ART
Works On Paper
In the Spring of 2020, going into Covid lockdown, listening to the bad news and the mounting death tolls, I found great solace and a magical, almost overwhelming, quality in the coming of Spring…something I had experienced before on a return to our garden from a 7 day zen retreat. This connection with the onrush and surge of new life, had a huge and positive effect on me. Zen had also introduced me to some of Mayumi Oda’s bountiful flowing paintings of goddesses, their seeming joy and equanimity. I still love their Matisse like presences and under these influences I began painting a female figure representing Spring. This was my first attempt at painting since school. I was encouraged and advised by my wife, an accomplished artist and print maker. As you will see this is a somewhat primitive painting and the larger painting had help and input from my wife in working on the hands and face. This was the start of my adventures in art. My focus initially was on the garden and garden scenes from our kitchen windows. Eventually I found myself getting to really enjoy playing with colour and the flow of paint, juxtaposing colours and experimenting with colour on colour, my painting became more abstracted more intuitive. Sometimes I took a more deliberate and patterned approach though more recently I have had a daily practice of rapid, ‘splashabout’ painting. All of this has enabled me to transfer my discoveries into oil painting on canvas, and in using oils and mixed media on paper.
Khadi Paper Sketchbook
Khadi paper has been a delight to find and has allowed me to work rapidly with watercolour and gouache and play with blending paints. I enjoy the coarseness and bumpiness of the paper. Here are some pages from the sketchbook over the Winter of 2023/4
Works on canvas and board
I began my first oil painting during the Autumn of 2021 on an a piece of ply wood board using a box of old oil paints that Di had had for years. From my experiments in painting in watercolour I had enjoyed making shorter and longer marks in varying directions to cause a build up of effects and energies from the original marks. And obviously Jackson Pollock was on my mind and a desire to break free of more obvious representational forms. I enjoyed making mistakes and rubbing or scratching out, I also splattered some ink about. I liked the result but I am not sure what anyone who views it will makes of it. Shortly after a friend gifted me some stretched canvas and I made my first attempt at a work on canvas inspired by the flowers at the garden where I volunteer. It turned into something more like a map. I enjoyed learning that you could scratch out, rub and adjust and how the application of one colour led to another, a very absorbing process. I still enjoy the vibrancies and juxtapositions of this painting and it certainly gave me the momentum to carry on with mark making and abstract intuitive painting, sometimes using a particular photo image or memory of a place as a starting point. Sketching and rapid watercolour work with nothing in mind has also informed my painting. What you see here now is the chronology of how things have been developing since those early experiments.