Japanese quince. Smell, heavenly. With work in progress.
I've always enjoyed the exuberant and joyful work of Raoul Dufy, especially his works from about 1930 onwards. I seem to remember reading, when I was first considering becoming a full-time artist, that he said something along the lines of getting the mundane things of your life sorted so that you can concentrate on the creative side. I remember thinking ruefully he meant getting a wife! Fortunately I decided to ignore his advice (I do by the way have a very supportive husband!) and decided to Paint First and let the rest fit in somehow. I might never have got started otherwise! Many books have been written on this very subject. One I am enjoying now is Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. But back to my topic (I'm breaking my rule for blog posts - one subject and one aspect of that subject at a time..) I came across this brilliant little painting of Venice by Dufy. Enjoy! ..to be doing my own thing! I can't tell you the surge of energy and excitement I'm feeling since I decided to just do my own thing. The studio will be blitzed (Kondo method!) as I prepare to make it look fabulous for opening on Saturdays and Sundays from Easter till October - these will be my fixed working days. If visitors come - wonderful - if not, I have work to do. I am painting a sign to put up, will ask people to spread the word, hope that some of the (admittedly few) tourists who use our single track road will stop by and ..see how it goes! The coffee pot will be on and I'll welcome anyone who is interested in what I do to have a leisurely browse through my paintings and collages. Among the papers in the studio i found a pile of cuttings and cards and decided it was high time I refreshed my pinboards. Some of the things have been up there for years and years and....it's not that I stopped seeing them as can happen, it's that I really liked the items and the composition, but it's good to stir things up every ten years, don't you think!! Have you refreshed your pinboards lately? Another inspiration for using bright colours in the landscape (see last two posts)...vermilion, and viridian on Monet's famous bridge. On a more domestic scale...I painted this little window lime green before we made the gate and half way through painting this blue seat yellow I decided I liked it half done with some of the blue still showing through. Do you like to use brilliant colours in your garden, or your home?
Even if you don't have a garden you might have a window box or a tub in say,bright blue with orange marigolds? I didn't live in a house with a garden until I was 27 but on the windows of the third floor tenement flat in Glasgow I had two window boxes filled with nasturtiums which thrilled me and brightened up the whole street. I LOVE that so many of you love the red gate! It's such a simple thing really, isn't it - to paint a gate in a primary colour. Many years ago I read an article about the American painter Robert Dash, by the late Rosemary Verey (Gardens Illustrated magazine June/July 1993). In his garden were a few very simple structures painted in zingy colours, and I tucked the images away in the back of my mind for use one day.... Several gardens later, and in a Swedish wooden house in Scotland with a bright yellow door, the idea came back to me as I stood looking from the sitting room window at the back garden. I had studied landscape design in Sweden, and had come across the work of the British architect Ralph Erskine there. He used primary colours on the doors and windows of his wooden houses. To my eye his colours just looked 'right'. There is a recent trend among minimalists for Tiny Houses and you may like his small house he called The Box - astonishingly, built in 1941. Beautiful! (Though not with his signature primary colours.) I like seeing now how all these influences, over many years, came together in what seemed at the time to come out of the blue as I stood looking out of the window - 'What the garden needs is a red gate.' PS After I had written the above I kept browsing (as you do) and found to my amazement that a picture of my red gate is on Robert Dash's image page!! GOSH! I bought a pad of bright coloured paper from the gorgeous Tate Modern shop (you can get it online here) and am having fun getting Matisse Cut Outs out of my system! Picasso said - 'I go for a walk in the forest of Fontainebleau and I get green indigestion. I must get rid of this sensation into a picture. Green rules it. A painter paints to unload himself of feelings and visions.' I don't really want to be Matisse of course (and neither did Andy Warhol) but I would love some of his vitality and courage! What I've learned from doing these is what a master of composition he was... Will you be going to the exhibition? When you watched yesterday's video did you also experience a prejudice against older people that you didn't know you had? I was a bit shocked when I realised that I was lowering my expectations because the dancer was 61 years old. I think I can excuse myself up to a point - dancers are usually young etc., but nevertheless it made me think - how often do I do that? Without thinking....and how will I feel if people do that to me? Oh dear. You may enjoy this post from the ever enthusiastic Gretchen Rubin. I love her enthusiasm. Do you agree with what she says about it? Roger Billcliffe Gallery in Glasgow has just taken delivery of ten of my Harris collages. You can see some under Simply Paint (though these are mostly sold now). I will post some photographs of the newest ones when I get back from a short blog break.... Do have a good weekend. Do you indulge in risky behaviour? Risk/uncertainty/imperfection/accidental effects/randomness/daring (see yesterday's video) I am interested in the part these things play in creative endeavours of all kinds. In my own work I sometimes deliberately add a random effect. It works like this. I am well into a painting, it is looking good, there are some nice passages, but....it's a bit, well - predictable. Summoning up my courage I load the brush - perhaps with a colour I've not yet used in the painting, perhaps by just streaking it right across the palette, then I turn away completely and paint a stroke or two at random! I turn around and see what I have done.... What I have done is set myself a new challenge and I look at the painting for a while (actually I usually go and make a cup of coffee at this point). Then, it may be straight away, or it may be the next day, decisions have to be made. Do I try and retrieve the previous harmony and balance incorporating the new elements, or have they set me off on a new and original tangent. Whichever way I go it's more exciting than it was! Love it. Here is one of my paintings. Very abstract. It's called The Pink Calls To The Yellow. The gallery space at the Burgh Hall in Dunoon was created I'm told especially to host the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition in conjunction with Tate Modern and the National Galleries of Scotland, which was touring Britain - quite a coup for the wee town of Dunoon. It was a great success, drawing people from a very wide area, and the gallery is a super legacy for the town. It's a classic 'white cube', quite small, but nicely proportioned and lit. I loved it at first sight and wanted to show my work there. I was lucky there was a gap to fill when I enquired about it, and we got together a show in record quick time! In the foyer to the gallery is a show of postcard sized paintings called 'Everyone is an Artist'. They have been donated to raise money for the restoration of the hall by four year olds to ninety nine year olds, amateurs and professionals, and are signed only on the back....a good fundraiser with 31 sold on opening night. If you are near the town you will enjoy a visit I am sure. I meant to take photographs of all the lovely people in the gallery at tonight's opening, but I was too busy talking to them all (and putting up red dots!) Just for a change from flowers I put a row of lemons on the table, and jokingly, I asked a friend 'Is it lemons or is it Art?' Quick as a flash Marij said 'It's Tart Art!'
Very tart art. Thank you so much for all your good wishes. The exhibition that is! Since I first saw this lovely space I have wanted to show some of my work here. I love its simplicity and although it may look a bit stark - imagine some people in there. Hopefully there will be lots tomorrow night at the opening. If you live near enough do come! Bring friends! I will tell you more about the Burgh Hall and its gallery tomorrow.... Regular visitors to the blog will know that I am making paper collages of the Isle of Harris and can't stop! Even while mounting and framing and doing the hundred other things required for an exhibition, I am still making more....(it's wonderful! I'm possessed!) I know, I'm sounding like the mad artist.... They are for sale, of course. Details here. And more photographs here. More from the mad artist tomorrow. I'm just a little bit - exhausted, actually. PS I have oil paintings at the Edinburgh Art Fair this weekend, with Tighnabruaich Gallery. My first attempt at selling something I had made was a total failure. I gave a talk about the history of patchwork and quilting and I had a table full of examples of different designs which I had made. I was so shy about selling that I priced them with tiny discreet labels and didn't mention that they were for sale. I suppose I just hoped they would know! The last person to leave the hall was helping me load them back in the car when she noticed a label and said with surprise in her voice 'Oh, were they for sale?' Lesson learned. I just felt so foolish.... The collages in yesterday's post are for sale at the modest price of £55, mounted on white and are unframed. I've enlarged the photographs on yesterday's post (thanks Elaine!) and the actual image is 20cm x 4cm.The price includes P&P for UK. Please email me, Freda, at [email protected] if you would like to have one of these unique images or if you would like to know postal charges outside UK. Today I visited the Burgh Hall in Dunoon which is being restored and has a beautiful new 'white cube' gallery space. I love this simple space and it is beautifully lit. It is bigger than I remembered so I will be showing 30 Harris collages there, but there will still be room to hang them with plenty of space around each one - I think that's important in an exhibition. More details later. It starts in exactly two weeks. I'm going to be busy, but busy doing something I love, and find so exciting, and I do like a deadline! Inspired by the trip to Harris in the Outer Hebrides (scroll down from here) I have been making small collages (20cm x 4cm) and I can't stop! I am planning to have an exhibition of 25. Here are 5 of them. (The photos not as pin sharp as I would like, sorry..) There is still time to see the Battersea Affordable Art Fair if you live within striking distance of London! Sales are brisk and there's a good atmosphere, and lots to see and enjoy.... Andrew (in blue shirt) and Penny (facing the camera) from Tighnabruaich Gallery will make you welcome - do mention my name! My paintings are the deep blue one behind Andrew and the pale blue one and the two red ones in the first photo - though there may be different ones tomorrow.. Fit to travel - Yay! (Thank you for your kind comments.) Weather forecast awful. Packing from my Travel Light lists (see here) plus umbrella. Back in a week.. I've been enjoying experimenting with painting frames with the marvellous Annie Sloan paints which come in wonderful colours. I know I have said in the past that there is enough distress in the world without deliberately distressing furniture and paint frames, but I'm liking this effect! (I should have lit the candle to enhance it). Letting some of the gold shine through.... The oil painting is titled The Pink Calls to The Yellow The door is open, the weather is beautiful, the people delightful, and the work is selling. I'm one very happy artist. If you live near enough do visit! See www.cowalopenstudios.co.uk If I haven't posted under Simply Paint for a long time, that's because I haven't been doing much painting. I've spent most of this lovely summer in the garden (too much of it perhaps in that hammock) but it is time to get into the studio as Cowal Open Studios is just a month away. My studio is this small annexe to the house. It used to be a wash-house and coal-house. The gable end was so damaged it had to be replaced so we took the opportunity to put in a big window. The light and the views are lovely - the loch to one side and the forest to the other, the garden all around. Back to work then.... Two new small (A5) watercolour paintings ready to go to an exhibition which opens at the end of the month at Roger Billcilffe Gallery in Glasgow. The title of the second is from a line in the poem Wind by Ted Hughes. I am lowering my prices this year - sales have slowed down in most of the art market (I'm not buying either!) and I want to keep my paintings affordable for more people. These are £155 unframed. (Similar work in previous years was £185). What do you think about the prices of original art? Are they too high? It is a glorious sunny morning and I'm off to the Boathouse (see here) for COS - Cowal Open Studios weekend (see here).
If you are near enough I hope you will come. So much to see! I'm about to fill the car with everything but the kitchen sink - travelling light is not an option today! More later.... Later: I stopped to take this photgraph on the way to Caol Ruadh today. I think I may have one of the loveliest commutes in the country.... The photographs I've taken of the coriander were taken on bright sunny days, but the painting was begun on a day of soft diffuse light and the flowers seemed to float in the air... Oh, and irresistable is the 17C way of spelling irresistible (knew it didn't look right yesterday!) I'm so enjoying working in The Boathouse at Caol Ruadh, surrounded by flowers which I've been bringing from the garden at home.. cornflowers and dill in a cornflower blue pot which I found in a charity shop.. More blues in a big lime green jug - I just keep adding more and more - any day now it will all collapse! I can see a new series of paintings - Flowers in The Boathouse.... Irresistable. Enough to keep me very busy for some time. Check out the blog on Caol Ruadh's website here I'm loving being artist in residence at the Scottish Sculpture Park! www.scottishsculpturepark.com
Here are some of the paintings currently on show: We had a great weekend at the Scottish Sculpture Park. Lots of visitors and some sales too....and my show is extended for another week. Tighnabruaich Gallery are using the space in The Boathouse.... which is currently being restored, though it's rather attractive in its rough state too I think... The latest and largest painting 'Dreams of Flying' (paint still wet!) More about the Sculpture Park here More about Tighnabruaich Gallery here and more on my arty blog when I update it tomorrow.... Here are three of the small watercolour paintings I took to Roger Billcliffe Gallery in Glasgow yesterday, and the new banner is how the weather was looking as I was leaving home! It snowed some more throughout the day, and the moonlight on the mountains as I came home was so beautiful - inspiring more paintings.... From left to right they are Here Comes The Snow, Moonlight on Cold Water, and The Big Freeze. Price £185. Please click on the images to enlarge.
The exhibition 'Postcards 2012' begins on Saturday 4th February, and you are invited to the private view from 11am - 2pm if you are anywhere near enough to come! Enquiries and information : www.billcliffegallery.com |
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