Day 152

Study: Barnes Railway Bridge
57 x 36 cm | Oil on Linen over Board
(Beginning oil sketch)

Spent lots of time today researching the elements of a possible new formula for working more indirectly. Up to now it's been about being inside the studio. The approach and focus has largely been on the direct observation of single or uncomplicated arrangements of edible, colourful objects and exploring how our joint realities overlapped in fat mountainous colour, shape and texture. Not to say that all of this is now finished, but there are a number of aspects of exploring my surroundings that the studio environment - and 'simple' shapes of colour and texture - don't cover. And at this early part of a hopefully lifelong development I feel now is far too early to decide what the rest of my work will focus on. Luckily for me, Tad Spurgeon has gone to considerable lengths to get to the bottom of some of the mysteries of painting from centuries ago when it and religion were the only games in town. And why such curious and mesmerising stuff has lasted so long without losing it's spell-binding allure as craft, message and magic. He's been an invaluable source of information on ways of keeping the learning and living of it, as a process, alive. But mostly he's generously imparted the fruits of his near obsessive investigations as insight to help take me completely out of my currently comfortable confines and see where me, my knife, pigments - and some agitation - can take me. My vision is of transluscent overlapping mountains of coloured terrain. The materials of this will be covered more later. Today I got back on the outdoor horse and, after much deliberation, loaded up my trusty steed of a mountain bike and headed for the River Thames for the final 4 hours of light. And. It was like awkward as hell. But positive. First run involved mostly putty medium with some egg(!) and absolutely no white paint. Now, that's right out there with the dragons - where security is a nasty word.

Day 151

Study: Lemon | 46 x 46 cm
Oil on Linen

It's not like I've got hairier knuckles this evening than yesterday evening but I sure am twitchy. Did put a little extra work in on the chicken bones at dinner - and this lemon started breathing at me here in the wee small hours. All under the beam of tonight's full moon. So now I surely am experienced, I suppose. Decided to wrap it up on the subjects last inhale. My little way of having the last say in this little tiff between myself and my yellow little night - (and day) companion here. Not thrilled with the way this photograph isn't picking up the purples as usual but it will just have to do for now. While mentioning things less than thrilled with - and only a poor painter blames his supplies - a particular tub of Utrecht white I procurred from a certain painter (you know who you are) left alot to be desired in comparison to the variations of Michael Harding and L. Cornellison's I've tangoed with of late. Really disappointed with both the tinting capability and the amount of drier therein. No matter how much stand oil or putty was whipped into it, within 24hrs the results were lumpy and immoveable. But just to be fair, I'll try at least once some other time when there's not a whirring industrial de-humidifier on flood repair duty all hours of the day only a floor away. That said Harding's gear held up under the Arizona desert conditions just fine. So, anyway, though the lemon (impervious itself to industrial drying devices I might add) did kick my butt. Did learn lots along the way. Such as, while in art school, one strives to grasp ways of manipulating the plastic elements of tone, light and colour temperature - uh - for a reason. Violet and pink are the best ways to turn yellow away from the eye, green will lead to wrist-slicing and sunglasses will keep a lemon from seeing the fear and desperation in the eyes. What's on for tomorrow? If I don't disect this 200gm monster I don't know what I'll do.

Day 150

Study: Lemon | 46 x 46 cm
Oil on Linen
(Restarted - In progress)

Everything's a little in the air at the moment. Back is not cooperating. Toiled a few more hours on this lemon study again today after scraping plenty of last sessions paint out. For some reason that I can't quite understand, there is far too much about this form I struggle to handle on the paint's terms. But those are the rules of this wicked game and it's not over yet. Alla prima or not, this might take 2 more hours or 2 more weeks, but by the time I call it a day on this, I will feel experienced - and on more than Hendrixian levels. I must. One thing I do know now - that I wish I'd known 2 days ago (or even 3 lemon studies ago) - is that gobs of lemon yellow does not an agitatedly real lemon make. In fact, it's not altogether clear to me how that pigment got it's name. Oh how spooky is the power of lemon.

Day149

Study: Lemon | 46 x 46 cm
Oil on Linen
(In progress)

Friday was a bit of a strange day. The weather I've now accepted is not going to do much for the studies or the spirits. However it's not as bad as it's been. We had to hire a de-humidifier to dry out the living room wall downstairs that got saturated through the bricks in a recent deluge. The machine - in a day - has yielded nothing short of astonishing results. A real Modern wonder. Had to do a couple of other tasks like mentioned the other day. Managed to begin thinking about a design for my eventual website, to complement Agitated Realism. I get lots of folks suggesting I do things here - like they see on websites - so instead of repeatedly explaining the difference between that and a blog, it would be better to just link one to the other. Later I stretched some linen and began the strange journey of trying to visually understand another lemon. This will be my fourth shot in the last year and I'm really expecting to have a little more success each time. I find this subject a powerful enigma of a fruit. A humble form, with the very power of the Sun itself in it's colour - the lemon is one of the true over-achievers of the fruit world. Its reputation precedes it. Will I be able to learn the secret to the lemon's very special rules with regard to light and shadow?

Day 148

Study: Nocturnal Lime
57 x 36 cm | Oil on Board

What I forgot to mention yesterday is that after dark here in the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere doesn't actually count photographically until about 10.15pm - when most of the blue leaves the sky and enters the hearts (of some). And this is just as well. For just when we think we've got a good handle on something, it then decides to show us its horns. Had to lay an unexpected amount of paint into this fair citron today as the daylight revealed the years of growth before me and the scant seconds of luster left in our subject. My old über-saturated friend - phthalocyanine green - came to the rescue as a means of breaking up the greens and also providing some rich neutrals to lift the black smile of a silhouette that was perched across the middle of the format in the middle of the night awaiting a cow to jump over it. Overall it's still a fairly visceral account of the past couple of days with this exciting newcomer, the lime slice. They will certainly be back, but this had to come to a sane conclusion today. Quite a bit was learned in the process and within the limited envelope of orange and green that will come along through many more. The newly found newness in the process itself is positve as well. Some of the old things I did by default or device before, are now being challenged, particularly in navigable passages of broken colour. They're less ready for grouting now than they used to be and I'm not sure whether I'll lose the heretofore everpresent edges, but will surely find out soon. Could this mean a more indirect, transparent system - brushes even? Let's just grab the reigns here for a second - Geez! [NB - This blurred image will be replaced later]

Day 147

Study: Nocturnal Lime
57 x 36 cm | Oil on Board
(Very very nearly)

Finishing up...really this time. [Later] Well, not quite. I pushed it until the yawns were so wide my eyes were stretching horizontally and tearing up, but only got real real close to calling it done. The real ground was covered between about 11.30 and 1.45am, but then the flickering began and I was wiping and chucking mini-rags in the bin faster than I was gaining ground on the study. I'll need to see this in the morning light and make some definite decisions. Light is nice in areas and too abstract in others, calling attention to the handling which can be distracting. Breaking some colour will give it more richness as will one last good look at just how much silhoutting of the rind is really required in this agitated world. For tonight, it's taking its place on the bottom shelf of the fridge to slow drying and preserve surface movement for the last go at it. The finished study will be posted after it gets dark enough outside to photograph - keeping consistent with all else posted so far. I'm working some awfully strange hours at present and need to put this right before zombification sets in. And I need that like a head in the hole.

Day 146

Study: Nocturnal Lime
57 x 36 cm | Oil on Board
(Slinging in progress)

Nightshift...[Later] The nightshift never really happened the way I wanted. It wasn't cloudy and there was no Mojito mayhem, but I was diverted from the painting by some refurb snagging duties relating to another side of life here of which I am a non-excutive direct benficiary. So in other words, when my beloved (or one of her clients past or present) beckons, the wise response is: how high does this beckoning require me to jump? Afterwards we sat out in the sun and counted the things to be grateful for - came home and did rather a little more of the same. The work shown here is actually what I'll call an early sling on Wednesday. As I'm desperately trying to nestle back into to my pre-trip ways, I'm realising that this all is feeling more new than familiar. My very good friend, who's more Pentagon than artsy-fartsy, after first conceding that he knows poop from pinot about art asked me: Mike, how come your pictures start out smooth and end up really bumpy? I initially hadn't the foggiest notion of what to tell him that didn't sound like ethereal arts speak. I think I tried to say the early bit is the reconnaissance part of the attack and the rest was hopefully like poetic post-battle carnage. Anyway, as I get re-acquainted with what I thought was my process, I come back to his question. And I wonder why it's taking so long to fire the first shots. I'm coming around to the idea that not knowing how to get it going is what's going to be my friend in the long run. Thus keeping my senses as sharp as the ever-changing enemy that Fox News trades on telling us is as perennial as evil.

Day 145

Study: Nocturnal Lime
57 x 36 cm | Oil on Board
(Beginning oil sketch)

After ordering more supplies today under a cover of darkness the likes of which we haven't seen around here since, well, yesterday and the day before - I headed up the road to see what was on offer. I saw many old friends in the bins; some lemons, oranges, pears, plums, melons and so on, but then my my eyes fell upon the largest genetically-engineered limes this side of the Mississippi. I kept on walking, though, all the way to the furthest stand and even stopped in on my boys at the Lebanese patisserie. Although the sweets were looking sweet, I didn't see anything I felt confident would make the stormy journey back in tact. So, I ended up stopping at the first place where I'd seen those big Persian limes and snagged a couple. Once home with the rain swabbed from my grill, I commenced to slicing one up. Now, I don't know what it is about the evincing aroma of limes that registers like the ringa-ding-ding of happy hour but the scent immediately cheered me up. Come to think of it - if this rain and darkness persists tomorrow - I might have to break out the rum and mint and get myself knee-deep in a fit of Mojito madness. Anyway, once I got a slice or 2 on the still life stand I found that despite their relative mass they were still relatively smaller and further away than most subjects. This led to a pattern of arranging, painting and wiping clean that went on for some time before I settled on this, which puts the thing close enough that it's almost blurry but not so far away the fragrance can't show me the way around it. The light glowing through it is just lip-smacking gorgeous. I'm looking forward to the challenge of keeping this one short, sweet, simple and alive. And if this doesn't go the way I want soon enough - or I can't see my shadow for the weather - then these subjects are getting chopped, iced, minted, rummed, garnished and quaffed - quick like.

Day 144

Study: Cantaloupe
57 x 36 cm | Oil on Board

More Later...[Later] What a long day. Early start with the plasterer arriving first thing. Was able to eventually put the final efforts into this study to get the old ball rolling. Feels great to be back at it again after such a ong time off. The big struggle however - and as usual - is the line between painting and rendering. Looking enough to see the form and light while having to look past the quagmired squigglies on the surface that distinguish the (unopened) cantaloupe. As I endeavoured to focus on the inner flesh of this subject, the rendering thing came up again at the seedy core. With ideally only one shot at applying the paint to keep it alive and fresh, I verily skirted the edges of rendering, impressionism and pretension. But I'm not too upset with the outcome, but another 40-50 studies down the line and I might be able to sign one of these. No painting tomorrow, but back to it Monday with some lofty goals for the week.

Day 143

Study: Cantaloupe
57 x 36 cm | Oil on Board
(In progress)

More Later...[Later] The day started with the screeming drills and pounding of walls - noise from the workmen brought in to repair the moistures damage we suffered downstairs in our absence and also to deal with a minor rising damp issue that's rather common in these old Victorian terraced houses in London. The racket made for a later start than anticipated, but was able to get on with some other domestic and non-painting painting tasks. Once I got to painting - squeezing out the fat and wonder, looking, mixing and troweling it down - it soon felt like I was doing this only yesterday. With the subject dehydrating faster than is helpful, I'm confronted with the familiar challenge of knocking this off today based on remembered observations as much as the looking at the sinking mass before me. One upside to this is that the less water in the melon the deeper the colour. This variety of cantaloupe is likely Spanish and more the size of very big grapefruit than the normal volleyball size. And this might be accelerating the process even more. But after the first hour into the final session, the battle will be more between the colour that urges me than the parched one before me.

Day 142 (Praise be to Yahweh)

Study: Cantaloupe
57 x 36 cm | Oil on Board
(Beginning oil sketch)

Well, Well, Well. Although I have taken longer lapses and there's plenty of self-loathing, self-reproachment and obscured direction to last months - I finally found the gumption to present myself before the easel today. I won't make tired stereotypical claims of having some sort of painter's block or howl about departed muses. No. Just lost my step in the parade of shame that is part of my agitated reality following my downer of a re-entry last week. It's been no less than about 672 hours since the Delaware Bay outdoor fiasco and I just couldn't stand another morning wondering if it was going to be different today. There are diversions and there are diversions. And then there are derailments. No easy way to explain it. I could describe it but it's all been said before. And I don't really care, as long as it doesn't kill me. Because one is only as good as one's last study. So that gackathon I experienced on the bay those weeks back (since trashed) was good for something. I'm still awaiting an internal verdict on whether the outdoor venture is realistically going to be part of my working repertoire. Meantime, I picked up 12 more panels from the lads around the corner to go along with another 245 square feet of linen and and a bucket of gesso on the way. This will get me stuck into some indoor studies for the next couple of weeks before we go away - briefly - again. Today's subject is one recommended to me by my dear Daddy-O weeks ago as he tried to console me about the weather and general unhelpful painting conditions across the pond. As good as it is to be back on the horse, the real rewards will come tomorrow when the colour gets squeezed out. I should also begin feeling decreasingly jet-lagged with the help of a melatonin supplement before I lay me down.