All At Sea

We've been on holiday to the seaside this week  and of course, I took my sketching gear with me. The sun was hot and the sea was blue (we were only on the Margate - Hastings coastline) and I decided to stand in the sea and make some direct observation studies of waves crashing against the shoreline. This was to inform my latest painting 'When The Boats Come In'. Unfortunately, it was very windy (not everything can be perfect) and some leaflets I had stowed away in my sketchbook blew into the sea. Previously we had visited the new Turner Contemporary gallery in Margate, so maybe I had been inspired by Turner, who was lashed to the mast so that he could paint and experience rough seas.
During our meander along the shoreline afterwards, we ventured across a slightly rocky part and Hazel lost her footing. She keeled over and the towel and camera fell  into the water and my hat blew into the sea as I tried to steady her. Everything dried out eventually though.
 

Watching Paint Dry

Many apologises! I hadn't realised just how boring the short video clip of me demonstrating oil painting at Tindalls was, until I saw it on my NEWS AND REVIEWS page. To add insult to injury, the long panning shot around the shop which showed that no one was there, makes it look even  sadder. Annoyingly, I was quite busy over the day and talked to lots of people, it's just that at that moment the place was empty. I was feeling a bit flustered at that point, as it seemed my painting of rough seas was all going wrong, so I forgot to say to Ben (who was kindly shooting the film) to hang on until there was a few people around. Anyway, in a few days time you should be able to see a shortened version on the website and Daniel will also be adding the latest stages of the painting
'If The Boats Come In' so you can see what progress I have made since that disastrous day.
 My painting 'Love That Dares' is now finished and has been moved onto the ART LECTURE page and the two latest newspaper stories will also be added to the reviews section.

Morris- Dancing

Last weekend I went round and round the Maltings roundabout for charity. Readers of my blog will know that I will do anything (well almost!) to promote Ted Coney's Family Portraits but I also made about £50 for local charities. I took my 1931 Morris Minor to Aquafest and gave people rides for a donation and even had a lady with a red flag leading the way. Ofcourse the Morris is the star attraction when visitors come to my gallery, as it appears in many of the paintings.  I have made work using the car for every decade so far, from it's 50th birthday to it's 80th and I even have a vague idea for the 90th in eight years time. But more on that, a bit closer to the event.
As I hadn't driven the car for a while, I took my old friend Joe, for a ride in it to Littleport, which is about three miles away, as a practise. Joe used to travel in the Morris some 50 years ago when we were students. Only this time, he felt car sick and I had to stop because my leg had gone to sleep.

Demo On The Square

Last Saturday, I did my day long demonstration of oil painting at Tindalls, which is an art shop on Ely's Market Square. I set up my two new canvases, which make up my current painting 'If The Boats Come ' on easels and displayed all my preliminary studies and other source material on a table in front of me. My plan was to work on the calm water first and the rough seas later. Painting the calm water went relatively smoothly (forgive the pun) as I was just laying in very transparent colour. I had felt pretty confident that the rough sea bit would go well, as I had done some practise beforehand. However, halfway through I suddenly realised it looked a mess and had to spend the rest of the time fighting to get it back into some reasonable state. The only good thing was that maybe, visitors realised that painting is more than someone demonstrating a clever technique. I talked to about 20 people over the day about oil painting, the ideas behind my work AND Ted Coney's Family Portraits if they seemed really interested. You should be able to see me wrestling the painting from the brink in a short video on my website, when Daniel returns from America, next week.