Ol’ rough cartography…

It’s been a while…since I last posted one of the Rough Cartography series.  This is one of three OS maps that used to live on the walls of a department of the University of Sheffield.  I think one of my friends rescued them from the bin for me.  They were rolled up in one of the many cardboard tubes of stuff that is part of my ‘back end of 2018  tidy up’…and I’ve decided to give them a sprucing up and create a kind of Cornwall triptych.  Nearly (gawd help us) twenty years back I was asked to give a talk to our Foundation students about sketchbooks and took quite a few along to the session.  One of the questions was “why do you colour in so many maps”?  I couldn’t rightly say then…nor now really!

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The terrors of twilight…

I’m not a great fan of the winter months – like quite a few painters I suspect.  The absence of light gets to me.  Not so much in the early morning sessions as the coming of day sort of makes up for the gloom.  No it’s more that time around three in the afternoon on dull days like today when the darkness starts properly creeping back.  And the getting up early hasn’t helped of course as I’m getting tired with it.  I do have my lovely daylight lamp to offset the gathering gloom but my productivity takes quite a dive.

So I tend to hunker down after lunchtime, sitting in the kitchen, tinkering with my Wonky Geo‘s.  There’s 58 completed in the series now – and here’s 54 to 56 for perusal.  I’ve said before that these are the fun things where ideas, even bloody silly ones, can be tested out.  And the pile of uncompleted ones is heavy, like properly heavy, now.  Goodness knows how many I’ll have eventually!

 

 

The Eighties…

I’m off to a seminar (a rare occurrence nowadays)…this Friday in Coventry organised by the energetic Matthew Macaulay.  Its about British Abstract Painting in the 1980’s and as a painter who is British, works non-representationally (pretty much from 1968 till now) and was about in the eighties I thought I’d pop along. Though the eighties was a weird time for me…as I went a bit figurative (ish)!  Not that I was the only one it seems…quite a few painters seem to have wobbled about a bit – strange days indeed.  Quite what I thought I was doing I’ve not the slightest idea thirty plus years on…

An End Of Empire, 72 x 56 ins., oil on canvas, 1985

Anyway I’m working on a short piece on the topic…and will post it here as and when…with maybe some thoughts on what transpires on the day.

Lack of recognition..

Newton Linford, Oil on canvas, 30 x 40 cm., May 2018

Lack of Recognition…not of myself (though nobody would turn down more!) but of the location of the latest of the Playground Of The Midlands group of works.  After all not even the most observant of the denizens of the village of Newton Linford would recognise it from the painting I’ve made.  Its a pity really as this one has been a bit of a blighter.  Not helped by the inordinate delay in tackling it (and the rest of them that have been languishing in the studio for yonks.  Still I’m redoubling my efforts, as with several other series, to get them resolved rather than moving onto fresh work!

Quorn, Oil on canvas, 30 x 40 cm., May 2018

Still getting that feeling…

Sometimes it just gets going…and what a good thing too, or I doubt I’d bother.  But just occasionally I get started on some new pieces and everything seems to jog along pretty well.  So it is with the Rock pieces, third part of the Landscape & Memory project.

Of course tomorrow morning it may all turn to dust, that happens just as regularly!

Still as the light fades (and today was proper Spring until four this afternoon) I’ve these three plus five others that have seemingly got something I can work with.  Tomorrow I’m out and about but it will be interesting to return to the studio first thing just to see how I feel about them…