I am doing many more, landscape-inspired abstract paintings

I want to show you these to get me painting and posting again  All three, 120 x  175 mm are mixed media mostly acrylic and coloured pencil on mountboard and were painted the same day in October. The sky reflected in the water and the dying vegetation.

 Over the next few days, I will try to post a selection of the many drawings, painting and photographs I have made over recent months as well as any new works I may create.

INERTIA

For personal reasons, I have dried up.  Ill health and an accident didn't help but it is almost a year since I last posted.  I want to paint but, like my music, my piano and organ playing, I just seize up.  I don't want to dwell on this and am hoping that starting my blogs again will motivate me.

I have just made two posts to my small paintings blog.  Why not have look here and here?

Here is one of the little drawings

AUTUMN AND SPIRALLING LEAVES

On Saturday I walked to the park.  It is sunny but colder and autumn is setting in

I sat on a bench and watched the wind taking the leaves. Many have fallen already, these are safe for a day or two if tonight's frost doesn't do its job.

Later, as I was taking a photo, within the wood, next to the pond, this little leaf spiralled down into my hand and snuggled against the camera.  I brought him home.

I made this little painting when I got home

"Autumn leaves, falling"  acrylic and collage on paper  15 x 12 cm

A NEW BLOG

https://imageandmeasure2.blogspot.be/2017/10/day-one.html

WHY NOT GO AND HAVE A PEEK?
This is what you find for the first posting.  I hope you like it enough to subscribe when you see it!

Day One

A few weeks ago, in the middle of a long period with no painting, a sort of painters block, I came across an idea from an  American painter's blog.  Carol Marine's Painting a Day .  For around ten years she has painted a small picture every day. It did not have to be perfect and, because it took a short time, there was no feeling of failure if it didn't work - there is always the waste bin!  She found the lack of pressure helped her to revitalise her work.  Read her blog.
I thought I would try it too and so here I am, nervously proffering my first born.  The first few will be  abstract, but I shall also do other things.

 #1a. 15cm x 15cm acrylic on paper

I am quite pleased with this; what do you think? It took about 15 minutes, I did several others but think this is the best. I may post one of the others.

SUMMER IN BRUSSELS

We spent a lot of the summer in Brussels and had a wonderful time with family staying with us and I did less painting than I expected.  I was a little disappointed with what I produced but, on reflection, I thank that maybe I am pleased with some of it.  It is very colourful - which is just how it was in the bright sun of summer in Parc Parmentier.

This one for instance

Approximately A3 size, watercolour and ink on paper, catches, I think the dazzling sunlight, reflecting off the almost still water of the pond.  I must look again at the others!

HEATH HOUSE ART GROUP AGAIN

They must have liked my last visit as tutor since they asked me back again!

On one of my two visits we drew in the garden  and around the various buildings. The other time I challenged them to make simple still life paintings or drawings of a standard size (20 x 20 cm) to fit in a frame I took with me.  I showed them a series of paintings I had made which used the frame as part of the composition; simplified designs which gain strength from the restraints of the format. I asked them to do something similar. Here are some of them.  I think they were as pleased as I was.

This is one of mine from a few years ago. A pear on a terracotta plate

and here are some of theirs. I will post some more another day

JORIS MINNE

A few years ago I made some drawings around Lutje's home. Standing next to her PC is this fine wood carving of her mother.  It was made by an artist unknown to me, Joris Minne, 1897 -  1988.

He was born in Ostend but grew up in Antwerp, Lutje's home city. He studied at the Bercham Academy of Fine Arts.  He is known for the revival of wood engraving in Belgium, making this cover for an art magazine he co-founded in September 1919

Shipping in Antwerp?

"O" is for olifant - a children's book illustration

In 1939 he turned to sculpture, mostly in wood 

   This small oak figure dates from 1988, the year of his death

Heath House Art Group

It was a great joy yesterday to make a return visit as tutor to Heath House Art Group.  My first two visits, last year,  were in winter time and we had a productive time in the studio.  This time we braved the possible rain in the morning and enjoyed the sun in the afternoon to look at  drawing buildings and simple landscape.

They produced a very varied range of work, I was very impressed and wanted to photograph them. My phone thought other wise!  Next week I shall take a camera as well!

In a very brief moment , whilst wandering the gardens and helping them, I was intrigued by , and quickly drew, these wonderful rusty metal chickens on one of the many lawns. .

no post Art Week blues!

Open studios have passed and we had a good time. A slow but steady trickle of lovely people came to see my pictures and enough of them brought their cheque books to make sure we did not make a loss!

One of them was the leader of a local art group, the Heath House Art Group. Heath House is not a building but the name of a village on the Somerset levels about 15 miles from here.  I was delighted to be invited to run two workshops concentrating on my pictures of buildings

.

The first one  happened two days ago and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I hope the punters did too!  I am really looking forward to next Wednesday; I will try, this time, not to forget my camera!

HARASSED BUT HAPPY

I suppose we shall be ready in time for Open Studios.  I am feeling harassed but happy!

I have even managed a hair cut since I painted this little oil sketch!

I am excited about the paintings I have done this summer and I look forward to showing them to you if you come to see me at 

Venue 142 during SAW Open Studios 17 September - 2 October 

we are open every day 11 am - 6 pm and details are in the SAW guide

Here are three little paintings, all four are 20 x 20 cm - there are lots of bigger ones

QUIET NIGHTS?

In the roof of our house here in Belgium is a lovely attic room which is the guest bedroom and the place where all the grandchildren camp out when they come to stay.

It has two small windows, high in the gable, facing the street, through which the street lights bathe the room in an orange glow and the children cant get to sleep.. Some times their mother drapes cloth over the opening but I decided yesterday to make some shutter panels and paint them with a dark sky and the moon. I used corrugated cardboard (see earlier postings!) and painted a view of the street in oil paint.

Here they are before I fix them. .

SAW OPEN STUDIOS

After a lot of humming and hawing I finally put in my entry forms for this year's Somerset Art Works Open Studios. I am so glad I did.  I wondered about it for a long time. It is a lot of work and it is hard to get people to Bridgwater, not quite Cream Tea territory! And being, as I so often am, the only venue in town makes it harder.

But I am doing it!!  I should say "I am the ONLY venue in town!"  So, come mid September, come and see my pictures.  If you are lucky you might get a cup of tea.

I hope you like this painting. It is small, 20 x 20 cm,   in oil and is one of a series called Flemish Fruit and Veg.  I spend a lot of time with Lutje, my missus,  in Belgium so they really are Flemish , like her.This one is "Pear on a terracotta dish"

I now have to do lots more painting and drawing.!

If you are interested Open Studios why not  follow this link
 http://somersetartworks.org.uk/what-we-do/art-weeks/openstudios/

WINTER IN THE PARK - work from earlier in 2015

These are part of a series of semi abstract works, still in progress, coming directly from my times drawing in Parc Parmentier, Brussels..  I am pleased so far.

Thoughts anyone?  

There are bigger ones on the way. All for sale eventually, prices yet to fixed.

 Ice , frost, fallen leaves etc, being very cold, sitting on a bench, drawing

detail of a bigger, A3, drawing. Charcoal on textured gesso on paper

no 1.  20 x 20 cm   watercolour on gesso on canvas board

no 2    20 x 20 cm   watercolour on gesso on canvas board

no 3  20 x 20 cm   watercolour on gesso on canvas board

A THING ABOUT PEPPERS

 I have been having a bit of a thing with two sweet red peppers today.  Not an intimate thing nor am I  going to cook them ,  well not yet!  I just love their shiny firm shape and their glowing colour

one page of an A6 sketch book. Noodler's Ahab pen and Noodler's ink

this time a double page spread in the same book , 

does the one on the right look a little like a naked woman sculpture?

same size book, double page spread. watercolour,a bit of gouache and a Pentel ink brush pen..  I think there might be the genesis of a painting or two here?