I have no idea what bores me. I seem to have made it my life ambition to avoid boredom. I wonder if that is just the way some people are. The painting above is hot off the press and depicts clothes dropped on a bathroom floor. Black jeans, blue jumper and an off white silk shirt. It is possible that a woman who could spend 3 hours doing such a painting maybe has no grip on boredom and really should not be commenting.
The technical challenges of painting such a dull subject were fascinating and kept me busy planning how to go about it.
The first stage was to paint the shadows that would fall on the tiles, then print the tiles but masking off the area that would be the clothes.
Have I bored you yet?
Clothes dropped on a bathroom floor. Who would ever choose to paint such a thing?
On a less boring note my greetings cards for an upcoming exhibition have just been printed. I am pleased with the way they look.
Facebook Timehop keeps coming up with old friends. Not the human sort but artwork that I have entered into exhibitions and then sold. October is traditionally the beginning of my artistic hibernation. Last exhibitions have been entered and the unsold works return to the studio. My work is not particularly gift-worthy so unlike many artists my exhibiting season does not extend towards Christmas.
I have got into the habit of having an experimental phase for a few months from November until February and then I knuckle down to create some new pieces to replace those that have sold the previous year. This year has been a little different in that some large works that had been leased/ loaned to a company that had huge white walls, were returned to me when the company moved locations. The last one of these pieces was sold last week.
Deadheading
I miss paintings when they are gone. Just as dog breeders probably miss puppies.
The one below was given a high gloss resin coating so the farewell picture also features a self portrait of the artist. (Me)
Dive
As paintings are sold and others return the studio gets a bit of a reshuffle. I’m not entirely sure how a reshuffle differs from a tidy up but this year there is a distinct difference. The tidy up meant I completely lost two monoprints that have an interested buyer. The reshuffle of this week has found those monoprints and an original watercolour which I need to make some cards.
Nearly there trees.
One more original to find. Pumpkins also needs to be turned into cards but somewhere between the tidy up and the reshuffle he has gone missing. So missing that there is not even a photograph!
In contrast to these pictures my experiments are quite different and may never see an exhibition. Yesterday I painted Storm Agnes in Tranquility Bay. A slightly strange mix of reality and imagination, but that is the point of experimentation.
Storm Agnes in Tranquility Bay.
It does me good to reconnect with sold pieces of art. I had almost decided to stop painting bigger pieces as they are so difficult to store, but seeing these has galvanised me into future action on bigger canvases. They, at least, never go missing.
Morning clouds this morning. Followed swiftly by a rainbow.
There was just a hint of a double, but one rainbow or two they were uncomfortably close to the parking restriction lines. Parking fines certainly are a pot of gold for councils so perhaps the rainbow was in exactly the right place.
Exactly the right place was also the location of this picture.
It found a new forever home yesterday. After posing in a medieval entrance hall for a week it has been awarded the red dot of a sold piece of original art. Exactly the right place. Lucky me.
If Turner had been walking in the Tamar Valley today he would not have been looking at any views. Today was a fine example of Tamar Greige. The grey lovechild of mist and rain rolling together in a fertile valley.
As luck would have it for me, I have spent the last two days in the gorgeous Autumn Exhibition of Drawn to the Valley Artists. So I know how beautiful the valley is when it is in full colour.
Calstock – Carolyn Wixon
My morning started close to home with my own painting showing the tidal pool in full colour which it certainly was not at 7:30 this morning.
Then a drive up through the Tamar Valley in the thickest of Tamar Greige conditions. Not for me the colours of Sonia Wicks , Looking for Luck.
But the mist did briefly clear, just around lunchtime. Cotehele House, a National Trust property serves very fine sandwiches with a great motivational message.
As an aside, I rarely need to be motivated to eat a sandwich. But at lunchtime I was not the only one nibbling and crunching on National Trust comestibles.
No motivational message for the squirrel on the bird feeder, they also need no encouragement to eat. This lovely lunchtime encounter happened as I overlooked the Cotehele Dovecot.
Dovecot-Carolyn Wixon
A completely greige afternoon carried on the weather theme but I can illustrate my return with one last painting.
Tamar Sunset- Michael Jenkins
A greige day, illuminated by some great paintings and a cheeky squirrel.
The artist has left the building, temporarily. After three days of setting up, Private views and meeting the public. I have left my patch.
Drawn to the Valley at Ocean Studios in the Royal William Yard, Stonehouse Plymouth has a diverse mix of 12 artists showing their work and demonstrating or talking about their techniques with anyone who comes along.
We had a bit of a tidy up at close of business today. That is just me as an artist. Procrastination disguised as tidyness. Its not been all art and no life. There was a bob yesterday so I slipped out for an hour, great swimming, fabulous conversation and snacks. And maybe something to chuckle about.
What to ponder on a warm Bank Holiday Monday. This fabulous painting by Oonagh Glancy is the nugget of this ponder. It symbolises a coming together. For the first time since Covid, Drawn to the Valley also threw in mass catering at their Spring Exhibition. Coffee, tea, cakes and other treats were served at a huge communal table. It was the highpoint for visitors, simply sitting down and talking between artists and visitors, old friends, new friends, complete strangers and hungry bowling escapees from the Bowls Club next door. Competition whites smudged with spring-green grass stains.
Sally O’Neill Asheltor Woods
Everyone was talking about how much they loved the communal snack table. Isn’t that fabulous. The art, of course, covered all the faces of the Tamar Valley and was as glorious as has come to be expected of the first exhibition of the year.
Julia O’DellLynn Saunders
Artists of the Tamar Valley also get further afield.
Michael Jenkins St Ives HarbourJane Athron Looking Towards Lancaster Gate.Julia O’Dell Godrevy Lighthouse
And some of us stick close to home.
Juliet Cornell Tidal Pool
There was so much to contemplate and consider, what a great exhibition.
Six original paintings and 3 prints , wrapped, labelled, priced and packed along with 20 cards, ready to go to Dartmoor for an exhibition later in the month. It has been a busy month artwise. Some of my bigger pieces have been hanging,for sale, in a large waiting room for some years. Relocation and an interior designer with differing tastes has returned the unsold ones to my studio. Some have subsequently sold but others will find their forever homes later in the year.
All the pictures for the latest exhibition look like classical landscapes but there is a twist, I have been galvanised recently to represent wind in pictures, using abstract imaging to demonstrate buffeting and movement, or not, when the experience of gusting storms affects the way the landscape feels.
One picture is vaguely accurate but is actually entirely imagined. The Rock at Yelverton is a place to go for families, hikers, dog walkers and lovers. This rocky outcrop is a destination and holds multi generational memories. A virtual geocache of love.
It is both exactly as I remember it and yet always different whenever I visit.
Currently it is in a box with all the other artworks. Memories and sensations trapped first on paper, then mounted and framed, snuggled in travelling blankets and boxed up ready for their big moment. A Spring Exhibition at Yelverton on Dartmoor.
What would be the wisest thing to do on a dreadfully greige day that is coincidentally World Earth Day. We took ourselves off to a fabulous friends solo art exhibition at Cotehele in the Tamar Valley. Clare creates landscape magic with a palate knife.
Wonderful pictures of landscapes at their vibrant best.
Gallery walls and thieves. Hannah @theoldmortuary has finished the gallery wall and the inspiration for a weekends work has been hung. I bought her three original prints for her birthday from Debs Bobber, one of our cold water swimming friends. As soon as they were unwrapped their new home was planned and this weekend the plane was executed. Debs Bobber, real name Debra Parkinson is currently working on a theme of thievery. In this series a mythical creature steals the gold finial that tops Smeatons Tower, the iconic Lighthouse that stands on Plymouth Hoe.
Procrastination gets a bad rap. I absolutely am a procrastinator. I have always felt that procrastination, done well, is a force for good. In the exact opposite of current psychological thinking I believe procrastination is a force for good in my life.
Yesterday I definitely procrastinated, deliberately and mindfully. There was a small list of things that needed to be achieved but I delayed starting them. Then a whole new task arrived which required action and the use of old skills. The task was completed in a couple of hours. That squeezed the required tasks into a more compact time-frame, which made me sharper and more effective. Art got done, the washing was done, the dogs were walked and I felt like I had achieved.
There was also a bonus for someone. My delayed dog walk meant that they stopped a little earlier to poo. In a pile of leaves they have never bothered with before. As I rummaged around collecting their morning offerings I found a small gold ring. Someone else’s lucky day.
