Breckland

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Ink wash with graphite and coloured pencil on paper – 56 x 77cm

Since the exhibition ‘Lockdowns & Landscapes’ at Hornsey Library in Dec 2021 I have been busy elsewhere. It is only just recently that I have been able to return more fully to my art practice with the above private commission of Breckland in East Anglia. The work is almost finished. I will put it to one side and wait a little before a final review and completion. The picture will need to be properly lit and photographed.

The summer of 2022 has been odd – waiting for some legal issues to be resolved regarding a property before being able to travel out to Malaysia and Indonesia. I’d hoped to be productive with drawings and watercolours but this didn’t quite transpire apart from the weekly Tottenham Art Class life drawing sessions at the Beehive Pub. The classes kept me going with interesting models and the company of the other artists at the sessions.

Autumn 2022 approaches and now that I have a little more time, outside of my architectural tutoring, I intend to be more busy and productive with art making, and to post more regularly here. More to follow very shortly!

Peasenhall to Berwick-on-Tweed

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I have cycled for 6 days to meet up with Yasmin in Berwick for a couple of rest days before continuing north to Stornoway.

The weather has been both wet and windy and only recently a little more settled. It is expected to change again as I ride on getting both colder and wetter. The landscape of the south has slipped away from spring bulbs and tree blossoms to winter with bare trees and grey woodlands. The flatlands and waterways of the Fens have shifted from the straight and horizontal to the more steeply rolling hills and curves of moorland and fell. Dairy cows are replaced with beef heifers. Sheep fill fields.

Berwick is a dramatic place to arrive with its bridges over the Tweed, the Elizabethan fortifications, steep narrow streets and views to the North Sea and Lindisfarne. To rest awhile, eat and drink and catch-up with Yasmin is wonderful. The solitary riding lets my mind drift to other self supporting journeys which are good now to share with her. I ask:

“Do you remember the Jedburgh couple and their weird B&B we stayed in on the way to Edinburgh? I kept seeing sign posts for it chasing me as I ride along!”

And:

“Do you remember the lady we rescued from her car in the dyke in the Fens? I’m sure I rode part of that road north of Boston”

Looking ahead I will retrace other paths and places we have stayed, in particular circling north around the Cairngorms towards Inverness. Pitlochry, Blair Athol and Aviemore. It will be very different with the cargo bike riding parallel to the A9 for as much as possible.

I feel very lucky still to be able to do this – ride a bike steadily for a day – and to enjoy the diversity of accent and culture that still is Britain. 

Cycling North

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Preparations are underway for next week’s departure northward on the cargo bike to Stornoway via Berwick-on-Tweed and Inverness. Slow peddling with a mix of campsites and pub hotels as I hope the spring weather in the UK holds.

Chromatic studies – summer 2023

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These are small oil painted veneered boards exploring differing colour explorations for larger figurative pictures in progress. They follow reading ‘Interaction of Colour’ by Josef Albers and visits to Tate Modern to see the ‘Hilma af Klint & Piet Mondrian: Forms of Life’ exhibition. Mondrian’s famous abstractions, look simple but are not. There is much thought into the placing of the canvas into a framing board, the treatment of the edge returns, and of course the physical geometric proportions of everything he is working with – lines and blocks of colour.

Here the boards explore and investigate the problems of:

  • the colour green and how it appears in nature
  • skin tone
  • night time in a Málaga bar

Cazorla, Spain – Easter 2023

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Towards Jaén. Oil paint on canvas board 40 x 30cm.

One of many pictures painted over a three week working holiday high in the mountains overlooking the olive fields of the Providencia de Jaén. See below for other works to be shortly exhibited. News to follow.