Recent work - chrome orange pash

...and a work in progress:

Tunnel Visions and Minotaur Dreams

These first two are small oil studies,
exploratory paintings in a new series
called "Tunnel Visions",
hinting at the preciousness of sight,
again exploring boundaries between landscape,
aerial perspective techniques and abstraction.

As James Elkins has described so beautifully in "What Painting Is",
oil paint actively encourages this kind of thing -
a sense of depth and the wallowing in atmospheric effects!

Largely the marks are made with the thumb and fingertips
and occasionally rags.
Painting medium or solvent dissolves and blurs edges and allows for subtle skeins of pigment to criss cross one another and blend.

In the above example, alizarin crimson makes a dramatic note
which could possibly be seen as jarring, but that's the point
really - experimentation.

Below, sap green, white and raw umber are applied more
loosely, but with a similar end in view; that of suggesting a heavily
circumscribed glimpse upon some new realm.

Minotaur Dreams...

Above are two from the "Minotaur Dreams" series,

where similar techniques are used with warm raw burnt and red umber,
deep orange oxides, indian yellow  and smoky transparent blacks.
Solvent is sprayed on gently to make the paint more diffuse
and give detailed drip effects in some areas.
Rags are used to expose paler golden staining from the Indian yellow.

White and naples yellow are opaque additions that immediately create

a fog like area - sometimes this gives a sense of far distance
and a blurring of any hinted-at horizon.

Below, a Bull of the Woods, with an initial improvised drawing layer
using piped black acylic from a plastic bottle with nozzle
(the type you get in haircolouring kits).
This dries very fast and it's very satisfying to rub oil paint over
and around these contour lines.
That eye keeps  recurring. Slightly unnerving...

New painting, "Caw and Clatter"

This is part of a series using gestural large brushstrokes in blackboard paint, with oil colour overlaid with painting knives.  It's partly inspired by the sounds made by corvidae and other birds in and around the trees in autumn.   
The painting is available via the Tarpey Gallery.

Apple Day Preparations...

Apple Day (I)

oil on canvas, 5th October 2011

First of a new series celebrating Apple Day, officially October 21st, but will be on Saturday 22nd here in Cromford, much better for families to join in with apple pressing, games and general apple-based mayhem! 

This event  highlights the need to protect older trees and orchards as both habitats and

producers of heritage or heirloom apples and encourage the growing of less widely

known varieties .

The local independent bookshop, Scarthin Books, has supported Apple Day with

its own celebrations including apple pressing outside on the Promenade at Cromford

for some years.  This year for the first time they are inviting local artists to display their

work there a la Rive Gauche!
Any sales I make will include a 20% donation to

Common Ground.

A few more relevant links are...

orangepippin


The Orchard Network (UK)

a is for apple, a V & A Museum art page

List of Apple Day events in the UK

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_apple_cultivars

...and the painting is on sale here:

etsy link 
(now sold)

Work in progress, mid -September

"Hilly Fields (I)", February 7th 2011

Hilly Fields (I):Winter Harvest
oil on canvas, 30 x 30 cm
view on etsy.com

Opaque Reverberation

etsy link

Sharp Shiver (detail)

In search of a certain colour...

I seem to have a bee in my bonnet about a certain very soft autumnal yellow at the moment.

Perhaps it would be easier to capture with tempera painting, or gouache.

This gorgeous piece is by VieModerne, on etsy.

You might call this more of a pale golden colour, but the colour I have in mind is yellow

just before it becomes golden, if you see what I mean.

Of course context is always so important,

and the cool, pale tint of the background colour of this photo really enhances the delicate colour

of the chiffon petals.

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=27622394

Let me know if you see a magical yellow on your travels, and in the meantime I'll try to find other examples!