thirty five landscape studies in an A5 sketchbook, 17th to 22nd April 2010...
from realism...
[sketchbook study - corner of a field with trees and hedgerow, 6" x 8"]
[sketchbook study - field with crows, or rooks 6" x 8"]
[sketchbook study - marshes 6" x 8"]to the abstracted...
[sketchbook study - ploughed field pattern striations 6" x 8"]
[sketchbook study - field/hill 6" x 8"]from day...
[sketchbook study - view over marshes with sky, 6" x 8"]to night...
[sketchbook study - field with row of poplar trees, 6" x 8"]
blue sky, and thinking [again]
It has been very warm and sunny all this week, with a heatwave forecast for next week. I am finding this quite odd, when contrasted with the knowledge of a volcanic dust plume from an Icelandic volcano drifting grey ash clouds at high altitude above most of Northern Europe. With no incoming or outbound flights in the UK for the last few days the skies have been unusually quiet - just as nature intended. We are grounded, but the weather has been quite lovely... wish you were here...Wanting to take a slightly philosophical stance on nature's subtle intervention (the best kind of art), I was delighted to read Alain de Botton's musings on a world without planes... Heathrow, he writes, would become a museum, [and of planes] we would stroke their steel dolphin-like bodies in museums and honour them as symbols of a daunting technical intelligence and a prodigious wealth. Modern air travel has destroyed any sense of geographical distance, the physical experience of moving through a landscape, or even the metaphysical space and sense of the passage of time that our travelling predecessors would have gained from crossing land and sea... perhaps the exception would be the hot-air balloon...I was amused by the notion that Botton was the writer-in-residence at London's Heathrow airport - how could he possibly think clearly with the constant noise of take-offs and landings? Of course, he actually resided elsewhere, it's just a creative job description..Clear blue skies or grey clouds ahead... (some animated cloud drawings)[the art of idleness, part one....]read more about the art of idleness...
on artworks and deckchairs
Passed by the Artworks exhibition at Wingfield Barns Arts Centre this weekend - this is firstly a shameless plug for my own work (it's my blog after all)... but the rural setting is fabulous - nature quietly intertwined within the traces of agriculture. I like to think that my work, Farmscape II looks quite at home here...
[Farmscape II, 2010, mixed media on canvas, 60cm x 120cm]
[a detail of surface textures]
[another detail of surface textures]Found out I had sold a couple of small paintings which was food for the soul.There is an interesting fund-raising exhibition of art on deckchairs in the adjacent barn... some really good ones (such as Dave Mckee's, the creator and illustrator of Mr Benn) and one or two perhaps not so good ones (technically speaking), but all will be auctioned off to raise money for the St Elizabeth Hospice... My favourite was the one created by the artist Tony Casement, all sand-encrusted with little seagull footprints, a deckchair that would be least coveted by the sun-lover, in the social etiquette (or war) of deckchair and sun-lounger acquisition. Very pleased to see that three Artworks artists have customised deckchairs in this exhibition too: Eleonora Knowland, Elaine Nason and Janet French...I wished I had stopped longer to observe and take some photographs of the old barns' structures but I had to get back to deliver my canvas to the HWAT Art exhibition, which opens on monday... you can read more about that particular painting, Edgescape: Fenn, here......The Artworks‘ Spring exhibition is currently showing at the Wingfield Barns Arts Centre until 25th April 2010, open daily 10am – 5pm.HWAT Showcase Exhibition of Art and Mini-works will be on at the Harleston Gallery from 19th April to 30th April 2010.