Comments Book

The Free Trade Inn (Oil on canvas, 16 x 16 ins)
SOLD

Northumberland Fells (Oil on canvas, 12 x 12 ins)
SOLD

Today my paintings came back from my solo show at the Arts Centre in Newcastle - minus these two, which happily have sold..

Yesterday I collected the Comments Book from the gallery and, if you can forgive me a little self-indulgence, I thought I might share some of the comments here.

Your hedges and walls make me want to go out and look for myself. Your vision of Newcastle is optimistic if not romantic. Good luck with this exhibition. - Paul

Really like the 'city scapes' and the differing view points. - Liz Atkins

What a wonderful exhibition. So much detail and colour, with even some "blue skies". Keep up the good work. Wishing you all the best, - Ann Elliott

Thank you Harry! I liked 'The Free Trade Inn' when I saw it on your blog, while researching Newcastle for an English class I teach. How wonderful now I finally visit, to find a whole exhibition of your strong shapes and colours and Norh East visions. I've just slept 2 nights in Sandhill and agree the roofs are full of pictures. Keep the art coming! - Sally (Holman) Johnson, London E17

Really liked the rich use of paint - my favourite, 'Wooden Spiral', reminiscent of Carel Weight's surreal atmosphere. - Joy Barsby

Love the oaks and hedgerows; the textures and colours are inspiring. - JGriffiths

Love the way you capture the feel of Newcastle. No.16, 'View from the Keep' somehow suggests the proximity of the sea. So glad I saw your works. - P Johnston, Berwick upon Tweed.

These are wonderful. Redolent of Edward Hopper without being remotely derivative and they are most certainly *not* illustrative. - Chandra Sankarayya

I'd like to thank all those who took the time to leave such generous comments in the Comments Book (and they were all positive) and those others who complimented me in person.

Auchterarder Hedgerow No.1

Auchterarder Hedgerow No.1 (Oil on canvas, 61 x 61 cms)

Auchterarder Hedgerow No.2

Auchterarder Hedgerow No.2 (Oil on canvas, 61 x 61 cms)

I'd rather have taken my time finishing this off, but the images were needed by the gallery today, so ....

Still, I think I'm satisfied with this and the companion piece. If not, I can tinker next week before I hand them in.

Hedgerows again

Hedgerow No.1 ((work in progress)


Hedgerow No 2 (work in progress)

I'm still feeling my way with these, but I'm happy with the progress so far. Not a lot more to do, actually, unless I make some major mistakes.

Sutherland Through the Hedge

Hedgerow No.1 (Work in progress)

Last night I set about quickly adding an horizon and a blue sky to the first of the Hedgerow paintings. Reviewing the result this morning, I realised how much my love of Graham Sutherland was becoming evident in this painting. There was no conscious decision to make that happen, but I can see it's there, I have no problem with it and in fact I was quite pleased when the influence was immediately commented upon at today's meeting of the Painters' Group.

The meeting was interesting in that I felt my work wasn't universally liked but that reinforced a renewed determination to plough my own furrow. I generally do that anyway, but in the last few years I think I may have drifted into market-driven thought patterns for understandable but unhelpful reasons.

A Picture with All the Trimmings

Cretan New Town (second pass)

This painting is turning into something of an adventure for me. The colour is much hotter at the moment than I would normally use, and there are odd things going on in the buildings themselves.

The people of the town have taken down their simple old church and erected something much grander, high on the hill above the harbour. A cypress has shot up alongside it. The blue and green yacht that was moored in front of the big pink wall has sailed off and the harbour is quiet.

I'll be interested to see what happens when next I go there.

Meanwhile, it's not only the New Town which was hot today. Gateshead basked in delightful June sunshine and I took the opportunity to tidy up the garden a bit.

Last year I borrowed the hedge trimmer belonging to John TwoDoorsDown. It was kind of him, I thought, and even kinder of him to remind me to beware of cutting through the cable. Suffice it to say, however, his caveat fell on ears of purest cloth.

I cut through the cable.

After that, things in the hedge department of Stately Zip Mansion have got out of hand. First of all, the hedge between here and Bob Eh's place has just about died. I suspect it suffered from tarry fumes when I had the garage roof re-felted and since then it's struggled to produce a handful of leaves at one end. The rest is brown and withered. Mind you, it doesn't seem to have affected the local blackbird who sits in it singing and pretends that he can't be seen.

Worse than that hedge is the way ivy and berberis are slowly consuming the garden wall and until today were creeping out across the pavement. I noticed the Council Man who drove round the other day on his little electric scooter, spraying perfunctorily at the weeds in the pavement, had to give my ivy a wide berth. I think I saw it twitch towards him as he sailed by.

Finally, the hedge between Stately Zip Mansion and that of Lucy Smooth has become a definite embarrassment. It's another berberis, I think, of an attractive pale gold and Lucy Smooth often says how much she likes it, especially when she flexes her elderly arms with her little clippers and tries to get it under control.

I'd have done something with that one, if no other, but for the first time blackbirds decided to build their marital nest in it. There was much toing and froing for quite some time, but whether there were any progeny I'm not sure. I suspect if there were, they emerged while I was in the Lakes.

Anyway, the blackbird presence meant that the trimming of the hedge had to be delayed.

Last week I invested in a hedge trimmer of my own. A cordless. No fool me. And today it worked like a dream. Every hedge in sight, including the Lucy Smooth side of the pale gold berberis, got the hedge trimming treatment. I even used it to cut down the thistles I found lurking under the banks of ivy.

I think I feel how the Pilgrim Fathers must have felt, after they'd cleared the forest and planted beans and corn and whatever and piled all the leafy cuttings into their big green wheelie bin. Ready for a big juicy steak, sliced from the rear of a bear or something.

I'm not actually looking forward to my lemon sole and broccoli.