Life Moves Ever Onward

I have to say that I get so angry, well unhappy that only those who have art degrees or art qualifications seem to be the artists of worth. I visited an art gallery  recently where I paid a considerable amount to enter and I cannot say I was a t all impressed by what I saw. Yet this artist was rated because she had an art degree. Not one single work of hers made me interested. Now that just might be me.

I have been fortunate to have sold a number of works but will I ever be considered an artist? I suspect not. This is my latest work of not art. I like it and hope you do also.

Toward The East They Looked.

Toward The East They Looked

Yes it looks very similar to the painting I sold within five minutes of painting it just the other day. But I just could not get the idea out of my head, and the more I looked at the blue version the more I saw yet another thought and another view of the idea. I still feel there might even be another version in green but who knows.

I though hard and hard about painting this second version but then many artists down through history have returned to a subject again and again. Monet painted so many lotus ponds. I know why they did it, not because they thought they were good at it, I think it was because their heads were full of further ways of saying the same thing.

So I do not feel I have cheated at all by giving this another try.  I had a painting that I was never happy with from the day I painted it. The canvas board it was painted on already had the base colours there if I painted it over. So two birds with one stone really, the old has gone and new is with me.

I would love to hear what you think of  what I have done. Please do not be afraid to tell me if you think I am being less than honest in my reasons.

The Moments That Make Dreams

The Moments That Make Dreams

There are days when you open you just realise how fortunate you are. When things just go well, or you realise how much you are blessed with good friends. For the artist these days are often linked closely to how the art is progressing. I began to realise this yesterday when I read the email I received from a friend. The email was saying that the person had not really realised how well off they were. It went something like this.

I am so rich, Silver in the Hair, Gold in the teeth. Crystals in the kidneys and sugar in the blood. Lead in the ass and iron in the arteries, and an inexhaustible supply of natural gas. I never thought I could accumulate such wealth.

Anyway back to the serious stuff of yesterday. I was looking at  some pictures of marathons I had run. As I looked I noticed this group of people standing behind the finish line. They were not looking at the finishers. I started to ask myself, what are they saying, what are they thinking and doing. As I thought a picture came to my mind.

I had already started working on a canvas board but was very unhappy with the progress I was making and had washed it off. I went back to the task with my mind now full of new thoughts. Using Platho Blue and White I painted what I could see clearly in my mind.

What appeared on the canvas board was not exactly what I had in my eye but it was very close. I had only used the two colours and I felt it was ok. I took a picture of it while it was still wet. I put a copy of it on Art Wanted and I posted it on my FaceBook page.

Within minutes of it appearing on Facebook I had been made a solid offer for the work. Obviously a person who knows just what they like. This person now owns two of my works. The first was purchased two years ago but I can see the similarities of thought in both works and I feel sure they will fit in the same home.

I was feeling pleased and to add the sugar to the icing I got an email just ten minutes later saying somebody had made my painting a pic of the day.

I never knew I was so rich as the story above says.

Hope you are all well.

I Remember Days

I Remember Days

I heard a song that reminded me of days spent both as a youth and in the past. Summer days with summer thoughts. I cannot even remember the name of the song or the singers, I heard it as the backing song on an advertisement. Yet this snippet of song made me think.

My thinking was not of the days spent with other people, the games played or the moments shared. Rather it was about happy times of peace and quiet in places that I was alone and yet at peace. Solitary moments, happy moments. Most of those were in times of holidays and warm places.

I had many thoughts of how I could express this and in the end this was what came of the thinking. When the colours were there before me this was what happened.

I painted this first as a little acrylic on a sheet of acrylic paper and put it in a little mount ( Matt).  MY friends who shared it with me all said the same as I was feeling, they liked it but could not say why.

Yesterday I got bold and painted it on a large canvas board 16" x 20" The scale meant making some small changes. Does it work? I am not sure, but i have put it in a nice black and silver frame and put it behind glass and each time I pass it and look at it I do feel some sense of peace. That is actually something, because right now I am in considerable pain, from what i do not know, and for a painting to bring some peace and comfort is saying something.

Memories of Summer ( The Small Version of the Painting Above.)

Where Do You Go To My Lovely ( Canvas Version)

Where Do You Go To My Lovely ( Canvas Version)

A customer liked my painting of the above name but  expressed an interest in having the painting on canvas rather than on acrylic paper and behind glass.

This being a theme of painting I have enjoyed so much playing with it was exciting to have another reason to try yet another version of this work.

I painted it on a box canvas round the edges. The customer and her husband seem pleased with it. So another painting now hangs on another wall I hope enhancing the lives of those who see it.

Tortured Cityscape

Yesterday seemed a good day in terms of art sales. I also sold my abstract painting Tortured Cityscape. This painting is going to a home where at least another two of my paintings already hang.

It is nice when somebody purchases a work of art that you created but there is something very special when more than one work hangs with the same owner.

The Calm Before The Storm ( Heading Home)

The Calm Before. ( Heading For Home)

This painting was painted after a run along the Fife Coastal Path. It was one of those atmospheric days that you cannot describe the power of an oncoming storm. The dark colours of the sky, the sea as yet still calm but the first hints of the wind rising. Boatmen and women head for the safety of shore and the birds head for the safety of a roost.

On the day I finished painting this I took it to show my friend. On my way home I was stopped by a young lady who asked about it and offered to purchase. It is an amazing feeling when a work just done has touched the heart of somebody else. My friend made the comment that he thought it was one of the best seascapes I had painted, if not the best.

The painting is on a large box canvas 40" x 20" so I hope it will make a beautiful statement somewhere and bring pleasure and thought in the years to come.