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