Winter

Winter (oil on board 32cm x 25cm)

It really is winter, but this painting is based on a still photograph that I took from a documentary film called "La Vie Modern".  I like to feel free to take images from anywhere - it's what you do with it that counts.  I found this one to have a slightly melancholic feel to it that says something about being in the middle of winter, and working in monochrome (more or less) always appeals to me.  We are past that point now, so Happy New Year!

Lourmarin

near Lourmarin (oil on board 25cm x 32cm)

I have been reviewing some paintings that I started outside during the summer that were never resolved.  Some of them are beyond redemption, some of them I keep going back to but they never work, and some just need a push.  With this one I used some elements form other paintings that I thought might help.  In this case just the way the paint is handled.  Sometimes areas of flat colour work well, and sometimes they don't - in this painting they weren't working at all, so repainting with a looser hand has moved it on.

night

night, les bassacs (oil on linen, 40cm x 40cm)

This is a painting made in the studio from a drawing and a photograph taken earlier in the year.  Interesting what low artificial light does to colour.

collage

landscape IV  (coloured paper, 25cm x 32cm)

I quite often have a parallel activity going on alongside oil painting, something related but different, to try and stop going stale.  At the moment that means making collages - ripping and cutting paper makes you think about making images differently.  Ground and motif become the same thing, and you can't get bogged down detail.  It feels to me to be a bit closer to sculpture, manipulating materiels and physically arranging them.  I have been using some of my own paintings as a starting point, re-exploring compositional elements and pushing them somewhere new.

refinery

refinery, etang du berre (32cm x 25cm, oil on wood)

The weather hasn't been too good recently, so I have been working more in the  studio.  I have been working from drawings, photographs and memory.  In the studio I tend to work on images over a series of sessions, letting one layer dry a bit and then working over it.  I quite often make a painting quickly, then scrape it back so that I am left with a ghost of an image that forms the basis for further work.  The scraped back image dries nice and fast, so I can work on it next day.  Sometimes I  'tonk' the original image. ' Tonking' refers to blotting a painting with newspaper, so it sucks out a lot of the oil and solvent in the paint, allowing it to dry quickly and removing any accumulated fussiness.  I think the process is named after Henry Tonks, an English painter who was a formidable and influential teacher at the Slade school of art in the 1920's.  Thanks, Henry. 

Goult

Goult cemetery (10cm x 15cm)

Goult cemetery (oil on wood 25cm x 32cm)

The smaller image is a very fast small oil painting made on site, at the end of a mornings painting.  The larger image is a painting of a painting, made in the studio.  I'm not sure whether it's finished yet, as is often the case when I am in the studio.  Paintings can rumble on for months.  Painting outside I just run out of time, or it gets dark, or I get hungry - then I know I've finished.  This particular place I think is very interesting because the space is very theatrical.  It recedes in a very controlled way, giving a feeling of something mysterious, a narrative about to unfold.

Jardin de la Louve

Jardin de la Louve (pencil on paper 17cm x 17cm)

Jardin de la Louve (oil on board 25cm x 32cm)

This a bit different from recent images that have all been painted in situ.  I made a series of small drawings as I wondered around these beautiful gardens full of sculpted shapes grouped together, and used them to create an image in the studio that combines the drawings, memory and imagination.

Venasque

Venasque (oil on board 25cm x 32cm)

The light is getting really good at this time of year for painting outside.  The shadows are longer, the light is warmer, and the colours begin to separate after the intense bleached out light of the summer.

water

river at l'Isle sur la Sorgue (oil on board 25cm x 32cm)

This is a problem new to me - painting reflections.  The clarity of the water means that in the foreground the bottom of the river is visible, beneath the reflections on the surface.  A bit further away and the refractive index of the water means that you see the surface of the water defined by the reflections in it.  All of this, of course, changes from one moment to the next.  The complexity the constant changes mean that you have to paint freely and condense a lot of information into a few marks.  As always with these small paintings, it was made in situ in about an hour and a half.

Beech Wood

Lagard d'Apt Beech woods (oil on wood15cm x 10cm)

Lagard d'Apt Beech Woods (oil on wood 25cm x 32 cm)

It's been very hot the last few days, 38degrees c,  so this morning we went painting up in the hills at a 1000 meters altitude where the air was cool and clear.  There is a beautiful beech wood there with raking light and shimmering colours.  I was thinking about trying to paint the volume of space under the trees, rather than the trees themselves.

Quay Branly

pen and ink 26cm x 21cm

Just spent a few days in Paris, and these are some quick drawings I made while wondering around the Quay Branly, the 'new' musueum designed by Jean Nouvelle dedicated to art from Africa, Asia and the South Pacific.  I am always drawn to carved masks. The inventiveness with form and texture within the confines of the human face is amazing.

Mont Ventoux

Mont Ventoux (oil on wood 25cm x 32cm)

Mont Ventoux (oil on wood 25cm x 32cm)

Painting below Mont Ventoux the other day, almost too beautiful to paint.  Not only is the volume of space arching over the mountain so vast and overwhelming, but there is also lavender in the foreground at the absolute peak of its colour intensity.  The challenge of getting anything of that down onto a small wooden panel in a couple of hours is absurd, but that's what I have tried to do.

evening painting at Lacoste

Lacoste,  evening I  (25x32cm, oil on wood)

Lacoste, evening II (25x32cm oil on wood)

Lacoste, evening III (oil on wood 25x32)

I made these three paintings over the course of an evening in Lacoste, just behind the Marquis de Sade's chateau.   On the first one I was able to work quite slowly because the light didn't seem to be changing very much.  As the sun goes down the light moves very quickly, and I could see the shadows travelling across the ground as I worked.  The warm light on the greens makes them start to glow, and things become defined that were invisible a few minutes earlier.  It's difficult to get anything down quick enough in a convincing way.  The third one took about 20 minutes, but sometimes it's good to paint faster than you can think.

Gordes on a hot afternoon

Gordes (oil on wood 25cm x 32cm)

Painting the impossible, here.  I am trying to paint the space around the buildings as much as the buildings themselves - the sky becomes dominant.  The  idea is to get as much as possible down in a couple of hours, shuffling around chasing shade.  It was 35 degrees C!  Like many of my current sketches, it is painted on an earthy red ground.

St Remy II

farm buildings behind St Paul de Mausole (oil on board 25cm x 32cm)

This is a second painting made the same day as the one below.  I am trying to keep things very very simple, a limited palette, a few shapes.  I really have to start moving these on in the studio and develop them into something more substantial.  A big reference for me at the moment when working outside at the moment  are Corot's early paintings that he made around Rome and in the Italian countryside.  They were made as studies for bigger more elaborate paintings to be made back in Paris - but he kept them with him throughout his life.  I love them, and I'm too embarassed to post one on this blog.

Painting at St Remy

landscape at St Paul (25cm x 32cm, oil on board)

Spent a day painting at St Remy de Provence last week, in the grounds of the hospital where Van Gogh was in 1889, St Paul de Mausole.  For me, it is a highly charged place -  it's impossible not to think of Van Gogh while there, everything looks so familiar.  At the moment I am pushing horizons to the edge of the image, leaving large areas of paint to be paint.

a week out painting

landscape near Villars (oil on board 32cm x 25cm)

I have spent the last week taking a group out painting, so I have been working small and quickly just trying to get down some ideas and keep it fresh.  Some of them will get worked on in the studio, but most of them stay as they are and are mined for ideas for other paintings.

Murs (oil on board 32cm x 25cm)

study of hands

study of liz's hands from my current sketchbook - pencil on paper

tree forms from the sketchbook

pen, 12cm x18cm

pen, 18cm x 12 cm

micro-paintings

oil on board 18cmx12cm

oil on board 18cmx12cm

These small paintings are done very quickly on the spot, maybe 10 or 15 minutes, and then I don't mess with them in the studio.  I have taken to working on quite strongly coloured grounds.  It gives something for the other colours to bounce off, and sometimes generates interesting combinations that I wouldn't have thought of .   I can exploit those effects in other, larger, pieces.  Again, these are painted within a hundred meters of the house.  It saves time wondering around trying to find a subject - the subject is the painting.

etching

hard ground etching, 2012

I have been working on a series of etchings, drawings and paintings of places in or close to Les Bassacs.  No particular goal in mind - just recording, looking and thinking.  I make the etchings back in the studio from drawings,  photographs and memory.  I make them the old fashioned way, on zinc mostly, etched in nitric acid.

oil on board, 2012

The paintings I have been starting in situ, and and then working on them in the studio.  I have also been making postcard-sized paintings on board, quickly and in one go just trying to grab an image and not kill it.  I'll post some of those another time.

studio today