Pension Kastelli

Pension Kastelli (Oil on canvas, 12 x 12 in) Private Collection

I painted this after our last trip to Crete and gave it to Pat as a Xmas present. It's a picture of Pension Kastelli, the place we stayed in in Chania and I'm posting it now because we're going back again!

Last year I was so dogged with poor health that there never seemed a time when a holiday would have been enjoyable. Things in the eye department have settled down now and we think a trip abroad to see the Spring flowers on Crete in May is just what the doctor ordered.

We decided on this almost immediately after seeing the John Craxton Retrospective at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. Although he always rejected the label of Neo-Romantic, John Craxton was certainly influenced by the 19th century sources of that movement, William Blake and Samuel Palmer, as well as Picasso's Cubism and spent some time with Graham Sutherland in Pembrokeshire.

However, it was his discovery of the idyllic landscapes of Poros, Hydra and Crete that opened the way to paintings of breathtaking shimmering light with a fascinating technique using coloured lines "to explain the play of light on contours."

John Craxton: Landscape, Hydra (Tempera on canvas)

Of all the paintings in the show, I think it was the one showing asphodels that decided it for us - asphodels are always dead and shrivelled in September when we normally go on holiday: 

John Craxton: Reclining figure with asphodels.

Tram with Prickly Pear (Soller)

Tram with Prickly Pear (Soller) (Oil on canvas, 24 x 24 ins.)

And there it is. When I stopped working last night I thought I would have to do just a little more today, but I find I'm satisfied with it the way it is.

Prickly Too

Tram and Cactus (work in progress)

More work done on the cactus, a really enjoyable task. There's such a great opportunity to find colour within the overall greenness of the plant.

Next: development of the tram passengers and adjustment of the windows which seem to have become differently sized.

Prickly

Tram and Cactus (work in progress)

Although I'm making some tentative, slow progress towards a new, or at least different direction, nothing seems good enough to post right now.

What is occupying me at the moment is this new painting. Although I intend to show older work - the Vaporetto and Tram series - in the upcoming XIV show, I thought I should make the effort to submit at least one new painting. This is an image I made from a photograph of one of the trams of Soller together with one of the local prickly pear cactus.

I started it on Friday night and painted more on Saturday afternoon. Too wet to work on it today, but I think it's going to be finished in time for handing in next Friday. And I think it has the potential to be a good one, but then I'm biased.

Auchterarder: 3rd Day

Plant Stalks, Shinafoot (Pilot disposable fountain pen, sketchbook)

I've been checking out the quarry but so far haven't found what I think I'm looking for. In particular, there's no special motif I'd like to spend some time exploring, although there are probably rock forms that might repay looking at again. Today, however, I drew these plant stalks in the garden.

Old Drawings #23

Yucca (21 x 16.5 ins., charcoal and pastel on cartridge paper)

Following on from that agave, I thought this might be an appropriate time to post this drawing, done in 1996. The yucca is sitting in the window of my parents' flat on Allerdene Estate in Gateshead. Through the window can be seen a bit of the estate and part of the Silver Hills.

Exploring Mallorca: Agave 3

(Watercolour, Pilot disposable fountain pen, A5 sketchbook)

This weather really does get me down. No snow today, but some heavy rain and even heavier skies. All of which makes for a less than agreeable creative mood.

On hearing that the Club was likely to be deserted today, I gave it a miss again and worked on this sketchbook watercolour of another agave plant. Although it's rather dark, it brought memories of at least a bit of Mediterranean sunshine.

Hailstones and Blossom

Outside the sky has turned darkest grey and for the first time that I can recall, we're having thunder and hailstones. Inside, I'm warm and surrounded by the scent of grapefruit blossom.

Thirty years ago I picked up a pip from the office floor and pushed it into one of my plant pots. The resident plant - a miniature rose, I believe - died from an infestation of red spider mite, but the pip, to my surprise, started to grow. I wasn't certain what it was, but as one of my staff used to eat a grapefruit every day, the odds were that it was a grapefruit tree I was nurturing.

A year later it seemed like I'd lost it when something attacked the stem and the main growth tip died, but it rallied and sent out a side shoot. Eventually, even that gave way to a reinvigorated main stem that shot away from the top.

Re-potting the tree several times, I found a way of moving it whenever I changed offices, and when I left the Civil Service in 1997, I brought it home with me, giving it pride of place in the bay window.

I learned that it didn't like tap water and that the best way of keeping it healthy was to let it dry out to the point of seeing the leaves droop and some even fall, then give it a good soaking with rainwater. A few days ago, it repaid me for the first time in thirty years by putting on a small display of three clusters of white blossom. The scent is startling and even those few clusters, now that they're open, are filling the room with it.

Xmas is rolling round again, as I expect you've possibly noticed. I stopped putting up an "official" Xmas tree about six years ago, but a few days before Xmas Day, I usually dress the grapefruit tree in tinsel and fairy lights. This year, I think it deserves an extra star.

Exploring Mallorca: Swiss Cheese Plant

Swiss Cheese Plant (pigment liner, A5 sketchbook)
[mis-dated: should read 4 Nov. 2008]

Escaping from a thunderstorm, we found shelter in the Banys Arabs (the Arab Baths) in Palma. When it had passed, and before it returned, we had a chance to wander round the lovely garden outside the bath house. This was one of several flowering monsteras there - another wonderfully architectural plant!. It would have been really great to have been able to sit and draw in the garden but the weather, and time, was against me.

Exploring Mallorca: Agave

Agave (4B pencil, A5 sketchbook)

Structure. That's what I like to draw: things with structure. Nothing lost in the haze, nothing vague and indistinct. Something tangible, something I can feel my way around as I draw it.

Even though this is from a photograph, I could get a sense of its volume as I drew it. It's obvious I'll never settle for an arrangement of flat shapes on a flat surface. I am intensely interested in the shape the subject makes on the page, but not enough to want to lose the modeling, the shading that gives it form.

I think there'll be more of these plants. I like them a lot. How about you? Do they make you want to draw them, or are you more inclined to lose them in the mist?