Annie Taylor Landscape Painter: TIME TO WRITE ANOTHER BLOG!

Annie Taylor Landscape Painter: TIME TO WRITE ANOTHER BLOG!:  Two paintings in the new © Flight of Fantasy series It's been far too long since I put type to paper!  I've been writing the...

TIME TO WRITE ANOTHER BLOG!

 Two paintings in the new © Flight of Fantasy series

It's been far too long since I put type to paper!  I've been writing the odd article for a magazine for Dorset Artists, but other than that over the past few months I have been focusing on my work, exploring new directions and finding ways to avoid the pitfalls of my work becoming stale.  Before this recent push I was very stuck and I really wasn't enjoying my time in the studio, but once I realised that I had fallen into the trap of painting to my market that explained why I was no longer enjoying the process.  Last Autumn with that in mind I began work on a series of paintings that have been more experimental - a transition to some work that is a little more surreal and I have been trying to move forward with more along the same lines.

Needless to say, not all of the work that I have produced since then has come out quite as I hoped. But I think I am finding the dream like quality that I want for most of the paintings that I am producing. I am definitely happier with the quality of the paint and a sense that I am continuing to experiment.  The two above were  the turning point. You can see a lot more of the new work on my website: http://annie-taylor.com

Painting & playing...

© Lazy days - Canal du Midi 70 x 70 oil on canvas

A friend came to see my Dorset Art Weeks open studio exhibition today and reminded me that I hadn’t written a blog for a very long time - the title for the last one ‘Pursuing the elusive’ seemingly had a double meaning!  So let me set the record straight – whilst I may have been elusive I have certainly not been putting my feet up.  Quite the contrary in fact as my studio has been the scene of a veritable hive of activity, with two galleries to supply here in England and this huge open Dorset studio event that I am currently part of which takes place every other year. (http://www.dorsetartweeks.co.uk)

I had to deliver work to the galleries in the Autumn, so throughout the Winter I needed to produce a lot of work for Dorset Art Weeks. However, I still managed to paint and ‘play', taking time to head off in the car with our new fold up bikes to ride along the Canal du Midi, or along the trails through the wetlands just behind the Mediterranean between Narbonne and the Spanish border.  The days out helped to feed the imagination and a new series of paintings featuring the Canal have been the result. 

These were prompted by the sad news that many of the grand old Plane trees that line the canal banks are likely to be felled as they are diseased with some new virus.

Painting water has been an interesting challenge for me.  Following on from the tunnel theme that preceded this series – the water adds a different dimension to the theme, completing the sense of the tunnel through the reflections.  I am still engrossed with the tunnel idea and plan to get back to it on our return to France.  Happily, whilst it is a quintessentially English theme, it is one that I can adapt and expand no matter where I am painting.  It works on more than one level for me and can be somewhat abstracted giving me a real opportunity to work in the ‘flow’.

I have talked about the problems of getting blocked in other blogs and I think one thing has been very clear through this period of intense production and that is the importance of  'play' time to keep my work fresh and provide me with new ideas. Whilst change of style or even change of medium - are perhaps the most obvious routes to a fresh approach, I have found that just taking time out to play, walk in a beautiful place, or simply head off to explore new countryside has provided me with the necessary creative momentum. That time off away from the studio relaxing and enjoying myself has been every bit as important for my painting as standing at the easel day after day. It is that very special 'thinking space', relieving the pressure, nurturing the spirit and providing the impetus to try something completely different.  

Pursuing the Illusive

PURSUING THE ELUSIVE

© Following the light 
Oil on canvas 80 x 80

I come from an area in the South West of England where many of the narrow country lanes wind their way through overhanging tunnels of trees.  No matter what the season, these tree tunnels with the sunlight filtering through their branches have a very special atmosphere and provide a subject that frequently draws me back.

I am working at present on a series of three tree tunnel canvasses and as on previous occasions the effect I am after is proving illusive. This is largely because I have an idea in my head of exactly what I want to achieve and that is somehow not reaching the canvas.  It is a lot less frustrating not to have such a clear image in the head when starting out on a new piece, but on the other hand I have a goal in mind with this that I suspect will keep me going for another year or two!

The lattice work and patterning of the tunnels in winter is similar to the work I do on groups of trees standing stark against the horizon, but come the summer the tunnels take on a completely different identity that is more secretive and magical.  They are leading you on a journey to a special hidden kingdom or perhaps a promised land.

© Still Searching 

Oil on canvas 80 x 80

So I just had a really productive 6 weeks - maybe deadlines help?

© The way the wind blows

Last month I was painting at the dining room table in Dorset because it was too cold out in the studio. I'd covered the table with plastic sheeting, put cardboard under the easel and hoped that oil paint would not get all over the furniture. Hubby was away for 6 weeks, I had two big canvasses on the go for a gallery + two commissions to complete.  All four pieces were very different. I had no other commitments, just the luxury of painting all day. I got up at 6.30 am, walked the dog and started work each morning by 9.30, painting steadily through the day until the light went.  Bliss!

The commissions were a success, the other two paintings have been delivered to the gallery and I am now back in my main studio in France, searching for fresh inspiration.  Looking back it was quite the most productive period I have experienced in the last year and I am wondering whether it was all because the work had a deadline. (Or could it just be that every time I headed out of the door I was surrounded by the countryside I love?  Every time I drove anywhere new ideas presented themselves. Can it be that the muse is so fickle it deserts me when I am not in exactly the right place?)

© Have you seen the others?

I know that for me deadlines do help, I found that when I was illustrating my children's book 'Violet a Very Special Hippo'.  The publisher moved the release date forward and I had a lot of illustrations to produce in a very short space of time.  It focusses the attention somewhat  and  I have found that I often produce better work as a result. I confess, much to my surprise, that I also like commissions, there is something satisfying about fulfilling a brief.  I always provide the caveat that should the client not like what I produce they do not need to buy and perhaps that alleviates the pressure a little.

Hey ho back to the easel - I need to produce some new work!

DORSET ART WEEKS 2012

One of the best ways I know to renew your faith in yourself as a  painter is to take part in an open studio event.  As I have mentioned in previous blogs working in isolation so much of the time, you never know whether what you are doing has any validity or not, hence the holding of breath when you put it out there for others to see for the first time. The open studio event makes exhibiting a very personal experience where you get to see for yourself how people react to your work.

Dorset Art Weeks is one of the largest open studio events in the UK.  With around 1000 artists taking part across the county this year it is a lot for people to get around in the 16 days it is on, but people come from all over the UK and spend a lot of time visiting studios right across the county. This was the fourth time I had taken part and once again it has re-invigorated me and given me a lot of food for thought for the new direction my work has taken over the past 6 months.

I have been exhibiting two very different strands of work - the more traditional mountain paintings that have come about as a result of living and working in the Pyrenees and the lighter hearted composites of life in the countryside in Dorset.  It was what reception these Dorset paintings might have that was the unknown factor that was making me a little nervous but I have been very pleased at the response so far.

You can follow news of my work and new exhibitions on facebook at:
https://www.facebook.com/annietaylorlandscapepainter

SPRING IS SPRUNG! NEW WORK, NEW WEBSITE & NEW FACEBOOK PAGE!

© Once upon a Landscape 100 x 100

Well yes, Spring has definitely sprung in this corner of France. After several months of hard work in the studio I have celebrated with a lovely new website put together for me by Richard Dron at Alchemie in Prades, which is so easy for me to work that it has revolutionised my web experience (http://annie-taylor.com). Then today I started a brand new page on facebook - and no, I haven't created the link here yet - although if you look for Annie Taylor Landscapes you should find me, and now, last but not least I'm getting back to my blog.

For the last few months I have been preparing for an exhibition in Dorset, England, that runs from May 26th for two weeks. It's a huge open studio event which takes place every other year. The preparation has been quite intense, but it has also been a lot of fun.  "What no agonising artistic angst?" do I hear you cry - no, just paintings that make me smile!  I have been having a lovely time painting stories - hence the title of the one above - Once upon a landscape.  These imaginary landscapes, peopled (or even 'sheeped') are based on slightly nostalgic memories and are quite a contrast after a heavy year or two of absorbing the mountains around us here and finding different ways to interpret them. 

I owe thanks in part to the wonderful David Hockney, who really got me going again after quite a long period of creative doldrums.  A particularly good interview on English television about his recent landscape exhibition The Bigger Picture at the Royal Academy in London renewed my interest in the landscapes of my childhood. The exhibition itself, whilst rather overwhelming perhaps in terms of quantity was, for the most part, a celebration of brilliant colour and a permission to interpret that colour in a way that I have not done for some time.

COMING OUT OF HIBERNATION!

 © All is safely gathered in

Oil on canvas 80 x 80

I have been taking a holiday from my blog over the past few months.  I needed to re-think where I was going with my painting. Somewhere along the line I had forgotten how to enjoy myself in the studio and so over the past few months I have been putting so called ‘artistic integrity’ on one side and simply having a good time!

One of the first routes back to this feeling of well being has been a journey of the imagination, conjuring up a character out of my childhood - an English West Country farmer going about his daily work on a big red tractor.  This farmer has now been joined by some sheep and gradually other members of the ‘village’ where he lives are appearing in my paintings.

© Walking the dog

Oil on canvas 80 x 80

It’s all a long way from the mountains I was painting last year, a nostalgic trip and to some extent a marriage between my painting and my children’s illustration work.  I hope what it has done is to create something that has a touch of humour that will reach out to the child in the viewer at a time when we could all do with a little more in our lives to make us smile.

© Burt's sheep

The perils of painting over the top of finished work

I have a big exhibition coming up this month here in France.  That is, it feels big to me, because I seem to have been preparing for it for weeks.  It will be the first time I have had a proper exhibition of my work here and for that reason I suppose it is somewhat more nerve wracking than usual !  Mind you up until a month ago I had been quite laid back about it. Of course, I thought, I had loads of work ready….but needless to say when it came to looking at it again, it wasn’t that simple !

Part of the challenge this time is exhibiting with two other ‘Brits’ who are really very good, begging the question : is my work going to stand up beside theirs ? And so when I got down to getting the work out to see what I was going to exhibit, my heart sank and I was into some knock out rounds once again with my obnoxious internal critic who was naturally having a field day making unhelpful comments like : « huh, call yourself an artist !  Who’s going to look twice at this lot ! etc » 

That’s when things could have got a bit tricky, as I decided that I didn’t have nearly enough work I was remotely happy with and didn’t have time to produce anything new - so it boiled down to that old chestnut : « What can I alter ?» Well, that can be fatal, but many’s the artist who has fallen prey to that particular vice. And no, it doesn’t always work, in fact quite often it is the exact opposite, particularly, if you keep a photographic record of your work and looking back realise that what you had before was actually inifinitely better.

To give you an idea of some of the dramatic changes that have been taking place, the image at the top of this page used to look like this:

 and here's another one that moved from hot to cold:

But perhaps even more extreme, this image from a blog I wrote in March has transformed into something quite different and still niggles me! 

New pastures to refresh the imagination

We just returned from a wonderful road trip down into the very deep south of Spain as far as Cordoba.  Starting out from our home in France, we travelled along the south side of the Pyrenees, almost to Cantabria, along stunning mountain roads. We saw huge Eagles soaring above us and then, as we headed down onto the plains, found storks sitting in their huge, ungainly nests that are perched precariously on top of church towers and electric pylons.

We were travelling in the footsteps of the Moors and the early Sephardic Jewish community, staying in wonderful medieval castles and wandering the streets of old towns like Siguenza, Cuenca and Toledo.  But what left its mark on me more than anything else was the incredibly diverse and majestic countryside we passed through.  From the brilliant colours of La Mancha where the earth is a deep terracotta red contrasting with the vivid green of the spring wheat fields that takes your breath away, to hundreds of acres of regimented olive trees covering every spare inch of land in the countryside of Andalucia just to the South of Cordoba.

 

When we came back I started to draw some very simple little ink impressions that this wonderful trip had imprinted on my memory and from those drawings I have produced a few small canvasses, which condense some of those memories.  Semi abstract and completely different from the large-scale mountain paintings I have been doing since Christmas, these pieces have given me enormous pleasure.  

For me experimenting like this is absolutely vital for refreshing my creative energy. 

Arriving back where I started

‘We shall not cease from exploration/ and the end of all our exploring/ will be to arrive where we started / and know the place for the first time.'

T.S. Eliott Four Quartets

'Seeing the Light' - oil on canvas 90 x 90 (cms) combination of the two styles

So, as you know if you read the last blog, I spent January and February shut away in the studio determined to change the way I paint.  Persuaded by my bossy internal critic that a ‘looser style’ of painting would somehow make my work more ‘valid’, I set out to produce a series of paintings looking at how light affects the mountains. At the same time I challenged myself to work purely from memory of what I see around me here in the mountains.

The work took a long time and went through numerous changes in pursuit of these goals.  I really was not enjoying myself: “so much the better,” said the critic, “art should be a struggle!”.

After 8 weeks, I had completed two paintings.  I stood back and looked at them.  I felt absolutely nothing.  No sense of completion, satisfaction, mission accomplished, simply the reverse.  I did not like this work.  It simply wasn’t ‘me’.

I was very bad tempered for several days!  What a failure, what a hopeless, mediocre painter I was! Then, trawling the internet, I came across the work of Polly Townsend, mountain explorer and artist.  Here was somebody’s work that spoke to me straight away.  Wonderful paintings, full of energy, form, strength, individuality – this was work that I related to, that really inspired me.  Polly’s work has elements of what really fascinates me – the patterns and contours in a landscape.

And so here I am back where I started. I have left one of my ‘misty mountain’ paintings to remind me not to travel too far away from my own style again, but to stay true to the journey I am on, to keep on working at it and see what materializes as time goes by.  The change was too extreme, it was stressful and far too un-familiar. Whilst the creative journey is often scary and difficult, I am convinced that it should at least give you a sense of excitement, and hopefully, from time to time a sense of achievement.  

The Challenge of Change

© Early one morning 90 x 90 Oil on canvas

Psychotherapists and gurus of all persuasions regularly focus on our reluctance to change, even though we claim that we want our lives to be different: happier, better, more fulfilling.  Something isn’t working, change it and you’ll feel better. Sounds easy doesn’t it?

For most of us working as full time artists, I think the challenge of change is fundamental to our development. It seems to me that the constant search for new ways to express ourselves is what makes the journey so exciting, but at the same time, just as changing the pattern of an unsatisfactory life is scary, so too is taking a leap into the unknown in the realms of creativity.

When I started painting full time 6 years ago, I seemed to find a style and voice very quickly, using vibrant colour and focussing on pattern whether in landscape or still life. The work went well, I felt some satisfaction in what I was producing and quite quickly found that I was selling my paintings whenever I exhibited.  Then gradually, the initial interpretation changed, I became more focussed on the quality of the application of the paint and less on creating pretty pictures. 

Recently – as you have seen from my previous blog I put all the work of the last 6 years together in a book.  It seemed to me when I had done it, that somehow I was making a statement: ‘this is the end of an era.  It is where I am now but not where I want to be in the future’

At the same time I warned my followers on facebook that I was going to delete the page.  I wanted to give myself sufficient time to experiment without pressure to show off my work.  I decided I would not exhibit this year I just wanted to paint.  But while change is happening, the world doesn’t stand still and in the ‘sods law’ way of things, no sooner had I set out on this course than I had several invitations to exhibit this year and the facebook page … well, maybe I’ll re-consider!

But in the meantime, I have been working in a very different way, even though that has resulted in chasing paint around the canvas for the past two months. Journeying but never quite arriving!  I have been working from images in my head rather than from drawings or photographs.  I am relying on memories of how the light looks as the dawn comes up on the mountains; trying to keep the brush work loose and focussed without tightening up; restricting the colours on my palette.  At times this is proving a painful experience as the effect I am trying to achieve continues to elude me, but through pursuing this very different approach to my work I hope I will discover something with substance to move me on.

Re-published my Book

Following my last post, I have just found that I could re-publish my book with over double the number of pages for the same price. The preview below shows the first 23 pages:

Patterns in a Landscape by Annie Taylor | Make Your Own Book

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Patterns in a Landscape by Annie Taylor | Make Your Own Book

A New Year in the Studio and Marking a Period of work

Patterns in a Landscape by Annie Taylor | Make Your Own Book

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Patterns in a Landscape by Annie Taylor | Make Your Own Book

Patterns in a Landscape by Annie Taylor | Make Your Own Book

I have put a book together to mark a four year period of work that started in 2006.  In a way I rather hope it will act as a milestone - the end of one phase and the beginning of another.  I have been feeling a need to change, to say more in my work and with the start of the new year, it is on my 'bucket list'!  (Ref: a great film starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman).

In other words, until now I have found it hard to focus on what it is that I want my paintings to 'say' about landscape. Yesterday I was walking with a painter friend high up on a ridge in the mountains near my home surrounded by staggering views in every direction.  We kept stopping just to breathe in the air, to marvel at the vast landscape of rock under the brilliant blue Mediterranean sky and  to listen to the silence that is so special in this part of the world.  We had been talking about what my friend was searching for in her work and it was at that moment that I knew what I had to focus on in mine.

I suppose that subconsciously an artist's voice is already expressing something about their feelings when they paint, however what I am looking for is a way to communicate to others a profound love of the natural world that I have had since childhood.  It feels particularly important today in light of so many environmental challenges that we are all facing, that I make some small contribution by sharing that sense of wonder, peace, stillness or simply sheer joy of being alive that comes from being somewhere wild and beautiful.

I know I haven't captured those elements to my own satisfaction in my work so far, so this year I'm going for it - I'll share the journey with you as I go along.

Bonfire of the vanities: destroying sub standard work

Home Thoughts from Abroad 

oil on canvas 100 x 100

I know an artist who resolutely burns much of her old work.  When I first started out I was very shocked when she told me this, particularly as the pieces she was destroying seemed beautiful to me at that time. Now I understand her actions only too well. 

Recently I visited an old friend who was among the first to buy my work and there was the painting she had bought hanging on the dining room wall.  I cringed - had I really thought that piece was sufficiently good to exhibit and with a relatively high price tag ?  The fact that my friend loves her painting is irrelevant, my pride is at stake !  I can see everything that was wrong with it now and know that my work has improved considerably since those early days.

Most of us who paint are our own harshest critics, never truly satisfied with what we have produced and spurred on by the idea that one day we will paint something ‘really good’!  The trouble is, that producing a piece of work can take days and sometimes weeks for really very little financial reward in view of the hours put in to its creation, so the temptation is to sell those pieces that don’t work at a knock down price in order to have more pennies to put into the materials fund.  But at the end of the day when you come face to face with a piece of sub standard work that you created do you really want your name on that for others to see when you know you can produce something so much better?

I suspect this feeling would apply to several of the great painters in art history.  Leafing through those coffee table books of images I have certainly come across work by the 'greats' of the art world that I know is simply in print because they produced it, but let’s face it, they too were human even if they are considered the gods of the art world – surely they must have had their bad days just like the rest of us?

Unfortunately, the more I paint, the more critical I become, so these days I do have quite a reject pile, but come what may I have decided to start 2011 off with a new tradition.  I am going to destroy my less than good work on the first day of January and take it to the tip for recycling!

Happy Holidays to you all and my thanks for reading these blogs and for your patience as they only emerge when I have something I really feel strongly about.

Deadline - a great cure for procrastination!

Getting back to work when I have been away from the studio for several weeks is a challenge.  I seem to forget how to apply the paint while I have been away and spend hours and sometimes days procrastinating before I actually get down to some serious work.  But when I came back from a recent trip I had to focus instantly as I had a deadline to meet for a gallery I want to work with and a very short turn around to produce some new work for them and for my own Christmas show.

Whilst I have a stock of work that could have been used, I needed something fresh and in a smaller format than usual.  I prepared 3 small canvasses – 40 x 40 and decided to rework another slightly larger canvas that had lost its way during the summer.  The small pieces were relatively straight forward, but it was re-working the larger piece that put me through the hoop.

As I worked at revising it, the painting simply would not come right. Under other circumstances I might have given up, but abandoning it and starting something new was not an option.  It’s funny how you just know when something is going to work, returning to each day there is a feeling of anticipation and energy.While you are working on it, you become increasingly absorbed in the continuing journey. It makes painting the sheer joy it can be.  But like coins this feeling has its reverse and this particular canvas was no exception.

Every morning I went out to the studio with a heavy heart and sure enough found something else that was wrong with it. A sleepless night followed my dear husband’s comment that he didn’t think I was going to resolve it! What was I going to do?  I simply did not have enough work that I felt happy with and the painting I was relying on was defeating me.  But I was determined not to give up!  So, tense though I had now become, I just kept working until one morning I walked back into the studio and realised that it was almost there. 

So what have I concluded from all this about deadlines? Yes, the,luxury of painting for its own sake with no clear exhibition in mind is what a lot of artists crave, but having to paint in order to produce, in order to sell, in order to buy more materials, has provided a tension that can be useful. The painting I am writing about - at the top of this blog - was certainly not one of my best pieces, but it is good enough!

To study or not to study that was the question

I have been following another interesting discussion on Linkedin. The question posed was: ‘Do you need university to be creative’? This is a subject close to my heart at present as I have been wondering whether to apply for an MFA (Master in Fine Art) course at a university in England.

Actually I found the wording of the question rather confusing, after all creativity is surely inherent in an individual to a greater or lesser degree, although it may be that teaching draws it out or develops what is already there. However in spite of my personal nit-picking on this score, it is a question that has attracted a significant number of responses from the group on Linkedin.

I have never been to art college. Apart from a two year period when I was partner in a painting studio and gallery on Long Island, I originally followed a totally different career path in order to earn a living, only recently taking a leap of faith and starting to work full time as an artist just six years ago. Before doing so I was awarded a grant and had an excellent mentor and I have successfully exhibited and sold my work in respected galleries.  As a result of working at it virtually every day, I can see that the work has improved, but I regularly question where I am going with it all and find that I have no real idea how I am going to expand my horizons or bring more depth into what I do. Like many others,  the more I work at it the greater my need to search for validity and self-expression.

So my question is not “Do you need university to be creative” but, as a mature student: Do you need university to understand how to grow as an artist? Or: if you have already found your artistic ‘voice’ does life experience do the same job as university? Is it possible to expand those horizons on your own or do you need to learn how to do it? A university course can break down the creativity the artist already has in order to search for something deeper and whilst this would be a very useful process there is always the danger that it could be a destructive one. Each time you create a piece of art you expose a little of your soul and you certainly put your ego on the line so finding a path back from such an experience could be difficult for some.

I have two months to decide before I put in the application and it makes for an interesting debate.  There is no doubt that a degree opens more doors and a piece of paper with the words MFA after your name is potentially very useful, but I am not sure that real success in this particular field of endeavour has much to do with academic qualification.

In the meantime I am ‘playing’ in the studio, working on images I draw from my imagination rather than those that I adapt from sketches or photographs….a process far harder than simply re-creating what is in front of me. I'll keep you posted! Oh and by the way, thanks to everyone who joins in with their own thoughts on these blogs of mine. Whilst they are only coming out around once a month, they are often the result of a significant amount of soul searching and thought, so your input is really appreciated.

Right brain painting - turning the image I am working from upside down before I start to paint

OK, so I can be pretty difficult to live with, I admit it, especially in the summer when my studio becomes a furnace and I spend too long away from my paints. This summer I have had a very long break, but I finally made it back to the studio a couple of weeks ago.  It takes a great deal of determination. The dog is in a permanent sulk because her walks are shorter in the morning, the house needs cleaning, the washing isn't getting done, the garden is a mess and someone needs to go shopping – but I have persevered and something is beginning to emerge!

It is still too hot by mid day, which is why I am now catching up with blogging, but I have had time to play with two or three new canvasses using three completely different approaches – one of which - an avenue of beech trees is not behaving itself! When I have complicated images like this  to deal with I quite often turn the drawing I am working from upside down.  It’s a very effective trick to play on the brain, it stops me getting too bogged down in the detail and makes me concentrate purely on the shapes rather than what they are.  Sometimes I fold it in half as well and focus on one half of the canvas at a time.  I can be really exciting when the moment comes to turn the canvas up the right way….the bones of the image are there, intact and ready to be worked on and the composition is often much more accurate as a result. 

If you are a painter this technique is worth trying if you are not already familiar with it and I have also found it a useful one when a composition is not working for some reason – it can show you where you are going wrong as can a photograph or just simply leaving the piece to stew for a day or two.  It is one of the methods taught in an excellent book : « Drawing on the right side of the brain » by Betty Edwards – it’s been around a long time, but I still find it very helpful.

The other two paintings at this time have been experimental with the aim to get back to using big brushes and palette knife – like the two I have included with this piece.

Dealing with the heat and YES, size DOES matter!

July here in the South of France has been very hot and for much of the time my studio  has been impossible to paint in during the heat of the day. Not only has it been way too uncomortable for me, but the paint has also been affected - becoming very sticky and difficult to work with, even when using a medium. Working fast in thin glazes may be the solution. I will need to experiment with the medium to get the consistency right and avoid further stickiness. I am going to try mixing the medium with a little pure turps – just as soon as I can get some – not  as easy as it sounds when you live up a mountain !

When it has been too uncomfortable I have abandoned the attempt altogether and spent my time sketching. I’ve been doing quick sketches of people, taking my sketch pad everywhere I go. Last week we took a trip down into Spain and found a restaurant sited just above a beach in a very pretty little cove, ideal for working unobserved - quick pen and ink sketches of all sorts and sizes of people!

But despite the heat and my poor husband's ears battered with my subsequent wingeing I have managed to complete two paintings this month. The one above is fresh off the easel and full of nostalgia for the gentle contours of my native Dorset now I am back in rugged mountain country. It fits the bill for painting smaller, which I vowed I would do following my recent exhibition in the UK. Size DOES matter when you are selling in an environment of  quaint country cottages and at a time when people are watching their pennies.

The second painting completed this month doesn’t fit the small is beautiful bill at all (it is 100 x 100). It is another large canvas in the mountain series. I wanted to paint the peak of the mountain opposite the house now that the snow has gone and when we first got back from the UK, there was still a little left just below the summit which was poking up above the clouds. I haven't quite decided what to do about the sky. I wanted a complete contrast to it's companion painting (on the right below) which I completed at the beginning of the year.

Earlier canvas also 100 x 100

  

Waltzing Around the Easel - or how I perfected the art of procrastination!

I have been out of the studio for 5 weeks and now I'm back and have begun the oh so slow waltz around the easel, telling myself I will get back to the studio 'tomorrow.  It's remarkable, but after a week at home 'tomorrow' has so far not dawned!

You will know if you have been reading my blogs, that I have been exhibiting in Dorset in the UK.  It was an open studio event, with around 350 visitors coming to see my work, some to buy, others just to browse, all with lots of questions, many with their own painting stories to tell: all in all it was pretty tiring and I certainly don't envy the gallery owners who have to do it all the time! As a matter of fact I think I deserve a holiday!

Brilliant, there's another excuse to add to the ever growing list!  The odd thing is that I do have a lot of ideas that have been incubating while I have been away and I was really looking forward to getting going with them, but that means tackling those big blank canvasses. It is an inescapable fact a lot of artists will agree with, that  we are supremely inventive when it comes to perfecting this art of procrastination: the urgent calls to make, the dog to walk, the laundry to do, the TV to dust, the fridge to visit for one last snack....on and on it goes, even after the painting clothes have been put on, the brushes have been put out,  and the canvas is on the easel.

Soon of course I will get so disgusted with myself that I will take myself by the scruff of the neck and frog march me back into the studio and close the door!  Apart from anything else I need to replenish my stock, having sold well and left several canvasses behind to be 'aired' sometime this summer at Courcoux & Courcoux in Stockbridge, Hampshire.

So I will get back to work and this time with renewed determination to control the urge to paint bigger and bigger. The simple fact of the matter is that not many people have the luxury of large wall spaces to fill and an artist has to make a living.  Meanwhile, the image below was a work in progress on the easel when I left - needless to say I can't remember where it was leading me - but it is part of the mountain summit series (which you can see on my website) all of which really just have to be large paintings!

By the way I just finished an interview on another blog which is written by Steve Gray in Australia.  One or two of us on there now - follow the link if you have time.