Day 171

Study: Watermelon with Pears
57.5 x 35.5 cm
Oil on Linen over Panel
(New Beginning)

After scraping it back to the underpainting and basically flogging a dead horse, with only intermittent glimpses of any kind of point or end, the time came to cut the last study loose. The fruits themselves have been blanched and peeled and are now downstairs simmering in a delicious sauce even as I key this. No hard feelings. On to new horizons today. [Later] So yes, the fresh air of change that's been upon us for a while has now taken - at long last - the form of a new subject. Trying to trim things back some now, towards the basics. Would be really nice to get the last paint around this by - I dunno - next Thursday?

Day 170

Study: Tomatos
57.5 x 35.5 cm
Oil on Linen over Panel
(Going backwards)

Really wanted nothing more than to finish this today. This did not happen. What's more is that it's likely going to get another scrape, like the one it got this afternoon, tomorrow. Don't really know what's happening. Only it's change. And when there is change it feels the opposite of comfy. The green tomatos have turned orange. Hurray. The big butch one in the middle, that would roll its cigs up into its t-shirt sleeve if it had one, is wrinkling from over exposure to the heat lamp. This has become an epic struggle and there's not alot I can say about where it isn't right now. Huge apologies to the sweetest music teacher in Canada who expressed interest in possibly owning this - yesterday. I'm not above heading back to the wholefood store for ripe replacements before I have my day in the sun. Time to lay head down now though and dream of tomato avalanches and falling. Early morning appointment which means there'll be no picture burning tonight.

Day 169

No painting occurred on Tuesday as I finished up some print-related work. Have managed to source some new fruit items to begin the next study - once I lay the tomato foray to rest, hopefully on Wednesday. Also the washing of safflower oil is coming along nicely. Another week washing with just water should get things ready for the lead carbonate and heating next week.

Day 168

Study: Tomatos
57.5 x 35.5 cm
Oil on Linen over Panel
(In progess)

Continuing to keep things moving here. And keeping it moving means turning most of the process on its head. One way this is going is still using alot of paint - but quite thin. Taking off as much as I put down...ish. It got pretty heavy yesterday so I tonked it off with a broadsheet of newspaper, and this was exciting enough looking to lay it down on some paper in a 1-of-1 monoprint. Just stepping out of my comfort zone has been really pretty uncomfortable so no surprise there. For my own sanity - but mindful that this is meant be work - I decided to ease back on the preciousness of it all and try to enjoy some of it. Still didn't get it today and I'm feeling that yet another new thing in all of this just might be working more indirectly using some layers. Will I leave it to dry first? Well I just don't know. No sweat. Despite a drastic change for the better on the sunshine front. Just had a tremendously insightful email from my States-side voice of reason, Mssr Spurgeon, and I just don't know where I'd be without him. Good man.

Day 167

Study: Tomatos
57.5 x 35.5 cm
Oil on Linen over Panel
(In progess)

The moon is growing before my eyes. My beloved and I saw a shooting star on the walk back from picking up our green Thai curry tonight. And this painting is quickly becoming a mile-marker on my long lonesome highway where southbound takes me to hell and northbound to nirvana. Perhaps a little on the dramatic side, but meteors, or whatever they are, do that to me. Earthly grounding is good for the soul. Especially when shifting to complex multiple shapes in my still life studies necessarily chucks my old system out the window. I can't get my knife around it. And my options are scant. I either evolve or severely limit my subject matter and miss out on opportunities for some dang fascinating thangs. I certainly may resort to the larger single items again, possibly later in the autumn. But where it's at right now - and not forgetting the outdoor interests - and moving into some figurative work in the winter, something's got to give. I hear lot's of interesting suggestions all the time from urging me to embrace the forbidden fruits, to loading up the brushes, to bringing some little people and animals into these edible landscapes à la Dali - of all things(!) All much appreciated but tends to confuse the venture for one of either folly or mere commerce - clashing with the agitated axiom of the day: no tearing, no gearing. I'm going to give this study another session or so of my life and then move on. It helped tremendously to shift the surrounding light and space to green instead of the colliding chromatic storm front caused by the blue. Now for some shut-eye.

Day 166

Study: Tomatos
57.5 x 35.5 cm
Oil on Linen over Panel
(Still beginning)

Yesterday was a blackout of the soul of sorts. Today wasn't much brighter but it did involve some time at the easel. Hard time it was, but time at the easel just the same. It's so difficult when no matter how much I look, mix and lay it down - it still continues to feel like the first moments when it's mostly about orientation and thinking and never getting any closer to the elusive zone. If only one could find that get-in-the-zone elixir in a phial, it could alleviate plenty of heartache and probably not a little back pain. Nothing froths up the agitation in reality like the realisation, hours into a study, that reducing multiple subjects to any one of its many would not help in the slightest. I suppose I could just scrape it back, eat these delicious specimen and then set up and paint something I've handled better - and sold - in the past. But that would only arrest all development in the most heinous fashion. Nope. It's better to publish this record of the struggle and look forward to another day when it can only get better. It might also be handy to look back on later as an example of the how bad it can get when the gettin' ain't good. This would help to better appreciate the zone if it ever happens to hop off the back of the muse anywhere near here any time soon.

Day 165

Study: Tomatos
57.5 x 35.5 cm
Oil on Linen over Panel

A black wet day. I wasn't about to even get near it. Took care of some lingering projects I've been promising to do. There's always Thursday. As much as I hate to take that for granted, I'm feeling confident it will come - in all its black dank glory. Summer was nice in the hours it lasted. But now it seems that the funk is indeed upon us.

Day 164

Study: Tomatos
57.5 x 35.5 cm
Oil on Linen over Panel
(Beginning)

Nocturnal activity in progress. More later...[Later] Following an intense week that culminated in a pleasantly surprised wife and thrilled buyer, took the weekend off to attend to other business and entertaining house guests. Have since managed to update the image of the wild strawberries which seems to capture it in a more representative light. Got started back at it today by beginning the experimental process of washing some safflower oil for ongoing putty permutations - under the ever-generous guidance of Tad, who's done all the hard research. Pretty exciting stuff. Sand, water, oil and salt shaken (not stirred) then left to settle and to be repeated over a few days. One objective of many in this is to come to a greater understanding of the function of oil in oil painting and not least to see if I can work out a way extend the open time for my greens and blues a little. There are also supposedly nice things like less yellowing of the paint over time and a more homogenous drying process verses the film-to-skin-to-shell drying from the outside in affair that I understand to be going on as it is. Also made use of the 1:1.6 wood panels I had cut last week and began wrapping in linen. In only the first session I'm already enjoying the best of several worlds. Rigidity, speed and the ability to put on and take back to almost white that working directly on the gessoed boards didn't offer. As much as the Wise folks try to teach us to focus on the now, which is all we've got - I am looking forward to a few things down the road. Namely that the work progresses beyond merely a more polished mechanical version of what I'm doing now, but also that the craft of it holds up to the potentially cruel conditions this big old world has to offer. And while I'm at it - I am looking forward to getting my head around this party of tomatos here hosted by the exotic and spectacular Accordian Beefsteak of likely Spanish or Tuscan origin (left over from last week's fraises sortie at the wholefood market.) Simply marvelous.

Day 163

Study: Fraises des Bois
76 x 76 cm | Oil on Linen | Sold

Going to be a nighshift session to finish this, but it is close. After supper, I'll head into the final lap in finishing this Chardin inspired romantic allusion to a special night in a restaurant in Antibes (France) - back in 2001. More later with finished article...[Later] Well, ate and had a beer and fell asleep in the chair. When I woke up I thought I still have a couple of hours to do and the buyers are coming around 10.30am - should I sleep first and finish in the morning? To make a long blog entry short, it's now about 4am and the thing is as done as it's going to get. Very glad I managed the gumption to work through. There are parts of it I find successful, which are the areas I feel were about the handling of paint and what can happen with that art-wise. The areas where I'm just beginning to grasp the journey ahead are the areas where paint becomes secondary to image or depiction. This is a difficult thing to explain. Only to say that one feels like exaltation, the other like illustration. What sustains me is the mere possibility of increasing my experience of the former. Here's to the happy couple. (NB - Photo updated 21.08)

Day 162

Study: Fraises des Bois
76 x 76 cm | Oil on Linen
(In progress)

A long day painting. What made it longer was the almost total scraping out and re-laying of about 80% of yesterday's paint. Premature filming-over and gritty lumps created general havoc in the early half of the session. Made a breakthrough on the medium front after picking up new materials in the morning. The freshly acquired fine marble dust in combination with much thinner oil and bigger proportion of chalk made a lively but sturdy thickener that holds a peak better and seems to somehow raise saturation without more pigment. Nice. Have decided to hold off on the image today as the buyer is chomping at the bit for a preview which I worry at this stage would serve to confuse, at best, and at worst unduly influence the decisions on the finishing. Not to mention lessen the impact - good or bad - of the actual piece on first viewing. Thursday should allow plenty of time to finally bring it all to a frenzied conclusion. Will see. What is certain though is that the pile of berries now resembles more fruit-dappled white furry meringue than just about anything else. So this means at this late hour - and at those prices - my only friend is a sketchy flickering eidetic image.

Day 161

Study: Fraises des Bois
76 x 76 cm | Oil on Linen
(In progress)

Still working the nightshift. Off out for a walk to clear my breathing passages, go to the shop - and back to it for a bit. More later...[Later] Bending plenty of my own rules through this thing. The biggest is still having some bare canvas in areas where other areas have mountains of oozey topography. While others still, almost pure transparent medium over bare canvas. Really, I'm at the mercy of the shelf-life of these edible gems like never before. So had to go for it today or lose them forever - or worse - have to resort to photo reference which as I've said before puts me meows amongst me coos, so to speak. Not comfortbale with it. The buyer wants to see it tomorrow. I'm putting him off unless he pushes it and then, well, I might have to fire him. I'm out of chalk and my silica putty, though exciting and new, is a little lumpy making for much picking out of lumps and generally causing me grief at this scale, and on linen. So getting some of that first thing which will help me in the chromatic tug-of-war between the glass that's half empty and the one that's half full. They know who they are. Yesterday was mainly about scale and position, today about capturing a sense of les fraises in the best of their remaining life and spacial relations. Tomorrow will be about laying paint down with some intent. Putting some flicker where there's gloom and some verticality where there's leaning. But mainly rounding out the feeling of the thing with paint, intuition and verve - before the problem-solving side of this sucks the life out of this chamber of agitation that is my reality.

Day 160

Study: Fraises des Bois
76 x 76 cm | Oil on Linen
(Beginnings)

Finally got a chance to get some paint moving based on the drawing and still life set-up from Sunday. The berry tower went up and the berry tower came down - and back and forth. Such is the agitated reality of the painter playing pastry chef. Just don't know how this is going to turn out. Pain is inevitable, but tears and shame also loom. It's a first in so many ways, but apart from that, bits of it are stretching the parameters of my indoor process, which is obviously not as stable as I thought. One of the accidental discoveries in today's session was having run out of putty and calcite, in mixing the next batch I needed something more. This meant tucking into my new sack of cristobalite (fumed silica) which made a surprisingly interesting medium. Marbley, transparent and springy. The hope is that with so many surprises and much uncertainty something may just happen that I could send me to another, positive place. This is the nature of this grueling game that one might easily confuse for leisure of a Sunday afternoon. One first action for tomorrow might just be shaping this mountain of berries back to a portion for 2 - instead of the centerpiece for some Bachanalian feast.

Day 159

The financials and purchasing protocols went according to plan so I was able to gain possession of some of the world's most expensive wild strawberries. Won't go into the actual figures here, but will say that I kept the receipt and will be presenting it to the buyer, and look forward to getting a much needed new pair of casual shoes with the cashback. Out of stretcher frames, I had to break-down a couple of previous 18x30 duds and prepare and stretch a brand spanking new 30x30 for the commission. Also picked up 12 new panels from the lumber yard over which I'll be laying linen for the next wave of indoor and outdoor work following this week's sold work. It's likely to be a fairly intense next 4-5 days, as the buyer wants to unveil and collect on his way out of town on Friday morning. Continued with the non-painting preliminary stuff through Saturday. Then moved on to house and garden work, before hosting a dinner party in the evening. The good thing about having people over is it tends to get the grill fired up considerably earlier than the witching hour it usually is when on our own. Looking forward to Sunday's new moon. I know only lunatics and poor painters blame the moon and tools respectively - but something kooky has been keeping my muses and furies from sneakin'round my back door.

Day 158

It's increasingly clear to me just how much being a fulltime painter can get in the way of painting fulltime. With the aforementioned commission now a live green-lighted venture, the race has been non-stop full on to physically locate actual fraises des bois. The difficulty being that these gem-like needles in the haystack of summer fruits, mostly come from France - the romantic setting this anniversary gift will be commemorating - and August is about 2 months past the season! The best news of all is that the world famous Harrods Food Hall - which claims to stock everything - has some. Now, all I have to do is get to a bank and organise the loan to be able to afford them, recreate the setting and paint like the wind before they wither to jam faster than my patron can say - we're leaving for our holiday in 7 days time, are we ready to do consummate the deal? Ah! Nothing like a grand panic in the interest of humanity and romance - to earn a crust.

Day 157

Contemplative Miscellany
43 x 25 cm | Discarded Paint on Easel

A non-painting painting day, Wednesday was a day for rest, drying out and resting a weird back. Looked into several possibilities for a travelling protective painting cover and think I've got it cracked. As I thought about the last few outings, there's plenty to be excited about, but many mysteries yet to figure out. It's times like these that involve alot of brainless staring around the room. It was during one such gaze-athon that my eye fell upon this mini-sea of discarded texture and colour, that autonomously developes between my easel shelf and the indoor study of the day. Lumps and unwanted dribbles leave the theatre and end up here. Sometimes the biggest clues and inspiration come from the most unlikely places. Another welcome distraction came in the way of a meeting with a potential buyer to discuss a commission. All I need to do is source the specified subject matter for the set-up, get on with it and finish by the agreed time - which is scarce. It felt a little like a design brief from a former life, but assuming I can rigidly adhere to my painting ethos - whatever that is - I should be able to retain the requisite integrity to avoid sleepless nights and walks with the devil. But for Thursday still don't know what will occur: indoor, outdoor, up on the roof or further afield. Nothing like decisive action.

Day 156

Study: Little Venice
57 x 36 cm | Oil on Board

What a shame. After a reasonable conclusion to my second offical outdoor subject - smalls steps at a time here - the finished article took quite a heavy beating on the journey home. I'd realised in the nick of time that I'd committed to going to a good friend's private view in trendy Hoxton Square, in East London, the opposite direction from home. This meant schlepping all my junk and runny wet painting across town on bike in rush hour. Luckily there were no traffic incidents involved on either leg of the trip, but the heavens surely did open about 5 mins into and throughout my 45-min ride home pushing up to midnight. Very very soaked. And the painting suffered the most from road grime droplets and a generally funky flushing from all directions - from both the sky and the wheels of mine and my neighbour's tires in the torrent. This is most evident in the go-fast horizontal streaks across the small willow in the middle ground. Damage aside, the painting session on the day was the most positive in Little Venice so far - and though this begins its life in permanent private collection in this state - much was learned both from the working activity and the hellish bike trip. I'll spend some time Wednesday designing a protective covering for works in all states of life to protect them in future travels. As one can see from the top image, both the painting and the weather were on the fair side. Received my cristobalite (silica dust) to begin experimenting with in different putty mixtures that will help me to make dense glazes and move further from the edge that I've been so comfy with to date. (This is basically an attempt to try working with thick transparent layers of colour as opposed to mainly thick flat patches.) Still awaiting some safflower oil to go with this. Exciting new beginnings. But I still catch myself oggling fruit in the bins as I cycle along being choked by the strap of the easel on my back.

Day 155

Study: Little Venice
57 x 36 cm | Oil on Board
(scraped back to step one)

Back after the trip to Poland and wedding. Whoa. With the exception of a brutally long, exhausting and frustrating trip across arriving at 4.30am instead of 12.50am putting us at our ultimate destination around 6.30am(!) - we were delighted to have taken part in a special occasion - between 2 special people - in a magnificent location. I was only well on my way to a full recovery by the time I rolled up to my canalside spot to finish the Little Venice study. Thing is, after hours of trolling through gobs of uncertainty the only progress I felt was when after much reluctance I succumbed and began the somewhat healing removal and scraping process. So now where I am with it may seem an enormous step in the wrong direction - it's actually quite the opposite. For, every discernible blemish now before me is either a breadcrumb towards the way home or a warning sign to shield me from the dismal abysmal. I had been given some timely and astute pointers from my seasoned mentor on how to avoid this from the start, but thought I should first put myself through it to be sure. I'm going back again Tuesday to bring it back as far as possible and then move on to simpler surroundings - but still outside. The biggest achievment for Monday was painting within 24hrs of international travel. Particularly when vodka features so centrally in the customs and culture of the country visited, regardless of the occasion - it seems. Oooh-ey.

Day 154

Study: Little Venice
57 x 36 cm | Oil on Board
(First Session -
just the darks, mostly)

It's late I'm covered in paint and putty - just had one of our late midnight BBQs for 2. Just about everything still to do before we fly to (Wroclaw) Poland for the weekend late tomorrow afternoon. Following a day of preparation, airport parking reservations etc I got down to deciding where the paint was going to be spread around outdoors today. Eventually the rain stopped, but by this time my options were logitistically limited. Settled on one of London's quaintest hideaways in the canal junction of Little Venice near Paddington Basin - absolutely dripping with colour, light and Weeping Willows - not to mention the odd pack of adolescent mischiefmakers. Although there are plenty of cute bridges and colourful residential canal barges, I learned my lesson from the bridge on Thames and searched - not long enough given the time - for simplicity. Got set up and into it much quicker this third time in as many days. Its pretty clear that these plein air studies are a whole new thing from the controlled conditions of the studio still life. Not only in terms of subject matter and context but in the whole activity, from how to compose, isolate dynamics and the building with light. I've only ever read what it's like to chase shifting light and atmosphere and these past few days have given me a firsthand taste of that daunting but exiting task in a big way. The most screemingly salient aspect is in dealing with colour. Anything saturated or out of the tube looks and feels like alien litter. The chroma of the evening light whizzing on past is wackier than I have words to describe. One gets the feeling about every 45 - 60 seconds that the best bit is getting away until finally the only thing left to do is let go and chase it like a neophite bassist trying to keep up with Billy Cobham. It's a sense that something is happening here, I know it's spectacular, but thinking about it, mixing, deciding and acting is inhibiting. Used tons of putty (with egg yolk whipped in) and again kept the white to a mimimum. I made a good start despite abusive heckling from one passing party-barge hurling things like - get a real job, mate! and painting's for gays! But what was most obtuse was a couple of lads, obviously experiencing their first open-bar occasion, chanting nonce, nonce, nonce... from as close as 15 treacherously dangerous nautical yards of London canal water. I was so enthralled by the light I was missing I laughed and chimed in not really knowing what the term nonce meant or why it was being directed at me. Me, there innocently troweling putty from one edge of my panel to the other. I tried to pinpoint the kharmic debt but couldn't, so I guess I'm - ah - in the black at last!

Day 153

Study: Barnes Railway Bridge
57 x 36 cm | Oil on Linen over Board
(In Progress until potentially scrapped)

The tide had changed today both figuratively and literally. As I anxiously cycled along towards my spot on the river I was twice confronted with 10-12in flooding on the Chiswick Mall where the river had breached the banks as is common during heavy rain and very high tides. But I was able to navigate my rig up onto the sidewalk to get past the deepest parts. Once on site the place I stood yesterday was drenched where the tide had just begun its desperately anticipated ebb. After things were set up - further back - I had a much cleaner water line, as well as a better look at the bridge. Struggled wildly to get some of the drawing problems resolved - a no no of the craft - but in the end was just laying heaps of gooey paint down and wondering with each squessze whether it was a waste because of how quickly it was all slipping away. My self-diagnosed ADHD was not helped by the busy evening of rower's foot traffic that seemed incessantly to be putting in or taking out and passing within feet of me constantly, from the rowing club boathouse behind. This coupled with the stark realisation that I'd bitten off more than my knife could delineate in the stitched girders of Victorian steel before me, made for a fairly dishearteningly challenging affair. I know too well that they don't all have to be keepers but my goodness. At least I now know that I probably need to spend about twice as much time choosing my spot as working. I couldn't help thinking how much anguish the Cape May weather spared me weeks ago in not being able to tackle Roseman's Marina as planned. Phew! The bridge will likely be left to settle down some for now. Next day out I'm looking for Rothko-ian horizons, open spaces and big patches of sky. Maybe one of the good Queen's parks.