Abstract in Blue

Abstract in Blue.

I was out purchasing art materials when two small canvas caught my eye. A friend recently told me she was painting some miniatures, when I saw these canvas I just could not resist buying them and having a try at painting small.

My first love as you all know is to paint abstract. When I do I get so involved in the artwork. I use everything lying around. My fingers, knives and yes forks and even my credit card. The one thing I seldom use is a brush.  I tend to splash paint around and add texture.

Now I challenge you to try this at this small size. The canvas is 7" x 10" maybe not real miniature size, but for me miniscule. I once before was challenged to paint using more blue than I would normally use so I thought I would use the same ideas as I did then for this abstract work.

I put the original work on my website and it is very very tempting to go and compare them but I am just not going to do that. I will post it on here and then I have somebody in mind to give this small canvas to. I just so hope it brightens that persons life just a little on a few days in the future.

I hope this post finds all those who read it, well and feeling good.

Where Do You Go To My Lovely

Where Do You Go To My Lovely

How often music seems to influence my thoughts and my art. A song catches my mind as I run and for days it is there in the back of my mind.

For the last few days I have been thinking of the song from the 60s  with the first line, "Where do you go to my lovely when your alone in your bed. Tell me the thoughts that surround you. I want to get inside your head.'

So often this ends with me putting something on a canvas or sheet of paper. Such was the case yesterday with the painting above.

I am aware that it is similar in style to some of the works I have done before. I do not apologise that this is the case. Somebody reminded me that Monet painted a great many different versions of his lilly pond paintings.

Most of the other similar paintings to this have been done large scale. This one is done on acrylic paper and kept to a size that with the mount is 16" x 20".

This blog is linked to my other.  What Ever happened To Good Old Service?

The Path To Enlightenment..

The Path To Enlightenment.

I suppose I had to try and paint something to do with Buddhist Monks or Shaolin Taoist Monks to be more accurate. Having attended a very moving show II have found myself constantly thinking about my own path, the journey already made and that which I hope still lies beyond.

I see this painting as part of that. When we are young and full of the colours of youth it is easy to think that we know it all, there is little to learn. Before us are those who have already travelled the road to various stages. These are the ones who know that there is always much to learn. Those who, in some cases , have forgotten more than we have yet learned.

I think of the many paths I walked with those I learned from and hoped that I could yet impart some of the learning.

But no matter how far along the path we have travelled it is still possible to walk in the footsteps of the stranger and learn even more.

Now to the painting. I am not at all sure about the worth of this as an art form. I may keep it for a bit and then paint over it. It is often the case that the value of the work is in the canvas and not the paint. It is also in the learning experience and not the art.

This blog is linked to my other.  Lets Make A Good Job Of It.

The Mirage

The Mirage

For some time now I have looked at this painting on my living room wall. It is not very often that my wife suggests that one of my own paintings should adorn the walls of our home, our tastes are so different. 

Strangely, this was in fact a second version this work. The first one my son took to hang in his workspace. When he moved to his won office it was brought home and hangs in his house. At the point my wife said she had thought it would be nice in our living room. 

At the time I put it on a website and had forgotten to take it off. Last week it sold. It is now hanging in a dining in Somerset in England. I hope it brings much joy to its new owners and that it stimulates much discussion round the dining table. We were glad to have had it for a time, but even more happy that it may bring joy to others. 

It means I now have another of my paintings hanging where it has gone from. 

I realised as I came home from my run this morning and saw the new work, how lucky artists are that we can surround ourselves with images that bring us joy. 

This blog is linked to my other.   Before We Try To Change The World !!

I Don’t Like Mondays

I Don’t Like Mondays

I was feeling terrible first thing on Monday morning. I awoke with a terrible headache and a fever. Try as hard as I could I had no energy and really did not want to do anything other than sit and feel sorry for myself. As the day progressed I felt no better but thought that I could not just sit about all day doing nothing. I headed through to my painting space and poured some paint.

I had been thinking about the Mondays of my youth.  The school days! After a good weekend remembering how terrible it was to have to go back into school on Monday.

Then there were the times when I spent the summer holidays with my Gran. Monday was her day to have the communal washhouse. She lived in a tenement building. At the back there was a large pole. Strung from this pole to each of the houses back window was a rope pulley system. My Gran would lean out the back window and hang her clothes on this  rope and pull it until the clothes were out between the pole and the window, where they caught the wind.

At the bottom of the garden was a washhouse with a large boiler with a coal fire underneath. The clothes were boiled in this with some of the soap powder from a little box. I even remember it was , “Akdo.” It took her most of the day to accomplish this washing. An event. What it meant was that on Mondays she an I did nothing much else.

So I heard again the song, by the, Boomtown Rats, “I Don’t Like Mondays.

So this abstract came from these thoughts. Painted on acrylic paper with acrylic paint. Most of it was painted using my fingers. I hope you can see all the things I was thinking, especially the line from the song that says, “I want to shoot the whole day down.”

This blog is linked to my other.   The Toils of getting old.