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.

Night Station 2

Night Station 2 (oil on canvas, 18 x 24 ins.)

One done, one still under construction:


By the Tracks (work in progress)

Back to a Winter Frame of Mind

By the Tracks (work in progress)

Agonising over what to do for the upcoming Xmas show has held me up considerably in the last few weeks. Yesterday I decided to spend some time stacking paintings that have accumulated round the studio, but as I did so, I came across a painting I started for the show at Red Box last year. I ran out of time to finish it for that exhibition and was eventually unsure whether or not to abandon it altogether and paint over it.

I suddenly realised that, by taking a different approach to it, I might turn it into a valid Winter painting. A couple of hours later I felt that my optimism for the painting (and by association for the Xmas show) had returned.

Old Drawings #59

Small Lemba Drawing (Charcoal on cartridge paper)

Despite my reservations about the first trip to Cyprus, I returned to Paphos in 2000. I still didn't like it much, but a visit to the Cyprus College of Art at Lemba did pique my interest.

For some years the students at the College had been building and adding to a strange wall round the edge of the yard. Made of concrete, wire, bottles and general junk, it was a fascinating structure and it led me to produce some drawings. This was the first.

My interest was such that I immediately made this painting from the drawing. As was always the case at Uni, no one expressed any interest in either the painting or the drawing and I came to believe that it was in some way wrong.

Looking at it now, I realise that it was, as I secretly suspected then, an interesting direction I could have taken. Another nail in the coffin of my University course.



Organic Form, Lemba (Oil on blockboard, 21 x 22 ins)

Star Gazing

A rare return to a cartoon for Ilustration Friday. It was drawn with a fine point marker and coloured in Photoshop, for the set theme, Star Gazing.

It comes at a time when the Perseid meteor showers have been shooting through the earth's atmosphere. As usual, the clouds moved in after sunset in the north east to ensure the display was hidden. Perhaps they're only available on pay-per-view.

Courtyard with Watermelon

Courtyard with Watermelon
(Oil on board, dimensions unknown) Private Collection

In this time of painterly inactivity, I've been doing useful things, like sorting through photographs and ephemera. As a result, I've begun to find images of paintings I sold before I could photograph them. It's quite a pleasant surprise to be reminded of long-lost "masterpieces."

I recovered this image from a poster for my solo exhibition, Aphrodite's Island (Gallagher & Turner Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2000). Before I went to Cyprus for the first time, I'd promised to put on a show of paintings based on that trip, but the making of suitable pictures proved a nightmare. I didn't much care for the part of Cyprus I was in (we were staying just outside Paphos): it was dry and dusty, and given over to not very inspiring agriculture, so my source of imagery was very limited.

This picture ran aground when I found I had a painting of two doors in a not-very-interesting empty courtyard and not much else. For a while it sat in a corner of the studio and glared until something suggested itself to me. I had a small drawing (now lost) of a slice of watermelon which I realised made an inverted echo of the rounded arches of the doorways.

When I'd added the watermelon to the painting, it became one of my favourites in the show; it went onto the poster and sold at the preview.

Old Drawings #58

Collapsed Ceiling 2 (charcoal and pastel, A1 cartridge paper)

This drawing is so like the previous one that it seems daft to wait a while before posting it. Even now I'm surprised by how similar the two are.

I don't often follow up a charcoal drawing with one in pastel of the same subject, but this time I was trying to work out whether I wanted to make painting of it. I never did make up my mind and the painting didn't get made.

Old Drawings #57

Collapsed Ceiling, Cyprus
(charcoal, compressed charcoal, A1 cartridge paper)

The last Old Drawing I posted was of a building I found in Cyprus with a collapsed ceiling. This is the same building, the same collapsed ceiling. The huge slabs of concrete were still attached by the reinforcing rods and swayed slightly in the wind.

Coincidentally, in that post I mentioned that I was having problems with my left eye. It's turned out that I have ocular hypertension in that eye. Luckily, there's been no damage done so far and I'm now on a course of drops whose potential side effects are too horrible to mention.

This may account for my less than full time attention to painting at the moment.

Nest Forms

Nest Forms (etching, 12.5 x 21 cms)

Another week without painting. In a spirit of a glass half full, let's call it a period of retrenchment and reconsideration, rather than a block.

Some time ago I made myself a promise to have framed a small collection of prints I made at University. The actual framing has taken much longer than anticipated, but yesterday I collected them from Gallagher & Turner, the framers who've framed almost all of my work since I began to get serious about it.

This etching has always been a favourite of mine. It shows the influence of Graham Sutherland, I think, which is unsurprising given that I was about to write my dissertation on his Pembrokeshire landscapes. It was based on some drawings I did in what was then the Hancock Museum but which has now become part of the Great North Museum:.

Here's a relevant page from my sketchbook;


Bird objects (Rotring Art Pen in A4 sketchbook)

Guest Blog

It's been a busy time, with last weekend taken up with Pat's Mum's 90th birthday. I was going to write something about it, but then thought Pat could do it just as well, if not better:



My last week has been taken up helping my Mum celebrate her 90th. She has been high as a kite all week and has thoroughly enjoyed being the centre of attention.

Saturday was the actual birthday and we all, (Harry & I, my sons and partners, my brother and his wife, their sons, partners and daughter, 15 altogether) had a slap up lunch at Headlam Hall.

Headlam Hall

She had a (real) birthday cake, (plastic) tiara and magenta feather boa which she wore with aplomb.


Tiara and a Boa

Luckily the weather was fine and we could move out into the gardens afterwards and take loads of photographs. She was thrilled to have all her family around her, all getting on with each other and looking so happy.

We left her on Sunday surrounded by flowers and plants, and every inch of space covered in cards.

I was back on Tuesday for Wednesday's buffet lunch party at the local pub for some other family members, friends and neighbours. She still didn't flag, but moved around from table to table talking to everyone, then out in the garden for more photographs.

She now has more presents than she knows what to do with, enough plants and flowers to open her own shop and over fifty cards. She also has a whole new lease of life. On Wednesday she announced that she would see everyone again in ten years time, and I suspect she could be right.

-- Pat Mailer

Bands of Colour

Orange House (work in progress)

As Casey Klahn pointed out in his comment on Black Ship and Mosque, Chania, there's a certain attraction in compositions that consist of relatively simple bands of blue sandwiching a band of coloured complexity. At least, I think they're attractive and I'm pleased at least one other person sees it that way.

I find the concept so interesting that I've been looking for further examples of it to work through and for variations on the theme. This is a variation in that the sandwiching has been turned on its side and there are now vertical bands of wall sandwiching the main subject of the painting, the Orange House. Although it may be less obvious, the recently started painting Archway, is also derived from this thinking. Development of the painting may make it more obvious in due course.

In the case of these paintings, of course, the walls are not quite as featureless as the bands of sea in the earlier pictures, but it's not impossible that further paintings on this theme might produce plainer walls. Oh, a painter's life can be so exciting in its possibilities ....

Sunset

I'm always a little restless when I'm finishing off my tax accounts. I don't like doing them and would rather be painting, but generally I end up fiddling with both and feeling ... well, restless.

So it was today that I made some small progress with the accounts and then some smaller progress with a painting that may yet work out, but not until I can give it my full attention.

Coming up from the studio, I slumped into my chair in the living room bay window and looked out at the setting sun. It's at times like this that I sometimes wonder why we try to make paintings. They certainly can't compete with what gets painted in the sky every evening.

Sunlit Wall. No Bagpipes.

Archway (work in progress)

Those bagpipes I hear must be still some way off, because this is definitely somewhere more exotic. I hasten to add that at this point I'm not prepared to enter into a discussion of the value judgement inherent in my suggestion that Scotland is not exotic.

I enjoyed working this over an old painting I'd decided would never make it to completion. The texture and colours of the old painting were really good to paint on. I worked quite fast and used what paint was still on the palettefrom the last session. As a consequence there's some greying of the colour (especially the greens) which will need to be dealt with when I cone back to it, but overall I like the effect of a sunlit wall seen through an archway.

Black Ship leaving Harbour

Black Ship leaving Harbour (oil on canvas, 9 x 12 ins)

This Black Ship has proven to be very useful. However, I think I may have exhausted its possibilities for now and will have to start looking elsewhere. I think I hear bagpipes ....

Black Ship and Mosque, Chania

Black Ship and Mosque, Chania (oil on canvas, 12 x 12 ins)

One of the " one or two other things" I was "getting on with" got finished today. The two Black Ship paintings look good together and it's not immediately obvious that one is 30 x 30 cms and the other is 12 x 12 ins. It is immediately obvious, however, when I try to put them both into 30 x 30 cm frames. Bummer.


Black Ship at Chania (oil on canvas, 30 x 30 cms)

Frustration and a Fish

Chania Harbour (work in progress)

It's been a week of frustration, mostly. The latest "winter" painting is misbehaving and progress, such as it is, has been of the two steps forward, one step back sort. The painting is in a state I don't care to show at the moment, some painting out having been necessary, but once I've re-established it, I'll let you see where I am with it.

Meanwhile, I've been getting on with one or two other things, including some work at the Club today on this small picture of Chania Harbour. The light in it is peculiar and I wonder where it came from. Somewhere within the picture itself, I guess, because it wasn't in the original scene.

I came away relieved of some of my frustration and carrying a fish - Roly has been in the trout streams again and although he catches them, he doesn't like to eat them.

Hot and Solitary

Chania (work in progress)

Well, it was another gloriously sunny day today, so what better idea than to make my way to the Club and paint amongst my fellow painters? Of course, the studio being so hot, everybody (by which I mean all two of them) had gone home by the time I got there.

Having taken along a fresh small canvas, I figured I might as well get something done, so spent the next couple of hours laying out yet another view of part of the harbour at Chania, while muttering aloud to myself and wiping the sweat from my brow. Who are these people who say painting must be fun?

Hickery Dickery Dare

Fibretip and coloured pencil in A6 accordion fold Moleskine.

Hickery, dickery, dare,
The pig flew up in the air,
But Patrick Brown
Soon brought him down,
Hickery, dickery, dare.

Sometimes a change really is as good as a rest. I recently agreed to help out Michael Nightmare with his Piggy Moly which he'd retrieved from a moribund group of Moly Xers. When it arrived from Lynne Lamb a few days ago, I found the chance to do something that didn't involve painting very attractive, so tonight I set to and finished my contribution.

The nursery rhyme I found in Cole's Funny Picture Book, a treasure from my childhood. and I decided to make my pig a superhero. The evil Patrick Brown, his arch-nemesis, is yet to appear on the scene.

Grey Day

Turnbull Winter (work in progress)

One of the hardest things about this painting is that I need to grey down most of the colours to make the seasonal light look right. This is particularly difficult with red because to do the greying down you really need to add green and as I've indicated before, my eyesight is red/green deficient. The Turnbull Building is proving resistant to the right amount of greying, but it seems to have worked okay for me in the building at the bottom right.

Ah well, who wants to be able to get a painting right in a day anyway?

Winter Again

Turnbull Winter (work in progress)

It's been a funny old week, with some tests for an ongoing eye problem which I won't go into here. I used what was left of the week to catch up with the guys at the Club, but did no work there. However, I made a start today on another possible Winter painting.

This is a view across the Tyne from Gateshead to the Newcastle shore, with the Turnbull Building on the crest of the river bank. It's unusual for me in that it's a low viewpoint. Normally I go for something high above the subject because it enables me to flatten things out and emphasise the abstract pattern. Nevertheless, I rather like this current approach as it allows me to work with horizontal banding again.

It's a reasonably large picture (36 x 36 ins) and those big areas of flat colour take some filling. But they should prove interesting as new layers are applied and the colour becomes, I hope, more complex and subtle.

Grey's Monument

Grey's Monument ( oil on canvas, 20 x 20 ins)

I thought it was time I put the finishing touches to this painting. I last worked on it over three years ago, but I got distracted with other projects and enthusiasm for it waned. Ridiculous, really, but that's how the mood takes me sometimes. Had there been a need to finish it, I'd have done so in a very short time - less than an hour.

Anyway, here it is finished after all, one more to add to the collection in the back of the studio.

Rugs & Icons

Rugs & Icons (oil on canvas, 40 x 40 cms)

Working on the Shops & Stalls series gave me a greater insight into what it was I wanted from this subject so, although Rugs & Icons was the first of its type, I found I wanted to make some alterations to draw it into closer alignment with its children.

As a consequence, I've brightened up the colours of some of the rugs and taken down the colour of the walls round the shop. The blind has been made more substantial. I think now I'd be happier to show this with the later additions to the series.

Return to Kastela

Kastela Restaurant (work in progress)

I'm very fond of the work of Lionel Bulmer and that of his wife, Margaret Green and some of Bulmer's pointillist techniques seem to have come unbidden to my mind when I started again on this painting of a restaurant-on-stilts in Kastela, Croatia.

It's odd the way a painting can demand something different from you, but giving in to the demand often turns out to be so rewarding. I'm looking forward to seeing where this picture may yet take me.

Rooms & Mannequins

Rooms & Mannequins (oil on canvas, 40 x 40 cms)

Another in the Shops & Stalls series brought to completion. I think they look good lined up together and now I have only to finish the slight reworking of Rugs & Icons, the painting that started me on this theme.

Open the Gate Again

The Gate (work in progress)

This painting has been languishing in the studio for some time now. I last worked on it in 2008 and it just didn't seem to be going right. But today I pulled it out of the rack and had another go at it. I've simplified the composition and taken the colour down somewhat, which I think suits Newcastle better, but there's still some way to go before I'll be satisfied with it.

Another Black Ship

Black Ship and Mosque (work in progress)

I thought I'd get the day off to a good start today by laying out this new small picture of the black ship in Chania harbour, the disused mosque in the background.

Sometimes I'm really surprised when the first layers of colour turn out to be as vivid as these, because it's not something I generally do deliberately. Colour is something I think about when the composition is established, but maybe my constant colour thoughts are coming to the fore more than they once did.

Two Toothbrushes

Two Toothbrushes (2B mechanical pencil, A5 sketchbook)

Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head ....

and then I drew this. Something about it caught my eye and I just had to get it down on paper. This doesn't happen often, unfortunately, but I've been looking at the blogs of Michael Nobbs and Jay Mercado recently, and something of their enthusiasm for drawing must have rubbed off on me. Whatever the reason, it felt worth going with the flow.

And then into town. Into the drizzly-grey-raininess of Newcastle. Please someone tell me that this isn't going to be another of those awful summers! Don't let me find by the end of the year that summer was that nice week I had in the Dales in April.

It was all worth it anyway. I was there to lend my expert opinion on the purchase of an outfit for Pat's son's wedding in September (by which time, we hope, the summer really will be here). The expedition was a success and Pat will look fantastic in her emerald green. Now I have the far more arduous task of finding just the right tie....

Six Years

Waste Pipe (2B automatic pencil, 6 x 4 sketchbook)

Another Boogie Street anniversary slipped by without my noticing. On the 15th April, the six anniversary of my first post came and went.

A little googling shows that the traditional gift for a sixth anniversary is something made of iron, so I thought I'd trawl through my sketchbooks for something suitable. Quite a lot of things made of steel, but the only subject definitely of iron is this cast iron waste pipe. Drawn in a break from office life, it evidently took me away from my duties for 20 minutes, yet another example of public spending waste.

The subject should not in any respect be taken as a comment on the blog, however. I still find it fun to post things here and it often serves as a stimulus to get some painting done to show you. But not today it seems.

Breakfast & T-Shirts

Breakfast & T-Shirts (oil on canvas, 40 x 40 cms)

This one has just been waiting for me to finish off the top and tickle one or two areas round the clothing. It's all done now and I'm an increasingly happy man.

Paintings & Prints

Paintings & Prints (oil on canvas, 40 x 40 cms)

Pushing the painting style dilemma to the back of my mind, I had a good day today, pressing on with this painting in the Shops & Stalls series and finishing it. I feel this series is going well and my initial enthusiasm for it has had a resurgence.

Not to be defeated with the Winter painting, however, I've done a little more to the Night Station 2 picture. I know it looks as if I've depicted the mouth of hell but have patience. It'll come right in the end.


Night Station 2 (work in progress)