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.