HELLO 2024

I thought if I start 2024 early I could make up for lost time? Two weeks of festivities over and I am looking forward to 2024 with more confidence. The year ahead is genuinely exiting in terms of my painting. I will have a full year of painting unlike 2023 when I was still putting the studio together. I think the main change I would like to make is to start drawing outdoors again. Whats stopping me? I got out of the habit many years ago, hopefully its just a case of getting started and replacing idle time with productive time.

Lorbottle. Day 6

A MUCH BETTER DAY

Here I am again, obsessing over the details but this time getting the results that were so hard to achieve yesterday. What is it with good and bad painting days?. Its difficult to determine in advance how the day will go. Mental sharpness seems to be a pre-requisite, but that’s no help, my brain is dormant most of the time until it is needed, much like a car battery. The task for today was to paint in the fore ground trees but I got side tracked correcting my feeble painting efforts yesterday. So many trees to paint, at least their pretty colours, being autumn. The sky is not photographing well at the moment, too reflective.

Lorbottle. Day 5

TURNER PRIZE WINNER

I would like to make a late submission for the Turner Prize 2023. It is my first abstract in stone with the suitably pretentious title, ‘Abstract No.1, The Fall of Rome’. I can’t see why this is any less of a contender than the usual suspects. It is in fact a rather elegant solution to solve a damp problem we inherited. Lime mortar, old school solution for a very old problem.

Abstract No.1, The Fall of Rome.

PERSONAL PREFERENCES

I have spent countless hours making changes to paintings knowing that working at this level of subtlety hardly makes any difference. There is an obsessive element to my painting where things get so nuanced even I fail to see the difference. I think there is an underlying dissatisfaction with your own limitations as an artist that fuels this obsessive compulsion. Sometimes its the actual subject that creates these difficulties, like tricky lighting conditions or in this case a very odd clash of acid greens and reds. Today was a marginal improvement and some laboured painting.

Lorbottle. Day 4

DON'T OVERTHINK IT

just paint. This is the advice I would give to my young self setting out to college. Of course I would just ignore it, then spend the next 35 years slowly learning the lesson. Now I can do it, but is it too late? I could be an Alfred Wallis type character undiscovered until old age, I don’t mind waiting. Will I develop sufficiently over the next 25 years, that is the gamble. Fortunately I enjoy painting so I will carry on regardless. I sense a stylistic shift, this does not surprise me, its gone more Bruegelesque, which means I will pull out my Bruegel books and head off in that direction for a couple of weeks.

Lorbottle. Day 3

AN INFINITE VARIETY

I had some doubts when I first moved here a year ago whether all the effort of moving was going to be worthwhile. What I have found here is an infinite variety of spectacular landscape that really motivates me to paint. I have come to realise that even if I took on Van Gogh’s work ethic I would never exhaust the possibilities here. This is very reassuring, prior to this I flitted from idea to idea, and this has been the pattern since I left college in the 80’s. I am assuming that with consistency of work and subject the rate of improvement should accelerate.

Lorbottle. Day 2

THE DRAMA OF AUTUMN

This is the most dramatic photo I have used to date. Not only do you have the colours of autumn, you have a setting sun and a stormy sky. I have toned down the sky a bit, but some of the trees are almost cadmium orange. You also have the magentas and browns of the dying heather contrasted with the acid greens of the fields. Its a lot to take in but it shouldn’t make for a dull painting.

Lorbottle. Day 1

EXPENSIVE PAINT

One of the benefits of using expensive paint is you feel compelled to go into the studio if your palette is piled high with the stuff. Especially if its all premixed and ready to go. This only works with oil paint of course. I am due a few days of painting and I had an itch to finish off this painting. I thought it was finished but the foreground trees needed just a bit more work. I am not one of those painters like Chagall who would return to a painting years or decades later to rework it. I need to strike while the iron is still hot, or at least semi-warm.

Alwinton

THE LONG TERM PLAN

My strategy for my painting is to do more in the future. This may seem like a lame ambition made by someone who isn’t really planning to do more painting in the future. However, my particular circumstances are that we have just moved into a very old cottage, 260 years old! which in my opinion needs a lot of work. The plan for me is to focus on getting all of that work out of the way and of course this means less time on my painting than I would like. This will increase over time. Anyway, back to the painting. I can’t think why I thought that the foreground trees could hold up as a silhouette. If I’m being honest I wasn’t sure I could pull it off in terms on painting them in detail, some of this is still new territory. Comparing today with the previous version it is very clear it needed it, still learning. I think this painting is finished.

Alwinton

LOOKING TO PROGRESS

As the headline reads, its about a Painters Progress, and today was all about that, as is every day. I thought some areas of the painting needed a visual punch and a bit more experimentation with bolder colour and shape. The biggest problem for me as a landscape painter is how to deal with the ‘empty’ areas. As I have no intention of painting every blade of grass then I need to find a solution. I am becoming more interested in the tracks and natural pathways in the landscape, some of the shapes are quite bizarre. I suppose its the same as looking at clouds and seeing the shapes of animals etc, of course, I’d like to think my work is a bit more serious than that. The changes I made today are very close to working and I like how they challenge your preconceptions of how a landscape should look. I think if I apply the same approach to other areas of the painting this is going to work.

Alwinton. Day 7

EVERYTHING I TOUCHED

didn’t turn to gold, not s**t, either, more like bronze. One of those sessions when you know instantly that its going to be a grind. How can mixing paint one day be different from any other? I decided to press on without inspiration but with pig headed determination. Gradually I started making more right than wrong decisions and the painting started to advance. Its funny when things are going badly you can’t think of anyway to improve a painting. But when things are going well it seems every area can be improved, and more importantly you know what is needed. After a tough afternoon this painting has improved.

Alwinton. Day 6

THE TIPPING POINT

This is the moment every painter works towards, when the painting shifts into another dimension, from being an ordinary rendition of the subject to something that has gone beyond the subject. Its a kind of magic, to quote the Queen song. Its when the painting starts to work independently of the subject, using the language the painter is trying to apply. Today, it was seeing the tones that already existed in the subject but really pushing them to a higher key, a form of Fauvism if you like. The painting is starting to work. The mid-ground diagonal line of trees reminds me of a cast of characters from a late Guston painting.

Alwinton. Day 5

BLACK & BLUE

I feel like I have been trading blows with this painting all afternoon. At every moment it seems like it was resisting my efforts to advance it. Once I got into belligerent pugilist mode I started to make some gains. If you can still retain some control this way of painting is normally quite effective. Where you might hesitate in a calm state of mind you tend to act on instinct, an Arnold Schwarzenegger, guns blazing approach. Anyway, a couple of areas have suffered with this method but they can be recovered.

Alwinton. Day 4

WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DAY MAKES

Quality not quantity, why do I have to choose?, I want quality and quantity, which means working with mastery, oh well, I’ll take quality. I am back to my hyper self which I much prefer. I never see Bob Ross struggling with his landscapes, he gets it right first time, although his trees and mountains always look the same. Did he really have any ambition to get better? I don’t think so, still he made a lot of money, not a bad trade. This painting is slowly emerging, still not sure how much detail to put into the foreground trees. They are creating a strong silhouette, which seems to work at the moment.

Alwinton. Day 3

DAY TWO

The title shows how uninspired I felt today. Started on autopilot and gradually improved, by the end of the day I was up to full speed. On days like this I focus on something very small and simple to start with and its amazing how the act of just mixing paint and getting results can turn your mindset around. I can now see the potential in this painting, hopefully I will return on fully charged batteries.

Alwinton. Day 2

WILD AND REMOTE

Back in my favourite area of Northumberland, at least the Northumberland I know of. There is a country road (track?) that starts in the hamlet of Alwinton and heads west following the river Alwin. As soon as I get a good day I am going to head off and explore. The scenery is spectacular with steep hills either side of the river. I may even stumble across the mythical Edward Burra landscape unhelpfully titled, Valley and River, Northumberland. His painting has all the characteristics of this area.

Alwinton. Day 1

THE LAST FIVE PERCENT

The last five percent of a painting seems to take an age. It always seems to be an area of the painting that is empty, and your attempts to fill it with all manner of things has failed. I think there is an added desperation as you feel you should finish the picture with a masterly flourish. Instead you find yourself muddling around trying random colour combinations as if you’ve never picked up a brush before. That was todays story, and it will be the same with almost every painting I do. However, I think it has come to a reasonable conclusion and I am happy with the outcome.

Alwinton

A QUESTIONABLE WORK ETHIC

Is it even fair to question anyone’s work ethic when they are retired, its over, isn’t it? I suppose for someone like myself I should say its only just begun. I often berate myself for not doing more, but we can all do more, that’s always the case. Excuses aside, I suppose the question is doing more for what end? The answer for me is never clear, to make better pictures? that’s so poorly defined to have as a goal. I think as a start that aim is ok, but at some point you have to ask what level of achievement would leave you satisfied. If I am being realistic, I will never be satisfied. Anyway, this painting is getting better.

Alwinton. Day 6

THE DAYS AREN'T LONG ENOUGH

I suppose I would only say this if things were going well. Its curious how confidence and enthusiasm can waver from painting to painting. I am finding there is a balance to be struck between my ability to move away from the illustrative aspects of the photograph and towards a more abstracted interpretation, I still haven’t found it. That accounts for the inconsistent look from painting to painting. I would like to think that this is me searching for the right answers, a search that I will always be involved in.

Alwinton. Day 5

ACCIDENT AND DESIGN

It seems every painter needs a bit of both in order push their painting forward. What I found in the past is that I could never capitalize on accident because I didn’t know how to replicate the language. I am now finding that accident is often the key to opening up the painting, and the more I paint the more accident is leading me in the right direction. The idea of a reduced colour range in this painting is starting to work, I think it is the way forward. Still some way to go with this painting but I am liking it more than the previous one.

Alwinton. Day 4