Day 196

Study: Tangerines with Clementine
57.5 x 35.5 cm
Oil on Linen over Panel
(Beginning sketch)

Thanksgiving Day in the USA. I haven't properly participated in this holiday in like 17 years and it usually pops into my agitated world here completely out of nowhere. But still, it stops me repeatedly throughout the day - wondering what nuttiness is occurring from one table to the next from North Carolina, to Virginia, to Pennsylvania. I was thinking of you all - and fondly too! For my day here, the plan was an early start at the easel, after a call to the people about ordering the parts to repair and recondition our fridge. Well the parts order was confirmed at very nearly first light, but this beginning sketch of an arrangement of citrus delights was wrapped up well after last light(!) Setting it up took way more time than usual despite a fine selection of all sorts and sizes from the trusty window box outside - at least 1-2 degrees frostier than the purpose-built item awaiting drastic repair downstairs. Seems a good deal of time is still getting away from me due to preoccupation with figure study. Some spent actually doing it. But the larger bit on researching where else I can get a session or 2 in to compliment the once-per-week dose at present that's yielding regression and digression more than progression. And as long as it's within cycling (in the rain) distance, costs less than a session in the pub, and keeps distracting crackling low-fidelity Bangles and Elton John's tracks to a minimum - then we're getting somewhere. As we race into The Season, most such life-drawing opportunities will be nudged to the rear burners. But I'm trying to make ready for January...Anyway. Today's study reminded me of Days 10-14 in January, when I was hacking and stabbing away at similar subjects with one insufficient mixture of pink, red and yellow after another, only to discover it was a chemical thang. I then got myself some Cadmium Yellow Deep and my agitated world began to revolve again. Here's hoping for a comparable breakthrough all these months later on this study here. Not asking for the world. Just some dizzyingly engaging progress. (Admittedly, some regular easel time would probably carry me a little too.)

Day 195

Study: Pear with Pommegranate
57.5 x 35.5 cm
Oil on Linen over Panel

Another couple of days, another year older. If not for the fridge, this week-long alla prima study would not have been possible. Even with the fridge the wobbly flesh within the pear could only barely support it slumped over the petrifying pommegranate. But it's finished now and we're moving on. That's the key. For as drawn out an exercise as it was, some aspects of this study can be considered strengths and steps in a positive direction. The idea of taking steps with direction are two long lost notions from my agitated reality for some weeks now - months even. It was nice to learn to lay paint down thickly again, but to do so without any kind of rendering formula or colour plan. And there were other delights like actually leaving untouched gessoed linen and tinted ground throughout. To think I might well have even underworked some aspects of a study this soon after a lapse. Preposterous really. But it felt like it tonight - tomorrow could bring a different sense. Wanted to thank everyone for the sweet birthday wishes from around the hemisphere both on here and by email. So nice. And to those who let it slide despite my subtle reminder within this very blogspace - and you know who you are brothers and sisters - no offense taken too deeply. The day was spent with my rapidly transforming beloved - with breakfast and gifts followed by a very long walk on a brisk sunny day to - and all through - Holland Park and back. Had a few stop-offs. One at the Anglesea Arms for oysters and ale (for 1) by fireside, and the other at our butchers for a couple of whopping sections of chateaubriand we had later by a blazing fireside here at home. So retiring have we become - those of us on gestation patrol - and so soon. But still. I think I'm going to ease right into it like the plush papa bear house robe I was given with my other prezzies.

Day 194

Study: Pear with Pommegranate
57.5 x 35.5 cm
Oil on Linen over Panel
(Beginning and nearly finished)

The days are filled with questions, speculations, evaluations and potential permutations. Is it going to go this way or that? Shall I pursue the figurative from the drawing sessions in paint - or take advantage of the clear mornings outside? Will it ever come back to me even in the simpler indoor still life studies? I visited an aging artist last week who can't lift himself out of the funk of depression. He couldn't quite put his finger on why he felt so numb about his world. And in the past, only medication could change things - and not necessarily for the better. We looked at paintings for over 4 hours and I could only bring him to a point beyond indifference about them towards the final hour of the visit. His grand apartment was like a museum to another time with hundreds of paintings everywhere - up on the wall and stacked deep and tall along every wall from the front door to the back. He showed me his sketchbooks and his 3 paint (mixing) mills - and reminded me how he taught the namesake of my particular brand of paint how to make the stuff a number of years ago. He still makes his own and beautifully inscribes every label of every tube, although he could tell the colour by sniffing it. When I rang him a couple of days later to check in and to tell him how much I enjoyed the afternoon, he said he was feeling much better and thought the interaction did him good. It did me some good too. I've forgotten completely where I was before the lens of my focus became so muddied with questions about the future. But questions are all I have when the agitation is careening joyfully tortuously along as it should. So the questions are here for now. Now what about Day 195? I think because it will be my birthday - I might give myself the present of slaying this mushy coupling of fruit on my stand so I can get on with the fiery red Amaryllis our guests brought the other day for lunch - if they last. And a thanks goes out to dear Jazmin Velasco for the nudge about the blank post earlier.

Day Whatever

Study: Pear with Pommegranate
57.5 x 35.5 cm
Oil on Linen over Panel
(Oil Sketch)

Well. Here we are after an aeon. Sparing my patient readership the post-prandial blathering, there will be more - later. Believe it or not...[Later] It is quite a bit later, but here just the same. Don't quite know what the problem has been lately, only that it seems I've been in something of a state of quasi-shock now off and on for a couple of months. Trouble sleeping. Hyper-self-scrutiny. All the evil stuff that makes for madness. And heartily hitting the hooch, given the slightest opportunity, and then the international phone lines - as my poor unprepared stateside siblings will attest.

Day 192

Study: Chocolate Roulade with Strawberry
57.5 x 35.5 cm | Oil on Linen over Panel

And as if by mischief, I've managed to disappear for another whole week. Last weekend ended up being way way fuller than I was ever imagining it to be and it carried over into this week completely unexpectedly, in more ways than I care to elaborate on here. The drawing day on Saturday went down sort of as planned, in that there was a long day of drawing (samples here) - but generally it was slightly on the crowded and overfacilitated side. I'm a big fan of structure to a point, but the day seemed to take on an air of a life-drawing survey or overview and wasn't really billed as such. No real harm done though, still. Then - for my sins - on Sunday, I attended the first ever regulation NFL game to be played outside the US (and count) at the brand new Wembley Stadium. My cohorts, mostly nutters from the music industry, seemed to treat the whole shebang as something of an hedonistic all-day rock concert. And sadly they had far too heavy an influence on my comparatively reserved approach to spectator participation. It most certainly did feel as if I was party to a reality that would very soon become a swiftly waning aspect of my...uh.... foreseeable... reality. What with our life-changing blessing that is ever-growing, ever-closer, to rearing a head or limb with each passing day. And this is probably a good thing too. Anyway. Had to call this Roulade study a study. The only further touches made were necessary after (again) some unidentified last-minute house guest's fingers ploughed trails across its apparently irresistable tactile terrain, as it lay peacefully for days in the basement of the fridge. Done now. Since then, there's been precious little easel time as I tinker away through busy-work preparing for that next push that just absolutely has to be about to happen(!) There's simply no other way to put it other than to say that focus is a slight problem at the moment. Unsettled times. Earlier this week, as I gacked my way through a day, I recalled a hackneyed little trinket of an entrepreneurial expression from another life about lead dogs and changing views. Yawn. Well. Not to revel in my present stagnation, I must declare that the vantage point of an agitated dog chasing his tail can be pretty darn dynamic too. On other news, the scaffolders arrived this evening after dark - and after promising for 3 weeks now - to dismantle the scaffolding from out front by streetlight. What else? Oh, I recently politely declined to donate one of my studies to a small local charity auction. Such are the salient peaks in my agitated Autumnal world as it stands. This will - this must - get better.