Yummies

Yummies

(Acrylic and collage on block canvas, 24x30 cm)

Another building portrait of curious Newcastle architecture. I love the disjunction of the cheap and brash modern fascia with the fake medievalism above.

Curleys

Curleys

(Mixed media on canvas panel, 10x12 in)

SOLD

Another portrait of a building on Gateshead High Street, this one sadly scheduled for demolition I understand. The original building dates from around 1800 and the current pub frontage from about 1900. The pub was previously called the Phoenix (from at least 1873) but was commonly known as Curleys after early 20th century licensee Will Curley (who was a boxer) and later officially changed its name.

Since painting this, I've sold it to the grandson of a former landlord of the pub.

 

Fighting Cocks

Fighting Cocks

(acrylic on board, 25 x 25 cm)

A New Year dawns, one in which I fear for the safety and prosperity of my country, so  I wish you, my Regular Reader, the best you wish you yourself. Here's tae us!

Dispiriting though life may occasionally seem, there is always Art to see us through. This is a painting I finished late last year. It reflects my fairly recent interest in what I find is called the Northern School, a style of painting unashamedly derived from that of  L. S. Lowry. I'd rather dismissed it in the past as the "Flat Cap & Whippet School" and I do despair sometimes at the proliferation of paintings of miners going to the pit painted by people who clearly are far too young to remember such things. Ersatz Norman Cornish. 

However, I've always had a liking for the grubbier parts of town and the interesting vernacular architecture of pubs in the area I grew up in. It's not nostalgia: I don't want to go back to the Good Old Days, which really weren't that Good. In the 1980s I took some photographs of old pubs, many of them now either demolished or put to different use, and The Fighting Cocks is one such. It used to be a boozer in Newcastle, but has subsequently been converted to (I think) a design practice, with a glass extension added to the end wall.

I really like the grand frontage and thought I could make a successful picture out of it, as I did with The Portland and, to a lesser extent, Burton House. In the past, I would never have included figures, but as I grow older, my memory starts to fill these scenes with archetypes and it seems only right to put them in my pictures.

Foliate Head

Foliate Head (Fired clay)

I've always been fascinated by the Green Man. Carvings depicting the Green Man are usually referred to as foliate heads and are common in medieval architecture, especially churches, despite the image's pagan origins. 

This interest was rekindled recently when I found that foliate heads are something of an obsession with Clive Hicks-Jenkins on his Artlog and that there are one or two more on Phil Cooper's hedgecrows.

A little over twenty years ago I spent the day at Newcastle University doing a clay sculpture workshop with their sculpture technician. At the end of the day I had some clay left over and decided to make something quickly. Working quite intuitively, I found this foliate head growing under my fingers.

Unfortunately, one of the head's leafy "ears" broke off in the firing and is now, if not lost, mislaid. What you can see below is a repair using Photoshop, to give you an idea of what it ought to look like. 

One day, I'll colour it. Green, of course.

West End Fish

West End Fish (Oil on canvas, 30 x 30 cms)

One of the things I like about painting buildings in towns and cities is the opportunity it provides to celebrate the ordinary, the overlooked. I like to think that, without my painting, this building in Edinburgh on the corner of Queensferry Street and Charlotte Lane, would go largely unnoticed and uncelebrated.

Despite the busy traffic and pedestrians hurrying everywhere, the building's curves and cupola caught my eye and I knew I could do something with it. And I have.

I'm very pleased to report that after my tour of the galleries in and around Dundas Street, I was contacted by the Di Rollo Gallery and asked if I'd be interested in showing work with them during this year's Festival. You can probably guess what my answer was, especially in view of today's painting.

Back Porch Rebuilt

It may be architecturally unimpressive, but I'm delighted with my new porch.

When the winds blew in across the Valley from the north, it terrified me to go outside and down the stairs to my studio, all the time listening to the glass in the porch windows shake and rattle. I was convinced that one day the glass would shatter and take off my head. OK, I admit I watch too many slasher horror movies, but the thought persisted.

So it was a great relief to have Alan the Joiner come along, take out the old frames and insert some sturdy new ones. Not actually an easy task single-handed, given that above the wooden frames are three courses of brick and a flat roof, but he solved the problem by holding up the bricks and roof with some Acro Props.

All of which is by way of explaining why, yet again, I've managed to get no work done. As Alan was working on the porch, I couldn't get out to the stairs to the studio.