Gosh, it’s been a while since I blogged. Just looked at WordPress’ new look on the iPad and thought I had better get on with it.
Firstly, there has been a new arrival at The Rest…Coco the feisty, glum faced heart-stealing Chihuahua. And what a funny creature she is. Partly fiercely independent, partly obsessively cuddly and clingy. Faster than a speeding bullet, she is almost impossible to photograph and is rarely seen without a straight twig sticking out of her mouth a la Clint Eastwood
Just finished a painting for a book – working title ” An Alphabet of Monkeys in History”.
Meet Queen Elithabeth the Firtht Woman in Thpathe.
It is widely known that the Elizabethans pioneered space travel, but less publicised is the fact that HRH Queen Elizabeth 1 was actually the first woman on the moon. This portrait shows Liz in the costume she wore on the first of her many spacewalks.
Long time no write. Been very busy with the Final Paintings and with the show, and especially the very lovely feedback and new traffic through www.kissywhippet.com
Many thanks to everyone who came to private view, and to those who are taking paintings home with them, it was a great day. Gentle rain outside and bustling inside the gorgeous Rye Art Gallery. Sarah hung the show beautifully. I couldn’t have been happier with it all.
Tim Roche at the Roche gallery in Rye made me the most incredible frames, his ridiculously versatile and talented painter partner Marina Kim finished them with darkest brown gesso and wax. I am very proud of these paintings but I would be a fool not to admit that these massive, brooding, velvety frames added to the work a really desirable and grabbable quality.
I have had a set of postcards made from sections of the paintings for this show here are a few….
Sweet Bacchus
Just returned from the Fire Hills with the girls and checked out the Hipstamatic shots I got of them up there on this heavenly day.
Thought I’d include a rarely seen behind the scenes look at the photoshoot behind Blue Rabbit in Shadow (working title). Rabbit arrived, ‘fashionably’ late – ugh, but was in fairly good spirits, and ready get into the shoot. I showed him the Rembrandt that Stuart at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam had lent me for a couple of weeks to get aquainted with.
(note to self – pop pic back in post ASAP)
He seemed down with it, but I detected a note of reticence, and realised, too late that I had made a grave and embarrassing error. BR has the face of an angel, but a tragically stumpy arm/shrunken shoulder birth defect which had already seen his promising basketball career cut horribly short (no pun intended). He courteously allowed me to back-peddle with good grace, and the long and short of it was, he let us tape his arms down to his sides. The resulting imagery was a little Lynchian, but I have promised him faithfully that no-one will ever see the shots, and really – who’d care?
Believe it or not, the shoot took a whole day, and by a very strange quirk of coincidence, three-quarters of the crew were off with shingles that day, so we had a skeleton crew. I very rarely work without at least 30 men under me, but today we just had to soldier on regardless.
But we got the shot, and the painting was made….
It’s funny, I haven’t heard from him, but I did miss a call from his lawyer a couple of days back. Huh.
Saturday’s episode ‘Victory of the Daleks’ – well, what can I say? This program is SO important. Saturday night in, pizza in the oven and a blankie and dogs on the sofa. Perfection. How bloody brilliant was that? Have they chosen well or what? As always, stamped through and through with very British wry humour, always ready to laugh at itself and remain moving and human and often thought provoking, but always damned rollicking good fun. This poster says it all doesn’t it? My absolute dream of dreams would be to get a little painting hung up inside the Tardis. Giant pdf of this artwork is available to download free on the Dr Who website.
Body Snatcher.
This episode has inspired a World War two painting entitled An Ordinary Telegraphist. First sketch while dog walking here. A bit rough, but as usual for me, it is what keeps the painting fresh, if I stick to the life to be found in a swift rough sketch. The painting of the sailor whose bod I have shamelessly stolen for this piece is in the Greenwich Maritime museum and was commissioned by the The War Artists Advisory Committee which was formed early in the Second World War. Its purpose was to direct and commission art in ways that could usefully serve the war effort; through documenting the conflict, raising morale and promoting national culture. The Committee was led by Sir Kenneth Clark, Director of the National Gallery, and was set up in the light of the significant role played by British artists during World War I.
Little bit of work later, and our latest hero is dressed and ready for action.
I needed to get straight back on the horse following my flailing magpie, and as it was the airiness which hadn’t worked successfully for me, I wanted to get back inside, with shadows and candlelight, and pictured a boldly cramped and warm composition which needed to be set in the 19th Century. So Louis Bertinswan sat for me. I used coarsely ground pumice in the paint, so was able to brush the painting with highlights and lowlights to give some movement in the shadows in particular.
Having a bit of a time with this one. Funny, because the picture itself is going in exactly the direction I had intended for it, but as a painting, it is not working at all. So, the Magpie will remain atop his unfinished branch and the sky has since been scraped away, and because I still like him, he is going on one side to be re-imagined and reworked into a different painting later on.
I stole unashamedly an extraordinary Turner to start this piece off. Good start. How could I go wrong? For God’s sake, look at this painting. Can’t believe I am about to have the audacity, but I have.
redded him up a bit…..
Built up layers of heavy texture then went to town for Red Crow…
He’s refined and and ominous in his delicious deathly black box frame. I used huge amounts of gigantic red oil pastels for this baby, then melted the surface with sansodor to soften and mysteriolise the very deep crevasses in the painting’s surface. Oh I could do this night and day. Shame that most of the image disapears in a photograph, although this one is a rough shot for now, this will be a bugger to shoot, as the feathers for instance are built up in thick matt black on black. Will need to experiment…..
Just completed an unusually saturated painting by my standards. This one is asking if abandonment is possible. There is quite a specific work of fiction behind this little chap, which makes me wonder whether or not tales need to be told in relation to paintings. This little mixed race character is complete in the moment as he sits in the sun on the large manicured lawn. My intent was to tell the tales behind these guys, but I am thinking that perhaps the fact of the story is enough, to be filtered by the viewer in rather the same way some of the overlaid colours on the surface of the paintings get mixed in the eye. I would love to have other people write their version of what has come before.
