Day 90

Study: Two Black Plums I
56 x 35 cm | Oil on Board
(In progress)

I'll be writing more on these love birds later after I've had some dinner. But, I will say now that this study get's dedicated to Mr. Fat Paint, himself - David Oleski - who not only lays down a deliciously superb plum amongst many other subjects, but also because some 90 days ago he was the one to urge me to take on this oil journey and to take it to the masses and the few. [Later] These dark darlings had to be left to ripen for a day while I regrouped and recovered from the pineapple experience. Moving from barky surface to butt-smoothe was just as jolly as I was hoping. As has been noted elsewhere, the utter lack of colour variation is a starker (than usual) exercise in observation, if not a little hide and seeky. With now you see it now you don't reads on the warms and cools - and all deep. I'm reasonably settled on the colour for now, athough the slight variations aren't showing up as much digitally. To avoid over-doing it on this another will be started tomorrow after I turn some of the planes of this to the light and also into the dark slightly. I'm noticing the shuffle between the square and wider formats to be useful in avoiding a formulaic approach to space, moving from both front to back and laterally. The other bonus is that these smaller ones fit nicely on a cleared bottom shelf of the refrigerator for a near suspension of the drying process - handy to find - when the study so often carries over to the next day and alot of swiftly drying blues have gone down. It also gives the butter this - I can't beleive it's not linseed oil - kind of flavour - the toxic implications of which are elusive in the handbook.

Day 89*

Study: Orange and Quince
76 x 46 cm | Acrylic on Linen | 2006

No painting today. I've been nursing a minor sports injury to my beloved, picking up new fruit, catching up on some miscellaneous errands etc and making ready to squeeze out into the next session tomorrow. The painting shown here is one of my (*not done today postings) from my acrylic days way on back in 2006. It was interesting to see the differences in attitude and approach from then to now. I would say how much I'm looking forward to seeing the work of April 2008 - but that would be going against our rules about focusing on the study of now, and what is possible to create from that, no matter how painful or confusing.

Day 88

Study: Pineapple II
76 x 76 cm | Oil on Linen


It did scream to the fore over our improbably sunny weekend, whilst toiling away at this ferocious challenge of a subject, that just because one is accustomed to the Bodhran bounce of the linen and has some salient measure of the electromagnetic spectrum doesn't amount to one's free entry to the vision-to-technique-to-inventory lounge. Far from it. But, fortunately for me, the brand of realism that comes off of my easel is a smidgen on the agitated side. When I said in a blog or 2 ago that I wasn't "scared," I wasn't being altogether straight with myself or to those gentle souls who follow the penitent offerings of this mostly daily push. Fact of it is, I was damn scared and found myself - more than once - literally trembling as I loaded my knife and took my Zoroesque swipes at this bastard of nary a plain plane pointing towards Mother light - reflected or otherwise. So, I did turn to my mantra - and did look for "the general," and did move from the warm to the cool and then I did get down on my knees often and thanked Krishna for that merciful negative space whenever it revealed itself. As I continue along in the said push towards the set of 1 hundred pieces from which I'll comprise my first London show, I'll look back on this April swelt of a day, with my sweetly ballasted yucca poser, and deeply understand the bitter sweetness of lessons hard learned. In the end it came down to this artist's compromise of colour (with texture and pattern) over a complete understanding of the 8-by-13- by-21 mathematical matrix before me (and not a few other things) and opted for a bit of agitated order. I might even do another. Sue me.

Day 87

Study: Pineapple II
76 x 76 cm | Oil on Linen
(In progress - image to follow)

A beautiful Spring day in London. We're actually on quite a roll here - weatherwise, that is. It's just been so sunny and warm out. Despite this, I spent most of today grappling with the pineapple study. A considerable amount of deliberation went into the decision to scrape back the previous 2 day's juicy evilness and re-design the space. Actually, I woke up hell-bent on reclaiming more of the real estate for the edible part of the subject. After all this is what's rapidly filling the studio with the ripe smell of the tropics - or the juice bar - depending on your olfactory mindframe. And this is what the whole devilish job of it is. Besides, I needed it larger to get the tools around it. If I can be forgiven the pun, no matter how you slice it, there's an overload of information in that bit of it to get the tools around. I was really pushing to finish it but then realised I needed to eat and give my twitchy lumbar region a rest after standing for 7 hours. The big realisation of the day was that I have been, up to now, easing into a comfy little system for resolving my paintings (or not) - which I feel is not a good thing. And this challenge has provided just the necessary jolt to shake me awake from this and revisit my process to allow for subject matter that doesn't involve a contiguous surface of flesh, fuzz or skin. Another thing this barky matrix has is more Golden Section and Fibonacci sequences than a Dan Brown novel. And thank Jah for that after 2 days of staring and trying to understand. In the end, I was left with no choice but to crank up the funk and let the madness of Marcus Miller's base guide the palette knife. I laid into it again with a rather fauve triad of orange, green and violet that slides to russets and blue-greens for accents and (dis)order. Didn't use the chalk putty medium this time, but will on the next one... And there will be a next time because nobody hurts me like I do, do, do. [Image to follow as it's all currently mummified in plastic recycling bags.]

Day 86

Study: Pineapple I
76 x 76 cm | Oil on Linen
(In progress)

Too late to write but here's the state of affairs on this. It' always best to recognize sooner rather than later that this composition isn't working with me, so there's every chance this thing will get scraped and re-started or finished - and then re-cropped/stretched after it's dry. More later. Bed now. [Later] Started in on this complicated surface today to experiment with different ways of tackling the mass and volume of it while trying to retain a handle on its unique pattern and texture - and this is before really addressing the foliage. Although I was beginning to get a little excited about some of this, it occurred to me that the direction of the work recently was yielding heavy texture as a consequence of my process - and for the first time texture (and pattern) dominate how light and colour play across the form with this subject. The calypso-istic palette is exciting too, but above this and some pretty intense scrutiny and minor discovery of the modules that make up its structure - it's getting scraped back to the ground. For one, it's taking me off course, in terms of content, context and format (ie, the body of the fruit is not big enough compared to the surrounding space) and the secondly the the angles aren't settling down within this space. No. I can't abide the mere dimensions of a thing on my stand having such a command over my process in this way. Afterall I'm the one wielding the gosh-dang knife here. And I'm the one who has to try and sleep at night with the gremlins. Yes - the cackling gremlins - as they swing from pointed leaf to pointed leaf in the tropics of my skull - with their shrill Ozian taunt - "youooou can't fit it, youooou can't paint it, so you have to ren-der it! Illustrator! Luh-ooooo-ser! Luh-ooooo-ser!"

Day 85

Study : Pineapple I
76 x 76 cm | Oil on Linen
(In progress)

At the risk of repeating myself, one of the huge balancing benefits of living in one of London's biggest drug and crime enclaves is this. When one potently fragrant pineapple disappoints and dries out, I can just amble on down the Uxbridge Road a pluck another one of Costa Rica's finest out of the box and bring it on back. What to do with it once it's here is a whole different matter. I don't pick up my new boards until tomorrow, so I had to tighten the drum pitch on a 30 x 30 bit of stretched linen I had just to be able to fit in the head-dress on this flamboyant little savage. It was pretty clear to me from the first swash of pigment that this is going to be - uh - tricky. But I ain't scared. Come this time 3 weeks from now and this will all be well behind me. I'm awaiting delivery of a few supplies, including a new palette knife. This I'm counting on to help me carve my way around the this voodoo grenade before the real trouble starts. The likelihood of that arriving before the trowelling starts is not very. But for now, I'm going to go and lay my head down and (quietly) repeat my bite-off-more than-I-can-chew mantra to myself - 'general to specific - big to small - warm to cool, general to specific...' and see how it all goes tomorrow. Yikes.

Day 84

Study: Comice Pear I | 35 x 35 cm
Oil on board

Well it hasn't taken as long as it normally does after a break to step back up to it but it took long enough. I can't explain why this is but there is an overriding sense of 'now - where was I?' Then the more I try to remember - the less I can, and then start filtering for blocks which are boundlessly available by the skullful. Eventually, after trimming, feeding and preening about every single living thing in the garden this morning, I stumbled into the studio and began to set up. But, of course, the pineapple has gone the way of the desert dog [D.83]. So my alternative was this un-toppleable Comice pear I brought back from Yorkshire. The one I probably should have painted there instead of playing in the plein air. I began by mixing and painting a new backdrop colour for the still life stand that would help me see the pear better after a long break. The third one was the one I went with. All was fine once I started observing the pear in context, mixing colour and moving it around. It occurred to me about 6 hours into this that the reason I can never remember (while I'm away from it) where I was with my work is because when it's happening like it should - which is rare - it's about being nowhere. Breadcrumbs are no help. I won't be doing anything more to this painting. I sense a change or shift in my process coming on. Tomorrow it's off to the market to see what plump ripeness I can find to take me to a really agitated nowhere.

Day 83*

Study: Bananas I
56 x 35 cm | Oil on Board | Sold

Upon my return from the North, I was really very anxious about getting back to this painting to work out a few things I wasn't thrilled about in the mad rush before we left on Friday. I was anxious and apprehensive, because I'd spent considerable time encapsulating it in such a way that I thought would most closely simulate cramming the whole kitandcaboodle back into the tube whence it came - with board. After eventually finding the perfectly shaped box lid - deep enough to form a shelter over the wet paint - slid these carefully together into a plastic bag. Before sealing it with high grade duct tape I even placed damp towel in on top of the box lid for good measure. I drew the blinds in the coolest bathroom in the house, closed the door and left it stashed there like a fine bag of green bud for a some beatnik of the future to discover on some rainy day in a not too distant millenium. Now, to cut a story that's rapidly gathering column inches here short, when I returned 4 days later and did absolutely everything I could think of doing to avoid unwrapping my vapor capsule - I did. And it was just a little drier than the dry on a dying desert dog's nose. But it's not as bad as I remember. I'm also lucky the panel didn't grow some fine green culture. There's always another. And next time it's getting a dedicated shelf in the fridge.

Day 82

Oil Sketch: Seascape I
35 x 35 cm | Oil on Board
(Updated)

Updated Image from Yorkshire - as it was with no further work on it.

Day 80

Oil Sketch: Seascape I
35 x 35 cm | Oil on Board
(In progress nad cropped)

After spending most of Friday on the road, we're now in Saltburn-by-the-Sea, Yorkshire, for Easter. The blob of pixels to the right is sadly a mobile phone capture of my efforts to seamlessly up sticks and take my process on the road. The first thing I can say is that apart from the exhilarating danger of relocating (sans easel) to the flat roof of the downstairs neighbours dormer to have another crack from life of one of my favourite views, the sitting, leg extended out in front of me - cut off all circulation for about the entire time making me even more shaky on my feet than was necessary under the circumstances. I'll be updating the image when I return, but just wanted to see how this would work. With most things really not on my side, from the proportion of the panels I'd brought along - to the shear scale and swiftly shifting light of the subject - I feel fortunate to be inside now, in one piece and keying this in. My bananas - now sealed up in a customized humidor until I can ressurect the goodness that was emerging but quickly gacked-over in the frantic hours before we had to hit the highway - seem alot further away now than the few hundred miles they actually are. This plein air business is foreign territory to me for sure. If it's nice tomorrow, I'm going to have a go at this from a crab's eye view down on the beach. It won't likely be any more comfortable than today, but it will mean that I won't make another alarming spectacle of myself, as what could only look like a jumper to passers-by from the promenade below, out on a precarious 4th story ledge of this grand old former hotel. The most important thing for this weekend is to feel I'm not dropping tools entirely for 4 straight days - just because I'm away from the studio - and then having to overcome the mostly psychological enertia of that on my return and then have to work out where I was with both the work and this (mostly) daily project. So for that, today is a biggish step.

Day 78

Study: Bananas I
56 x 35 cm | Oil on Board
(In progress)

I'm learning, learning, learning. There's plenty more to say about this, but guests, conversation and the hour have ducked out the side entrance with the time in which I'd planned to do it. Apart from all the things I'm desperate to make 'good' before we head off tomorrow - and thereby leaving this either finished or in an eternally iterative state of limbo - I must re-charge, re-shoot and re-vise this posting a bit later [again].

Day 77

Study: Bananas I
56 x 35 cm | Oil on Board
(In progress)

Getting the image up now - because that's been taking a while with the recent upload issues I've had - and I'll elaborate a bit on things later on. [Much later on] Okay. It was a bright sunny day and I needed a walk to acquire a new subject for the study stand, so down the Uxbridge Road I went. Wasn't sure whether I'd be returning with a pineapple or a bunch of bananas and ended up coming home with both. The scene at Al Abba fruit stand was fairly usual, with me scruitinizing all sorts of produce from many angles picking up, putting down, taking the one piece from the bottom of the stack and then trying futilely to stop the mini-avalanche from spilling into the traffic. Once I made what I thought was my choice I proceeded to the checkout holding the precious item like it was fine china or newborn infant. As usual, the till operator's smile fills her hajib as she's about to gruffly sling my specimen banana bunch into the weigh tray - and I say - "hey easy-easyeasy with those please!" Perplexed, she announces the price (unsmiling now), I pay and while she's getting my change - "Just a sec"- I disappear to a place behind her to another box of samples I somehow missed. Sure enough these had better colour and compositional potential (yep). Back to the counter. "Sorry, can I swap these for those and pay the difference." She advises me that this would be a bad idea because my preferred ones are slightly bruised "see here?" I insist it's fine. She disagrees. I tell her I won't be looking at it from that angle. She's immovably unconvinced. "Okay, look really, it's not for eating!" I exclaim. Oh, all was completely clear to her now. I'm just another nutter from the Uxbridge road with my never-seemingly-pristine, multi-coloured cuticles and paint splayed shirt front. I then paid and disappeared out into the sea of other ranting nutters on the high street of our bustling little community. As for the study, these are great fun to paint, if not a little tricky to get the knife around initially. I've noticed my palette calming down some over the last few studies, which is a welcome change - and part of the reason I originally opted for the 'single' subject - to work through some of these issues. I expect to finish this within the first couple of hours at the easel. But my expectations and my agitated reality have a way of not seeing eye to eye.

Day 76

Study: Two Apples I
56 x 35 cm | Oil on Board | Sold

Judging by how slow the Blogger server is tonight (this morning) it's looking like Day 76 is going to be a long one. Just went downstairs after eating quite late (after finishing quite late) to photograph the apples and realised the camera battery is dead. Fortunately when things are low on energy they aren't really dead but just need some juice. I spent an inordinate amount of time today looking at landscapes - Boudin and Valenciennes - and the experience carried over into the work of finishing this study. I found myself lost in the attempt to create outdoor-like atmosphere in the space surrounding the two subjects as if they were plopped on an arid Tuscan plateau. I'm all for letting go and reacting a little to what's happening within the painting process but just had to pull in the reigns slightly. Although I tried to introduce some brush action to this space, I kept coming back and working up the surface with the knife, often skimming back to reveal a beautiful marbled skyscape - though didn't have the guts to leave it after failing to integrate it without it looking like plain technical mischievous indulgence. Getting on to the painterly business of injecting rich chroma within simplified planes of colour was the most positive experience. Of all such experiences in what turned out to be an extended session, that was only supposed to last an hour or two, the most exciting was actually finding colour for the first time in the cast shadows of the apples. It was as freaky as it was illuminating and I kept thinking "where have you been hiding?" I mean it's not as if I haven't been studying these subjects with my own eyes at least half of the time. Perhaps having the 2 objects - with 2 shadows in such proximity - helped me to see the one showing more cool green colour than the other. Whatever it was, it goes without saying that I'm looking forward to being on the lookout for this little phenomenon in - well - from now on. Just hope it's not something that only happens after a heavy weekend over a full moon.

Day 75

Study: Two Apples I
56 x 35 cm | Oil on Board
(In progress)

I'm now back at it now after the aforementioned weekend break. To use the word break immediately calls to mind the many painful bodily transgressions of Saturday night - punctuated by a textbook mistake of switching from that of the Roman to that of the Cossack - far later than the the full beam of the moon let on. The head pain deriving from both the cheer and the break(that word again)-dancing was assuaged early in the day only by massaging the frightfully mushroom plump temporal region and then later by the completely charming and angelic festivities of the fun and games at 2-year-old Isabella's birthday party. Odd - ironic maybe even - how two the other words - "more!" and "again!" - so seamlessly to carry over from the decadence of the night before to the child's party - with equal regularity. One warms the heart and the other napalms the liver. Sort of a physiological chiaroscuro of the human condition, if you will. So to kick things off - these two red delicious apples made that fateful journey from the fridge to the study stand. Seems like I spent so much time thinking about and talking about my agitated realism that I was anxious to get back to it. Although it's still in the blocking-in stage, I feel the colour is closer in terms of being within my grasp with this already now than the peach ever was. By contrast there's the deep calm hue and the informative shiny surface, which helps. This could also just be a result of the break. Starting back, I was expecting or planning to take a completely different angle on the buildup of this study - to alleviate the pressure of the accumulating voices of comparison and self-criticism - and to avoid a sense of the derived. But it's looking like it still might look like one of mine. But that is okay and necessarily so. For as Master Henri says - "Don't worry about your originality. You couldn't get rid of it even if you wanted to. It will stick with you and show up for better or worse in spite of all you or anyone else can do." Well thank Gaia for that. I think(?)

Day 72

Study: Peach I
46 x 46 cm | Oil on Linen

After a couple of days of both some trying distractions and some enjoyable visitors - I finally brought this most difficult challenge in a while to a close. The light-absorbing properties of this creature's fuzzy flesh and the pace at which it changes colour - both through ripening and the shift from sunny afternoon to dark-side-of-moon ambience make for unconfined glee. As if. Frankly and seriously, though, times are tough. But as long as I keep reminding myself that this is a lifelong living process and with each minute spent moving paint on, off, in, out, up, down and from my face and the walls around me, I leave a record on which to one day look back as evidence of a chapter in this confounding nightmare of my very own making. Oh there are issues. Issues in the process, the medium, the observation, the black skies and shelf life of my company and so very many others. Just need to keep proceeding as aware as possible of my true spirit, its nature and purpose - and make sure that the work stays of myself and honest (that's all!) This means exerting the whoesale energy required to accept everything as the real gift it is - perhaps often disguised as a harbinger of Horror - but still good fortune in some form just the same. Now that we've established how positive it all is, the panic is truly on to prepare myself for being away from the work again for another 2 days while I attend to social festivities in and out of town this weekend. I hope none of the criminals in my hood are regular visitors to this daily project - or we will be in for some drama for me to whine about.

Day 70

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

The good news that I take to my crib tonight and snooze anxiously over is how positive the minimal time I had at the easel actually went this afternoon. The reality is that I'll definitely be at this peach for another brief spell tomorrow - again - before moving on to the next seeded little capsule from my grab bag to take its place on the observation deck. For one reason or another - most likely that galleries are finally feeling the smart sting of the artists-for-themselves online revolution - the private viewings we used (sloshingly) to know, are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. The one I attended this afternoon began at 4pm, when the only people in attendence were other artists taking a break from a roll (hello), mommies and the remainder rounded out by assorted freelancers (you - of pillow seamed face - know who you are.) And, of course, those with the 4-figure readies to consummate the event. This was to view the rich and competent efforts of a dear friend in her first solo outing. A huge event for her - selling at last tally - some 12 of her 40 pieces before the doors even opened. As delighted as I was for her triumph, part of me was preoccupied with my quick-dry phthalo and permanent green ground. After a few swift pints with the delightful designer and painter, Tom (who astonishingly offered me a painting residence at his Greek island abode!), my beloved and I high-tailed it back to the ghetto, picking up some takeaway Thai curry on the way. After this treat, I examined the moveability of the juicy surface I'd left behind earlier on. And apart from shaking out some of the extraneous information I surely did have to entirely hog out the green before the trouble starts after coffee in the morning - or sooner. Troubles and distractions aside, the analogous colour keys of the peach (as oppposed to those coolish warmish wicked ones of the lemon or mango) seem mighty kind to me. If only in my next swift run at it in the light of day I can win the live-by-the-knife, die-by-the knife war I wage - it'll be Earl Grey and biscuits by high tea tomorrow. We'll just see.

Day 69

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

In keeping with my resolve to both scale things down slightly and hasten things along a bit due to the warmer weather (unbelievably) - I stretched this smaller piece of linen for today's new study. But before that, I needed some staples and a stroll in the sunshine to the fruiterers - with a pineapple on the brain - figuratively. Unfortunately I didn't see one in the 4 places I checked so opted for a whole host of new and untried subjects. First up is the peach. It's maybe because it's not a lemon - but it seemed so much more comfortable being stared at than the lemon - and the sun-flooded windows made all the difference. I read some Paul Klee over my coffee break - just to get my head swimming the old fashoined way - and was thrilled to hear the loopy old Bauhaus sage suggest that "the objects of a picture look out at us serene or severe, tense or relaxed, comforting or forbidding, suffering or smiling." And here I thought it was mine and the lemon's own little secret in the dark over these recent intense days and nights. But no they were experiencing this long ago in pre-LSD Weimar. A-n-y-w-a-y. Didn't finish before the sun ducked out but expecting to do so within an hour or two tomorrow, before moving on to the next. Meanwhile, David Oleski tortures me with his effortlessly fluid livingroom carpet sized studies seemingly as often as every other day.

Day 68

Study: Nocturnal Lemon II
76 x 76 cm | Oil on Linen

If yesterday was a day of excesses - food, wine and play - today certainly did feel like bringing the nose back to the grindstone. Misery - when deep dark and perfect - can be such a beautiful thing. Otherwise the world wouldn't love Vincent, Kurt, Nina, Roy, Johnny (and the list goes on) - so much. This might be why I enjoyed this not-so-swift lemon study so. And I also learned loads about myself. It made me question my right to this vocation - because true artists are supposed to get what it was that drove Van Gogh to allegedly eat cadmium yellow. I don't. Just because it makes one salivate doesn't mean necessarily the one leads to the other. In fact, after this so-vertical-I-needed-safety-lines crash course in the deadly serious nature of this business, I'll even be passing on the French's mustard for a spell. But it is finished. And at least for the next 24 hours to 24 years - these are but studies, and that is the notion in which I take solace. That and the fact that Spring is here in a sudden and amazing way - and I had to work in darkened studio - by bulb - with sunlight bursting the edges of my blackout blinds - all to keep faithful to the nocturnal aspect of the thing. The other big realisations are that warm artificial light and cool yellow make for a cooky cocktail if not dang naughty bedmates. And the other is if I have any chance of keeping my agitated events fresh and expressive - this summer in paint-setting warm weather without a/c - I'm going to have to mightily rethink my process and format. Possibly limiting the former to single sittings and the latter to a couple of square feet less linen. Or maybe I'll switch to an earthen medium like clay. But I can just hear my dear Glaswegian pal, Colin, now - "Mikaay - hacoo-jyoo!"?

Day 66

Study: Nocturnal Lemon II
76 x 76 cm | Oil on Linen
(In progress)

Well after a completely traumatic marathon yesterday I figured things could only get better. Oh goody. After scraping out at a ratio of about 5 times as much as I was leaving yesterday - today seemed to be heading the identical direction. This one has been by far the most challenging oversized study of a single object so far. For about a zillion reasons, but most probably because I'm not seeing in the language of paint well enough or consistently enough, this electrically charged yellow just seems to glow from every angle. The harder I stare the less of the shadow side of it I can discern. I'm then forced into the realm of logically puzzling out my light rationale - which is agitating enough - and then there is the matter of the uncompromising real estate. To keep it too general, so I can get my head around it, is to make the passages become dull and monotonous - and to activate the passages and keeping the form while emphasizing the envelope of light - makes for a mess, steepened overheads and a compressed lumbar region. Then, in the depths of full flounder - I was reminded by a desperate little humunculus on my shoulder - who also occasionally doubles in drag as my big-lipped muse - that this suffering is my decision. It's my responsibility. My choosing. And strangely it suddenly became about accepting that, although exhausted and dying for the boys room but too covered in heavy metal toxins to spend the penny - this did not have to be what I thought it should be. It always comes back to this basic thing. Just because the thing isn't becoming what you wanted or hoped doesn't mean disaster. (Doesn't mean it's not a disaster either) But it at least gives you the break in thought and torture to get to the water closet and turn the proverbial bike around. It feels as if I wrote this only the other day, but looking out of the corner of the eye instead of head-on, and even occasionally ignoring completely what you just saw, can be not that bad of a thing. The great painter and teacher - Robert Henri - allegedly used to have his students observe the model in one room and walk to another room to draw what they saw. Back and forth. So I started looking at this lemon again, then I started remembering the lemon study I did the other day - then started ignoring bits of both and seeing if I could find clues on my palette like one might read tea leaves. Now, the piece is gladly a short ways from a chilly stay in the drying room. It will be Monday now before that happens as we've got company tomorrow. Which is probably perfect as it will have a chance to calm down and I can have a break from breathing at it nose to nose.

Day 65

Still working into the night - but I will be updating this posting after a few hours of sleep so I know what I'm on about. [Later] Although I fully intended to update this after some rest this became a continuation of the session. I had to cover the piece and palette in plastic to preserve moveability of paint for next session. Will say this though. As if things weren't getting downright ugly enough - there was one instance where I was frantically whipping in some maganese violet into a colour and the knife slid over the edge of the glass just before catapulting a diver-shaped blob twisting, flipping, piking, and landing perfectly vertically propped between the upper and lower lashes of my right eye. Yes. Times were tough at the easel.

Day 64

Study: Nocturnal Lemon II
76 x 76 cm | Oil on Linen
(In progress)

It's days like these and progress like this that makes the daily visual entry difficult. I would quite happily just record a few verbal notes and only publish the finished article. But the purpose of this part of the project is to get a sense for the development of the studies and to keep a small record of how I'm thinking and feeling about that for reference - and closure. Today's painting session is now over - making it much easier to get excited about the fresh beginning tomorrow. In much the same way as the now of the morrow will renew my spirit, so might I flush the funk from the dirty brow of this rebel citrus. Serious measures will then be taken to understand the light of this thing. As a surface, space, reflection and emanation - speedy light racing brazenly towards my flinching retina daring me to make hide or hair of it. Tone only is impossible and the complimentary colour scheme has to be kept light-handed (pardon pun) enough to avoid that tired, derived, neo-impressionistic razzle-dazzle approach to the palette that easily creeps in. Good news is Spring is threatening to deliver another densely gray wet day so I should be able to work by daylight without having to take Nocturnal off the label. I don't need to remind myself that the pressure is mounting to finish it before end of Saturday or have surface hell to pay on Monday.

Day 63

Study: Lemon II | 76 x 76 cm
Oil on Linen (Showing progress etc)

It's been a varied and busy day. Had to travel by tube all the way across town to East London to Atlantis to pick up some materials. The most important of which was a pair of proper canvas pliers (middle right) because I've been noticing some of my canvas getting a bit baggy under the strain of my trowel stroke. Odd that. On the way I scratched out a scribble of this peacefully sleeping Sikh. Drawing people from 3 feet away, on a train - in a society where eye contact is widely considered overtly forthcoming - gives you such an amazing license to stare - regardless of whether the subject acknowledges themselves as subjects or not. These illustrative blog features are followed eventually by a considerably more tautly stretched support with eventually blocked-in subject and development. And just to be wacky, I thought I'd leap wildly and carelessy into the outer limbs - with the squirrels - those adventure sport junkies of parkland heights - and try going a little lean with it first before merrily splaying on the fat. In fact, after yesterday's review session, it looks as if the process is in a beautifully precarious state of upheaval. Which means keeping the words to a minimum for now, and verily taking full advantage of the lapse in self-jugdement that my wayward muses have afforded me.

Day 62

Study: Mango II | 76 x 76 cm
Oil on Linen

[Later] I did not paint as much as I'd planned today for one reason or another, but did manage to do enough to this mango study to know that I'm leaving it alone now, forever. There's plenty to feel positive about in this study but, as usual, this never really exceeds all the things I could, and will, do differently on the next. That's what makes this cooky little caper so dang catchy. There is an enormous whisper from the back of the classroom of my mind that's telling me what I should be doing - and not taking proper steps toward doing. One of which is to use the brush more, but the timeframe on this one just got a little disrupted. The lessen to take from it is to be sure to finish it - or be prepared to leave it - about 2 days earlier to be able to both resolve the form and keep the surface lively and expressive beyond the mere impasto relief. I've been sort of quietly hoping to softly softly home in on and ensnare the next leg of my process by squeezing in on it from the two extremes of the thin-but-rich oil sketch on the one side and the heavily structural colour and mortar off the trowel approach on the other. If only I could meet something closer to more frequent success somewhere in between. However, now's probably getting near to the best time to sit all the tools down and have a frank and honest little pow-wow about where the ship is actually going and what this will mean in terms of reductions in some roles and expansions in others. I've written before about the difficulty of knowing when to do certain things (like wrapping up work on a piece) or not do others. But it's now clear that knowing is one thing - but acting on that knowing might just be where the pearls hide. Basically - wrachet up the visceral - and squelch out the evil static of judgement. And then maybe sit down with the tools again (those that are still with us) in another 60 days or so and see where we are.

Day 62 - Early note

Just wanted to explain that Blogger server issues kept me up until 3am trying to get the image posted and cruelly continued with further denied access all morning today until about 30 minutes ago. What a hoot. All appears to be stable for the moment. More later.

Day 61

Study: Mango II | 76 x 76 cm
Oil on Linen (Nearing completion)

Something was keeping me from going up to the chilly spare room (the one with the open window to retard the drying process) to collect this study in order to give it one last seeing to. Perhaps it was due to a blue blue Monday. And then, maybe I was thinking about the Art Fair I went to in Battersea yesterday and how the plethora of work I saw there was probably not of the calibre I remember assessing them to be at the time. Most likely it was because my palette was filmy, just like I was imagining parts of the surface of the mango study to be and it was a textbook example of avoidant behaviour. Now we're getting somewhere. I didn't really need to contemplate the weather outside the window for so long despite the noteworthy fact that it would have required just about every single little adhesive icon from a TV weather forecast circa 1970 . Rain, sleet, hail, snow, lightning (really), thunder (in case we missed the lightning), twister, sunshine, partly cloudy...I just realised I'm doing it again. This time because I've realised I need to go snap an image of my work. Right back. [Later] Now. What I eventually addressed - after the long meteorological survey, palette cleaning, inventing and installing a painting knife holder, and scraping and mixing paint for some time, was that in all my medium pre-occupations, viscous laying-in and obsessing over warm and cool, light and dark, mass and void - I was ignoring the ever powerful potential of such plastic pictorial elements as pace, rhythm, repetition and surprise. The study has been trying to bring this into the light for some time now and I've just been dominating the discourse - interrupting and finishing all statements as if all input was to come from me and me alone. But now. A few passages to resolve and we move on up stream.

Day 59*

After Rembrandt: Self Portrait as St Paul, 1993
61 x 92 cm | Oil on Canvas
(Private Collection)

As occasionally posted, no work was done at the actual easel today. But after what feels like a month of goodbyes we actually got together with our very special friends who've just arrived back in London for the Spring leg of their annual residence split between here and California. Very nice for some. There is plenty that's enviable about these folks but nothing quite like the 100-week-old joy parade that they call Isabella. I do declare in those two broad scorched umber eyes one can behold all the joy, love, potential, wonder and truth the universe has to wager. And what's best is that she dig's me - so she directs them my way a whole lot of the time. Not taking this glance lightly I do whatever I can within my powers of entertainment to make the gaze worth her time. Sentimentality aside, she like many youngsters reminds me of the wear and tear on the human soul that life ironically imposes. It's nearly impossible to remember a time when I was even in the same solar system as this sort of boundless joy. Just like that, 1400 weeks pass and I'm in my 20s and boldly having a go at this Rembrandt favourite. With a postcard for reference, and working on canvas stapled to an old door propped against the wall in a garage on the fringes of the Sahara desert - during Ramadan to make it a challenge - I would toil away at what I didn't realise then was an indirect painting method of the Dutch tradition. What I also didn't know was that...Well, it might be easier to focus on what I did know - or believe. This was that if I worked really really faithfully on this thing I might learn some of the finest secrets of the past and with time, dedication and commitment could (if I could do it in those conditions) paint my way around the world, in and out of the Cork Street galleries of London and back to the US, through glamorous cocktail parties from Manhatten to Malibu. I was right and wrong. It's a long story, but the painting now resides in a private collection (love writing that) in Pennsylvania. And now another 1000 weeks on (after countless parties everywhere it seems but Cork St, Manhatten or Malibu) whenever I have the opportunity to be in the same room with it and our eyes meet, I see the foolish and fearless boy looking back and can manage only a humble smile.

Day 58

Oil Sketch: Lemon II
56 x 35 cm | On Board

Because of a handful of miscellaneous painting and non-painting related activities today I got off to a late-ish - and shaky start, again. After writing the most preposterous load of bunk yesterday, I expected to redeem myself with a break from the mango (to let it get a little stickier) and to wrap up the week with a colour sketch of my next subject. So, in from a 2-week purgatorial stopover in the window box came this patient little Woodstock groupie. I'm of course referring to the famous dog's best friend and unfortunately not that impromptu Mother of all festivals - musical, psychotropic, prurient or otherwise. Where was I. What I was hoping would be a fresh and considered examination, in preparation for the second go at this putty medium on linen and big, turned into a something else entirely. It was only yesterday that I was dissing the photograph and the inherent implications of relying on that information, and today I go and swing the other way - lapsing uncomfortably into rendering mode for what just might be regarded tomorrow as an unsaveable session. However it might not amount to a total a loss - for I learned 2 things: 1) That the listen-to-the-picture-jam technique might give rise to unhelpful acid flashbacks (and doesn't work). And 2) That the green-to-crimson transition struggles in the mango study are only the tip of the proverbial icerberg. The most positive thing about the day was the revelation that, if necessary, I can set-up and begin a sketch in daylight, then work through to dark, and then after realizing I can't tell brown from blue - arrange a few spotlights and carry on. Sheesh. I'm sort of glad it's behind me. That's with the exception of that flashback in the dark there earlier - wink.

Day 57

Study: Mango II | 76 x 76 cm
Oil on Linen (Showing progress)

To be true, it really started out very depressingly today. Even hopeless. It was so bad as I stood there blind to the subject, repeatedly laying paint on and scraping it back off, I was thinking "this is the end of the road. It's all just come to a silent screeching halt." In desperation, the first thing out the window is reason followed closely by its reliable back-up, sound reason. Yes, there I was thinking about such anathema as photographic assistance(!) Since my eyes were taking the day off - how else was I going to see the colours of the form on this sporadically lit subject? Let's just calm down and grab the reigns here. So I stopped. Washed hands. Changed the music. Next I accepted that if it really was going to be starting-over time - then this stretcher, with this fruit was going to be that starting place. Then things changed. With nothing desperately precious any longer, the work started to show me that I wasn't listening to what I was looking at. Neither poet nor lyricist myself, I discovered that possibly a way to start working out what was what with this thing was - instead of continually thinking about light, shadow, warm, cool, green or red - to think what it would sound like? A song - a live performance - about a dusty, road-weary mango to a very uptempo rendition of Kenny Roger's The Gambler (you got to know when to hold em...) But only on bass is that hyper lunatic from the Red Hot Chili Peppers and up front - Dustin Hoffman - in character as Rainman - and he's rapping over it "It's definitely green..definitely red...definitely green now..." and so the band played on. What fun. And so that's how we got through it today. The session ended a little better than it started and the camera stayed on shelf awaiting blog duty. And no offense intended to any who use the tool otherwise.

Day 56

Study: Mango II | 76 x 76 cm
Oil on Linen (Showing progress)

Well just because the stuff was getting flung around like chili sauce at a Baptist pig-roast doesn't mean everything was rosey. Far from it. But it doesn't mean everything was all terrible either. These (mostly) daily posted images are difficult sometimes if I don't remind myself that they are only steps towards - not only finishing that leg of the study - but tiny steps towards the intermittent but deeply rich rewards of committing to the path of the studio life. There are strange things that pass through the mind while in automatic fling mode - Mr Potato Head and the muddy end of Easter egg dyeing - are a couple of the more cogent themes. It seems I'm in one of those strange patches where something is about to change, something below is a-bubbling to the surface. Like we're not not in Kansas anymore, but we're still sucking hard on the chewing tobacco or straw - while trying to find another way to lay down colour that's not so much like tilling, plowing and crop rotation. Today confirmed - just like that - I'm going to be friends with this putty for a long time. It will settle in, just like paint did before, but it will wake up and run around if shaken awake - and without the broken film particles and hassles therein. And it would also (probably) take a salad spoon's worth laid right over a slumbering mound of it fairly whimsically. Not that I ever would do such a thing.

Day 55

Study: Mango II | 76 x 76 cm
Oil on Linen (Showing progress)

Completely exhausted, I'm looking back and trying to work out what today was like. I do remember trying out my new putty medium and being both pleasantly surprised and thoroughly terrified by how far beyond my comfort zone such a minor change actually took me. I made it fairly dense to maintain stability in my textural peaks and it held up pretty good but did give the slide factor noticeably more grip. I'll know more how fun it's really going to be when I re-approach the surface tomorrow. As for the work in progress itself - let's see. If I didn't have my hands full enough with the comfort factor, I had to choose an ostensibly mild-mannered mango for my first go. Looks can be deceiving. This thing all but tied me up to the back of its motorbike and dragged me up and down the ancient Roman straights of London. Then, I very nearly strapped it (very loosely) to my mountain bike for a whirl around the manner - just to return - the favour but decided it'd be more fun to take the garden rake to it. Okay, so I exaggerate, but how else am I supposed to explain the in-and-out stabbings of the early stages of such a venture here in my agitated realm. I came close but did not even manage to work the entire surface up to the same level. And I'm intending for my scratching and scribing to work more as an indication of where I need to get richer or neutral, rather than remain as a bit of gratuitous and contemporary stylization.

Day 54

Study: Pomegranate II | 76 x 76 cm | Oil on Linen | Sold

I spent the first half of the day today on a material gathering misson. I visited two specialist art suppliers I haven't used before and was thrilled that they were half the distance of my usual trek. I was able to collect my order from the fascinatingly quaint specialists L Conellison, which included some hard to come by precipitated chalk I mentioned last time. I also snatched a couple of really wonderful Roberson's (of Maroger-like medium fame) white, of both the titanium and the lead persuasion, and found both to be a real treat even before I cut, mix and mesh them for my own decadent purposes. Both smelled delectable with no wafty driers to make the head wobble and nostrils quiver. Also grabbed a sampling of Old Holland's Cadmium Rood Purper - to see firsthand what all the fuss is about. Well I did see. Despite being about a dollar a milliliter it is just the leanest no-nonsense little concentration of pigment I've ever coaxed out of a tube. It enabled me (after fluffing and fattening it up a bit) to inject a bit of vivacity to the sunny side of this now-leathery specimen of the ancient symbol and bearer of 613 seeds. I've decided to call it a wrap before I start stretching the alla prima thing beyond the pale, render it too much and (or) have to perform the equivalent of emergency facial exfoliation procedure on any more accidentally raked-up passages of cured paint.

Day 52*

Ravenscourt Park, London
46 x 76 cm
Oil and Acrylic on linen, 2006

As occasionally posted, no work was done at the actual easel today but I we did have a lovely walk through the park to the garden center to pick up some new things to put in the windoxboxes apart from my still life subjects. On the way back we passed this very passage of the park I had painted early last year sometime. It was worked up from a very small drawing and involved mostly acrylic but finished with spots of oil. The reason I post it today - apart from being reminded of it on the walk - was because someone yesterday asked me "why all the single fruit?" My response probably didn't make much sense but this work example provides as good an explanation as any. It shows how difficult it is to not work from life for me (apart from a diagram) and also how overwhelmed I was not only by the amount of light but also the information. Try as I did to let the (memory of) high-charged light to provide the structure and guidance, it really turned out being an image of an idea of a place - rather than what I set out to do which was study and paint. Not to invalidate this approach but it does sort of indicate to me that colour and texture are the real interests and that, without direct observation, context can get wacky in a hurry - whoa!

Day 51

Oil Sketch: Mango II
35 x 35 cm | On Board

It feels as if I've crossed some milestone clearing the 50-day mark, but that is really just plain ridiculous. I do feel lighter though, and because of it - I left my pomegranate to settle for another day. Then I reached into the bag of surprises outside my window and found this little gem to help me exhaust my stock of alizarin crimson tomorrow or Monday - on a considerably bigger stretcher I prepared the other day. This is only the colour exercise for that and this green-to-red modulation is a heck of a lot of fun wet-in-wet with the tonked, thin paint is still majorly challenging. The task of pulling off the modelling with my knife, edge to edge and big - is a different kettle of carp altogether. But Spring is in the air and if it isn't easy - I'll get hooked even deeper. I might even have to squeeze out some extra stuff to help me through it.

Day 50

Study: Pomegranate | 76 x 76 cm
Oil on Linen (In progress)

50 days doesn't seem that long ago now - but that first posting, Nocturnal Pumpkin, surely does. If I'd known that it was going to be this sort of ride, and that by Day 50 I was going to be trowelling paint around a gargantuan pomegranate that stretches a foot and a half across at its widest, I'd have done this along time ago. All the learning and tears aside, there have been many tandem lessons in this. Not least of which is learning how to stop the flesh of my hands from breaking down under the chemical assault. Another adeptly developed skill is that of rapid and effective paint spot removal techniques applied to various floor coverings, walls and private body parts in time to minimize toxity (and misunderstanding). I'm still surprised at the rate I'm getting through materials. On David Oleski's recommendation I found a new supplier and better quality white. They are hopefully going to be supplying me with some precipitated chalk, as well, for making a workable resinless medium that will extend my paint to peak-sculpting texture-terracing heights, as recommended by the erudite Tad Spurgeon, of Vermont. Until the new stuff arrives I'm using a little linseed paste to slow down the drying time of my titanium white and give it less of a stringy marshmallowy body that might perhaps keeps moveable for longer than a day - but I'll know better how this worked tomorrow. This study has been an authentic experience so far with a healthy balance of misery and satisfaction. But before I overcook it, I really need to be moving on to the next item in the windowbox by tomorrow afternoon or Saturday.

Day 49

Study: Pomegranate | 76 x 76 cm
Oil on Linen (Showing progress)

Had another positive bout of it today. There must be something afterall in these newly found sustained patches of sunlight that actually show me some colour here and there. As much as I keep squeezing out the viridian - in order to get my reds to really punch out within this particular envelope of colour - I can't seem to show it enough (and to get it to harmonize) - and so I keep swinging around the wheel to the dark wine - the brown - the doo. I'm realizing that the more paint I move, the more I'm conscious of certain colour supplies dwindling away - but it makes me use it even thicker in some bizarre manifestation of a manic version of binge spending - yippeee! - carpe goddamn diem! Had a visitor from a Czech colleague this evening, who dropped by to pick up some building materials and a debriefing from my beloved. As he was leaving he peeks in - "Can I have look what you doing? Oh! Hmmm! Is eeet submarine?" - he says. Is there anybody in the building trade today who's not on the weed or what? I could very well finish this submarine study on the morrow - but, hey, this is direct painting - so what's the hurry?

Day 48

Study: Pomegranate | 76 x 76 cm
Oil on Linen (In progress showing
first wave of attack)

A very exciting and full day it was today. I've been hearing rumours of possible further comissions which is always the kind of news that eases the squeezing of the precious butter of the trade. Managed to prime another small board for next study in the 3-fruit set as well as stretch 2 more 76 x 76 square drums of linen - for a seamless run into the next (2) study. No matter how much I dolloped onto the glass today though, there was someplace in the format to slurp it up. Everything seemed to come in a slightly larger measures today. Even the funky baselines of my web-streamed ambient work music were a little bigger and sicker than usual. I can even dare to report as a first, that the sunlight actually came blindingly screaming through at one point. It's very different working at this size because however important it is to work up the whole format at once to avoid a paint-by-numbers feel to the development, with this much real estate you've got to spread what you've got mixed and work those transitions, passages and modulations as you come to them. And they just keep coming. So it's much more physical where you need to be very conscious about stepping back because you end up whipping up the surface with our hands over your head (or at least shoulders) in areas that simply take more to charge up. I called it earlier than usual because the light was dropping really quickly and I ran the risk of pointlessly laying down in the dark, and possibly losing time in good light tomorrow as a result.

Day 47

Study: Sole Persimmon | 46 x 46 cm | Oil on Linen

I had a very pleasant cycle journey home under a lunar-eclipse on Saturday night. As I cruised along, I remember having the feeling I must be missing some beautiful irony about even moonlight being blocked-out of my world, but luckily could not quite put my finger on it. Moving swiftly from a selfish obsession with light-deprivation, my thoughts shifted from how hard my sadle was to how shapeless this persimmon was - and when I could finally feel done with it. There's probably a plastic surgeon's practice somewhere in sunny California with volumes of before and afters of buttock work. Perhaps I'll send a couple of these along with a letter of complaint on some legal, headed paper for blog fodder. Perhaps not. It is nice not having to scrape it back any more because the linen is as mis-shapen as a Louisiana lawyers summer suit trousers. What's also good is now nobody can ever say it took me more than 14 days to finish an alla prima study of a simple persimmon(!)

Day 46

Oil Sketch: Camellia with Glass
35 x 35 cm | On Board

Some very dear friends of ours are breaking down camp and heading for the coast to lead a life of wine, song and dance by the sea - with a little retirement, grand-parenting and the odd property project thrown in. She actually introduced me to my beloved (and the rewards of gardening) and to console our heavy hearts, has generously given us the most exquisite mature Camellia as a reminder of the beauty of her own garden and the times we had there. Since the sky was either gray or peeing steadily down upon me I thought what a great day for gardening - positioning the Gift - and a few other outdoor tasks. The hour then grew late, I was tired but still hadn't painted so I went back out to check our new botanical focal point and then decided to snip its very first flower of the season for the oil sketch here. This would have been a nice 3-month study - but it's no Sunday night exercise, of this I am dead certain. And because of it - dead tired. Very nearly labelled this one Camellia - straight up, but it isn't and I don't do titles, so it never made it past editorial. Fruit tomorrow.

Day 45

Study: Sole Persimmon
46 x 46 cm | Oil on Linen
(STILL in progress)

The thing one about this vocation that will make all the difference in the world to how much you struggle in the longterm is knowing when to quit. And of course there's knowing when to start, but that's a different post. And since this subject has appeared no less than than 5 times here - even licked-over and combed-down (with product) once - anyone can see what kind of damned sense of I've got of when enough is enough. But there's something about this study - apart from the fact that it keeps inviting me back with its perennial moistness - that makes me believe it can be so much more. Is it going to be the cover choice for my monogram coffee table book in the year 2020? Puh-lease. But I figure if I keep sharing life-changing experiences with it, like learning how to make a veritable cadavar of a piece of fruit look like the one we used to sing and dance with in the day - well now - that is a bond. No, this thing will be finished next session. Then, it can stay with me forever whispering over my shoulder when I'm moving big waves of paint over vast plains of linen - "psst - don't you want to re-examine that reflected light there once more or that sagging left cheek (no, my left) before you squeeze out another triple shot of that exhorbitant cobalt blue?"

Day 44

Sketch: Lone Pomegranate
35 x 35 cm | Oil on board

First I must say that, although it goes against all of the esoteric aha's of enlightened souls to which I'll long be but an aspirer, I've been really mad at me for lapsing yesterday and allowing outside forces, and a few domestic ones, to interfere with my routine posting. But I've now made up with me - and even cleaned the sanguine, hand-shaped splodge of paint off my cheek left there from when I smart-mouthed myself one time too many. Fact of the matter is, I'm running low on ready-to-go stuff to paint on and shuffling from scissors to stapler to easel but still making ready for the step up in both activity and paint volume to tackle a series of (3) 30 x 30 inch studies. And for the very reasons I still have a slightly unresolved sharon fruit, I need to do more preliminary work on these next ones, before troweling through my finest pigments faster than you can say "can it really take 4 freaking weeks for a litre of flake white to make it from its shameless maker to my palette?" My tack is to work-up (in colour) these smaller exercises in information gathering in order to better understand planes of colour in my work. By keeping a really thin and heavily tonked surface I avoid the time and expense of wrestling with them (and a mountain of fat paint per session) later in the larger version on linen. It would be nice if somewhere down the road it became, up close, topographically, like the hills around Pompei - like a week after the lava set. But then, from 20 paces or so to convey what it does here, but only with a more agitated spirit and less of a merely tonal ... uh ... image. I've had this pomegranate and 2 other subjects sequestered in a bag outside in my windowbox for several days now and they are looking improbably fresh indeed. This is most likely from the exhilarating massage they get through the bag from the wind and rain on the nicer days. The highlight of my day - if I don't crack that sharon fruit after I post this - was receiving an ecstatic voice message from a special lady in San Francisco who'd just received a UPS delivery of her surprise birthday gift from her husband - fully in tact - and hopefully a little drier than when it left London last Saturday. Lovely.