Give it a name

I am continuing to use the limited Zorn palette (titanium white, Paynes grey, cad red and yellow ochre) with great effect. Limited palette makes for a cohesive colour scheme and I am very intuitive with colours as I mix and paint. ( For intuitive please read" chaotic") . To be honest, it's just so easy!

oil on canvas
20 x 40 cm

To be honest, I am playing. I know, work should be HARD, but this time, it's not. My mind is preoccupied with some other stuff and there is no way I could paint if it was not fun , right now.  So I play and the more I play with good results, the better I think about things that need thinking about.I think?!

I have stopped giving the landscape paintings titles because I think that is too leading. It is whatever the viewer thinks it is or whatever they relate it to. Make it your own. Give it a name.

Zorn palette landscape

I am using new boards that I have had prepared with a little Gamblin  transparent red underpainting and a limited palette (Cad red, Yellow ochre, Paynes grey, Titanium white) made popular by the inimitable Anders Zorn.

I was reminded of this practise by a US based artist called Oscar Aroyyo, who recently posted all his charts on Instagram. I love Instagram! He worked up all the possible colour blends of the various colours and their relationships. They were gorgeous just in themselves, let alone how valuable such an exercise is to remind oneself of what a limited palette can offer.

I want to evoke that feeling of being a child and travelling by car or train across the hot , boring plains,car full of holiday stuff, squashed next to a sibling and possibly, the dog, hot , bored, listening to Dad's favourite Beatles cassette for the 20th time , lulled into daydreaming to save sanity.

61 x 51 cm
oil on board


Did I succeed?

Tomato sauce and painting

I am making tomato sauce and painting this morning. Odd combination of efforts, I know.

The tomato sauce recipe is from a neighbour and is so yummy I don't mind the kids drowning their food in it.I know what went into it and so am happy for them to prefer it over the store bought one. Also, I feel quite domestic and mumsy when I do things like this. Last week I poached home grown (yes, from my own garden) peaches in a spiced syrup. I meant to bottle them but we have eaten them as dessert all week, with a little mascapone cheese cream......too scrumptious for words. The kids think the Xmas food fairy has arrived.

I do these domestic goddess things every now and then to counteract my cutting edge  taste that appals and humiliates my oldest son. Clearly, the comment " Your mum has cool music" is  the same as saying " you are a dullard in comparison" and I have been entreated to listen to The Breeze, an easy listening channel, as opposed to creating my own digital radio station featuring The National, The Bombay Bicycle club, Joan as Policewoman etc (with thanks to music Guru, Stef, who sends me recommendations).
Actually, all the above is just to annoy him when he reads this, but I do do it because there is something truly fab ( no other words in my lexicon at the moment) in doing stuff like that. Stuff like gathering seeds from dead flower heads for next years crop, harvesting and bottling fruit from your own fruit trees, making wreaths out of vine cuttings. I wear aprons. In fact, I have a selection, mood dependant.

So today, I had kilo's of tomatoes and all the ingredients for tomato sauce, including the 3 hour cooking time. So, I painted whilst the tomatoes cooked. In a different space, though. No one needs a paintbrush used as a stirring implement( would not be the first time!)

Evidence:

using the moulix old time style!

Procrastinating Like it's 1999

I am fiddling with old paintings that had good bones and needed to be finished or "fixed", some new ideas . I am still framing and organising, but under each pile of papers lurks a yawn and a snore, sometime a fright. I allow myself to be distracted because I am ...squirrel!


The cat has decided to sleep in my studio, under the table,  in a paper bag filled with bubble wrap.I have tried to dissuade him of this notion. He refuses to acknowledge my displeasure. He is a total bastard.

A small notan-like start on a painting of the Welsh coastal town of Tenby. Battered by ferocious winds and seas at the moment, when I holidayed there it was all sunshine and ice-creams.I am painting this to will good weather back to the sodden isles and remind myself of the fabulous holiday with much loved friends.

My coastal aerial perspective painting with the estuary...checking the values in Black and white

Still working on this! Looks much better now ( this is the before!) but still a work in progress. Will post soon when I have finished.

Tonite I am making a Valentines's day card for my husband.

It reads" I love you more than I love my computer."

Crossing I's and dotting T's

Today is a day for Administration. Organisation, filing, forms, invoicing, tax, cataloguing,pricing.........Urgh! These are the worst swear words in my lexicon of profane speech.But I must endure, for I am a professional artists and this is the stuff that can get you into trouble.

 I am just not a naturally organised person (my tupperware cupboard consists of 95% lids, all of which fit nothing...get it?)

But needs must.......so, I pulled up my big girl pants and have started getting as prepared as I can for my upcoming solo exhibition of plein air landscapes of the district.I am photographing, cataloging and labelling etc

"Painting my way home"

Painting the landscape of my adopted home into my psyche of belonging. A collection of plein air paintings reflecting my everyday travels and how they have allowed me to connect with the landscape and create a sense of home.

21 March till  30 May
Gavin Gifford Gallery
Te Awamutu museum

As soon as I can find a willing slave intern, I am going to train them to do my admin! Bring on the monkey's in the meantime!

Abstracting a landscape

I am into experimenting and taking chances, at the moment. I feel like I am flexing some previously unused muscle that is really itching to be used.
There is some sense of what it should do but the reality is nothing but practise, practise, practise can make the process easier and better.

So, I am doing stuff I last did in kindergarten. Spraying and splattering paint, flicking and smearing with fingers or whatever tool is at hand, mad colour choices, lazy mistakes rectified with the scripting from an old brush…..messy, fun and exhilarating.

This is big. Biggest landscape I have ever painted. I have worked on it for a while.
 1010mm w x 760mm h

Fresh start

I have started to paint several canvasses at once, adjusting them each day and deliberately slowing the pace of painting. I usually paint all prima, (wham, bam, thank you, ma'am), finished in one sitting. But, the thing is……I am looking for more commitment from a painting. I want to establish a more polished, planned  result and , god forbid, actually achieve the effect I intend with the use of some deliberate strategies. I want it looking semi-abstract and carelessly well painted.That requires great effort!

I am deliberately making mistakes, mark making just to see what it does to the image.. I am deliberately choosing certain colour schemes. I am deliberately slowing down and considering the results and adjusting my methods accordingly. It is maddening to slow down ( i am all rush, rush, rush…Little Miss Wing It!). I am also experimenting with glazes, spatulas and the liberal use of wiping.

So, not much to show you but here's a start…..