My new blog is at www.patsbooksandthoughts.blogspot.com

Starting up again.

 I'm currently setting up a new website where I will offer to create portraits from photos via graphite, charcoal or pastels. Eventually I hope to sell some of my finished work on there too. I've been drawing quite a lot of people over the last few years. I may extend that offer to portraits for pets but I haven't created as many as those of people so I'm not as confident yet in that area.

I haven't posted for a while as I've been busy with things other than art, but I continue to paint and draw. This is one of my works in progress:

I acquired these vases over the years and liked the way the shapes and colours work together. The limited palette of blues and browns provides a challenge for my painting and, I think, make an interesting composition. The painting isn't finished but when it is I'll upload it for sale on my website.

The painting with the silver bud vase is now finished and uploaded to my website and the painting I've almost finished is this one, called Summer Harvest: I'm not sure about the background colour so I'm still working on it.

I haven't been painting much recently as I've been busy preparing for the our local art society's Summer Exhibition which  is currently taking place at the magnificent St Laurence's Church in Ludlow for the first time. The screens holding our paintings are in the chancel which houses the famous misericords and the many people that come to see these are also having to navigate around our artwork. Next spring's exhibition will be in a different place within the church; controversially, more pews are being removed to provide a better location for our screens. These are some of photos of the work I've entered in situ:

This week I visited the Tate Gallery in Liverpool and saw the Jackson Pollock exhibition: Blind Spots. Pollock was an American abstract artist who found a new way to express the world around him and eventually became known for his complete redefinition of modernist painting. He dripped and threw paint from above onto his canvas which was lying flat on the ground using colour and then later in his career, black and white. I particularly liked the painting entitled: Summertime number. 9A painted in 1948 which, though abstract, seemed to have dancing figures worked across the large canvas. The writer of the programme notes says that he "produc(ed) a tense balance between abstraction and figuration that blurs the lines between conscious and unconscious motivations." All very different from my own way of representational painting.

I haven't been able to paint much this week as life is getting in the way but I have been giving some thought to the next painting in my "window" series. Which season to do next? Autumn seems the obvious choice, but do I use the same scene through the window as the summer painting or a different one? I'm thinking of putting apples on the window sill as these represent the autumnal harvest. One of my favourite poems is "Moonlit Apples" by John Drinkwater which a friend has written out in beautiful calligraphic handwriting and I've had framed. It's evocative of my childhood, when my grandfather used to bring home boxes of Cox's Pippins in autumn from the farm where he worked. Wind-blown leaves in various colours; a flock of birds flying off to the warmth; a misty aspect, maybe as in Keats' "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness"; should I include all or some of these in the scene?

Anyway, meanwhile I have two small canvasses ready and waiting for a summer harvest set up and I've collected three vases together which could make an interesting still life for the second one. Hopefully, I'll be able to pick up a paintbrush soon.