Lead Kindly Light

Lead Kindly Light

I painted yesterday. It started out to look like another day when I would end up with nothing but a fuller bin. It turned out to be instead a day with a happy accident. I had started to paint something else but I was not at all happy with it. My concentration level would be slipping because of this and so the mistake occurred. I lifted the wrong colour. At the speed I paint there is never a coming back from that. But I did like what had happened on the canvas.

I made a coffee and stood looking at the happy accident. As those who follow my blogs know I have been walking the coastal path near where I stay. I intend to do it all, and the way I am doing it in sections walking out and back, when I have finished I will have seen it both ways. It is 150km so I will be having a few walks.

As I looked I saw different aspects of the walks I have been having. I put them together to come up with this painting. It is a painting of nowhere and lots of places. One of the little fishing villages, look at it from a distance. The lighthouse I saw the other day.

One or two people have seen it. One of the lads I was talking with yesterday thought I must have been in a gloomy mood when I used these colours. My wife felt the same, asking me why I chose to use such a dark palette.

They were both wrong. I did not choose the palette the happy accident did. I felt far from gloomy I felt peaceful and calm.

Why the title I have given it? I was a parish minister for 20 years and I loved nothing more than a good sing. Sunday after Sunday I was able to slip into the service a hymn that I liked to sing, and then I got the pleasure of blasting it out in full voice.

As most of you know I cannot sing anymore and yet after all those years, I still find myself humming some of those tunes as I paint. Often the song I am humming without knowing why gives me the title for the painting.

I having been discussing with Ruby the importance of the titles of paintings. I think they point people in the direction you would like them to be thinking as they look at your work. They should though, also allow the person to put their own interpretation to the work and fill in the gaps for themselves.

So here it is, Lead Kindly Light. For those who know the next line I think this painting just about fits the bill.



This blog is linked to my other. I Am Alive and it is a Good Day

Marathon

The Finish Line.

My apologies that I have again no art to put on this blog this morning. In my other blog I was talking about puting off the things you know you should be doing to do other things.

Well let me make a great big confession. I have not been painting nearly as much as I should be or for that mattr would like to be. I have a reason and I hope it is not an excuse.

Since taking up painting I have allowed it to almost dominate my life. I am prone to doing that. The trouble is some of the things I have been putting off is the regular excercise I used to do. Not only that I have been indulging myself in other ways.

The result: overweight. Just before going on holiday I had managed without thinking to put on two stone, for those who do not know that weight system that is 28pounds.

The picture on both blogs today is what I used to be like. I know so you do not need to say it, but at least not carrying an extra 2 stone.

I have been putting off doing anything about it and feeling so unfit. So I have decided this is a priority and I have been getting out, running and walking and more importantly indulging myself less.

Yesterday I had managed to lose 14 of those pounds so a mile marker. I am familiar with mile markers having run hundreds of marathons. So I have another two markers set down. Each for 7 pounds to get rid of the additional 14.

I know this blog is about art but can you just give me this one. Sharing this secret with you I feel will help me do it.

I will now go and paint, without the little choclate biscuit beside the coffee cup or the bottle of ale and packet of crisps.

As my other blog says. You can do anything you want if you want to bad enough.

This blog is linked to my other.  You Can Do It If YOu Really Want To

Thoughts of Spring.

Thoughts of Spring

As I said in my other blog I had a marvellous day yesterday visiting an exhibition of Impressionist paintings of gardens and flowers. So many beautiful works of art and so much to take in.

Those who follow my blogs and those whose blogs I follow know I have a real love of such things. I look at so many of your blogs and am so often dumbstruck by the beauty you are all able to portray.

I know this is going to sound controversial but I am going to say it anyway. I looked at some of the masters and in most case I was blown away. There were others where I looked and I thought, my blogging friend ………. has done something like that and better.

I was captured by a painting of Van Gogh. It was a garden painting, “Undergrowth.” I have seen pictures of this work before but to see it for real was just something else.

I carried the image in my mind and thought about my feeble attempts to convey that feeling.

The painting I have included here is one such example.

I am pleased I attempted this work but I am now inspired to look again and see if I can make a better job of conveying what I attempted.

So another canvas finds its way on to my repaint bundle. I am going back to read Katherine’s comment the other day about how to see that as positive. I am going to take the inspiration of the master and make a further effort.

Thanks to Van Gogh and thanks to Katherine.

This blog is linked to my other.  Learning to Fly

Summer Days and Holidays

Summer Days and Holidays.

I used this painting this morning because I thought my other blog was very serious and that was not really how I was feeling. I had a wonderful walk in the rain yesterday. It was a fairly high ridge walk with marvellous views in spite of the wet weather.

I find such walks exhilarating and yet they also make me contemplative. I think this painting does both also.

I hope it captures the feeling of walks in strange places where you find unexpected little alleys that make you stop and wonder. What secrets do the windows and doors conceal? Then the artistic beauty of the place takes over and you feel moved.

None of those yesterday, but I did find this little ridge high above the town of Burntisland not far from where I live. So near yet until yesterday I was oblivious of it.

At the end of the walk, as I returned to my car I walk under the cliff face I had just walked along the top. I was aware of how close the path was to this drop. Did I really go there?

How I wish I could pour all that emotion into my art. This painting was done very quickly so I think there was some of it in this one. It sold very quickly and a larger similar one was commissioned soon after.

This blog is linked to my other.  Something to Consider

And So It Was

And So It Was

It was Katherine who was talking on her blog about selling pictures. I found that blog interesting because she was asking all the questions we all have to ask ourselves at one time or other. Can we part with paintings that are part of us? I had a lovely chuckle as I pictured her running after a buyer asking for her painting back.

Another real dilemma I have is when it is time to admit that nobody wants to purchase a particular painting. There is the question of storing large numbers of unsold large canvas. The other thing is cost. These canvas rather than sitting taking up space can be used again.

It is true that there is a part of us in every canvas we paint. If there is not then we have to ask ourselves if we are painting just as a task to be done or are we giving the painting our whole being.

I have used this painting here today on both blogs because here is a canvas in point.

Before going to sleep I often lie and consider painting. What will I paint? What days might I try to paint? What medium? Then of course I consider the canvas that I will use. Will it be a new one or will I paint over.

I think this painting is rapidly reaching the point when I will have to decide to paint over her. It is like selling a painting, it is never easy but we have to ask what can we do with a mountain of unwanted works?

This blog is linked to my other. The Examination