A GOOD DAYS WORK?

Day 5 or Day 4 plus one hour?. I am afraid concentration levels were quite low today and I have identified a consistent pattern in my attitude. When I am almost finished I start to lose interest, and its because there are no dramatic changes or surprises. Although a weak effort, the hour did improve it and has justified this post. One thing I am starting to take more interest in is the ‘abstract’ mark making that suggests forms without illustrating them. I have noticed this in the last 2 paintings. Francis Bacon often talked about this and to paraphrase it goes something like,’ delivering the sensation without the boredom of illustration’, Well worth exploring.

Cartington. Day 5

DON'T STOP

I wish I had an unlimited physical and mental capacity to keep going until a painting is finished. There comes a point in the painting when almost every decision is the right decision, and even a wrong decision turns out to be a stroke of good luck later on. I suppose there must be prescription medication suitable for the ambitious painter, it might be worth the risk?. This painting has now moved on when it seemed in danger of becoming stuck. I would like to of kept going today but there could be several hours to go, who knows.

Cartington. Day 4

THE SWISS ALPS

I’m not sure any of the locals would recognise my paintings of the Northumberland landscape. There are plenty of clues in the pictures but my use of artist license is lavish. No one wants to hear a boring story, and its the same with painting, anyone who paints a picture straight is missing out on the adventure. My aim today was to get rid of the white underpainting, what has emerged is quite interesting. Most of the forms are in place and don’t need a lot of work, the painting is nearing completion.

Cartington. Day 3

EVERY NEIGHBOUR IN THE COUNTRYSIDE

has a chainsaw. Its the only thing that disturbs the peace, and today my neighbour decided it was a good day to do some sawing. Against my better judgement I continued painting but it was a real slog, even wearing headphones. Eventually the noise stopped and with a headache I began to do some decent painting. I am glad I persevered. I look at this painting and it looks so bizarre in terms of the landscape and how the trees are laid out but that is how it is. Sometimes when you spend a long time looking you see how strange the landscape, and nature really are.

Cartington. Day 2

THE INHABITED LANDSCAPE

Even in the remotest areas of Northumberland there are often signs of human habitation, houses, farms, barns etc, and they always pose the question, leave them in or out? Two artists that have been influences for decades are Soutine and Cezanne, both include and exclude. In this new painting I like the idea of a small community being overshadowed by the power of the landscape. Big sky and a strong left to right diagonal moving downwards, almost as if the hill is in motion. It is more Soutine than Cezanne with a sense that the whole picture is unstable compositionally. I like the start.

Cartington. Day 1

DO WE HAVE A BREAKTHROUGH?

I use we in the widest sense to include my global fanbase (its global, but very small, hello to my new friend in the Republic of Korea, yes really). Seriously though, in the last couple of days I started to get the sense that I might be getting somewhere with my landscape painting. If I were being critical, and you should always be, I have only painted 4 landscapes that I regard as successful. And 3 of those are the last 3, plus ‘Springtime in Edlingham, finished in October 2023. I have always believed, that if I can just paint consistently well, both in terms of quality and stylistically, then this would allow me to focus firstly on the compositional elements that make up an interesting landscape and the approach I should take. I am now building up a reference point that helps me construct these paintings and also offers a guide when I get stuck. I think this painting is finished.

Alwinton, looking west.

NO REGRETS

I could have put this in French, but that would be too pretentious, at least for now. Have you ever started to change a perfectly good painting and then immediately have doubts?, well that was me this afternoon. My priority was to find the structure of the landscape on the left side of the painting, and not worry about anything else. The turning point came after an hour, trial and error can be relied upon if your pig headed enough. I have now got it into a state that I can work with, some areas are a little unrefined but its a good step forward from day 2.

Alwinton, looking west. Day 3

LET THERE BE LIGHT

and God created Alwinton, for which I am most grateful. Yesterday was a good start and the framework was pretty much in place. My overall feeling was that I needed to introduce the sense of a setting sun, around about 3pm on a winters afternoon. There are some successful pieces of painting, especially on the right side, which is in full sun. I want to introduce that quality into the left which was a more challenging area as it was shifting in and out of dark shadow across a complicated form. Good progress today.

Alwinton, looking west. Day 2

THE MYSTERY VALLEY

Looking down the valley from a high vantage point some of the land formations are extraordinary. Some look like neolithic earthworks, they just look too fantastical to be natural, like a background for a Leonardo da Vinci painting. What is exciting about this area is this is just the mouth of the valley, I know it stretches for about 10 miles and so far is unexplored by me. Its a good start for the painting it reminds me of a Michael Andrews landscape, although there is a long way to go.

Alwinton, looking west. Day 1

A FAST FINISH

I got some advice at the end of Day 2 that my painting was finished and that I shouldn’t do anymore to it. Obviously, my intention was to carry on into Day 3 as it had never crossed my mind that the painting was finished. It was only when I sat down at the beginning of Day 3 that I realised my friends assessment was not far off at all. I have done half a day on it and I do think it has improved, but I have only changed about 10% of the painting. I could dabble a bit more and add more trees or refine some of the background but it won’t actually improve the painting. Anyway, this unexpected finish means I have no new boards prepared, so no painting tomorrow.

Alwinton in winter

THE BLEAK MIDWINTER

This painting is anything but. It was a miracle I had any usable photographs as I chose to go out photographing in 50 mile an hour winds. Its all about mood and motivation, why can’t these come along at the appropriate times? Britain may be falling apart on many fronts but one thing it still has is its landscape and I am discovering there is just as much beauty in the winter as the summer. This is a genuine surprise to me. This painting is progressing well, I think I have captured that cold, clear, sharp bright light you only find in the winter.

Alwinton in winter. Day 2

A SYMPHONY IN

browns….. This must seem deeply uninteresting to the casual observer, but to some painters it is an intriguing proposition. For me it is the motivation behind this painting. There is more than brown and I would prefer it if there wasn’t, I will consciously seek out some monochrome landscapes to photograph. I want to be painting across the seasons, and there is beauty in an English landscape in winter, although my mexican wife would disagree. Just recently I have started to think that these paintings need to be bigger. Not as a lazy way to create impact, but because I always go for the expansive view. As these paintings improve I will look to increase their size.

Alwinton in winter. Day 1

WHAT NOW 2024

More of the same but better would be my reply. This painting is now finished and it was a good one to end 2023. There is an area of Northumberland that I seem to have zeroed in on around Alwinton but just beyond that is a long valley accessible on a single track road that really intrigues me. It has the river Aln running through it and is flanked either side by steep hills. Seeing whether I dare take the car and explore.

Lorbottle in autumn

SERIOUS ARTISTS

don’t paint trees in autumn (too pretty), sunsets (ditto), mountains (too obvious), puppies and crying children (too sentimental) sheep (too ugly). These are all things I heard in my formative years. Clearly its had an impact, its taken 30+ years to paint my first autumnal trees, and I wish I had done it sooner. Painting these trees, ‘pretty’ was never a consideration, the fascination is the randomness of the colour changes and juxtapositions. The overall effect is magical. There is also the strange shapes to be found in such a scene, these can only be appreciated by an artist who is attempting to paint or draw them, they need a long period of observation before they reveal themselves. This painting is heading towards a finish.

Lorbottle in autumn. Day 7

HELLO 2024

I thought if I start 2024 early I could make up for lost time? Two weeks of festivities over and I am looking forward to 2024 with more confidence. The year ahead is genuinely exiting in terms of my painting. I will have a full year of painting unlike 2023 when I was still putting the studio together. I think the main change I would like to make is to start drawing outdoors again. Whats stopping me? I got out of the habit many years ago, hopefully its just a case of getting started and replacing idle time with productive time.

Lorbottle. Day 6

A MUCH BETTER DAY

Here I am again, obsessing over the details but this time getting the results that were so hard to achieve yesterday. What is it with good and bad painting days?. Its difficult to determine in advance how the day will go. Mental sharpness seems to be a pre-requisite, but that’s no help, my brain is dormant most of the time until it is needed, much like a car battery. The task for today was to paint in the fore ground trees but I got side tracked correcting my feeble painting efforts yesterday. So many trees to paint, at least their pretty colours, being autumn. The sky is not photographing well at the moment, too reflective.

Lorbottle. Day 5

TURNER PRIZE WINNER

I would like to make a late submission for the Turner Prize 2023. It is my first abstract in stone with the suitably pretentious title, ‘Abstract No.1, The Fall of Rome’. I can’t see why this is any less of a contender than the usual suspects. It is in fact a rather elegant solution to solve a damp problem we inherited. Lime mortar, old school solution for a very old problem.

Abstract No.1, The Fall of Rome.

PERSONAL PREFERENCES

I have spent countless hours making changes to paintings knowing that working at this level of subtlety hardly makes any difference. There is an obsessive element to my painting where things get so nuanced even I fail to see the difference. I think there is an underlying dissatisfaction with your own limitations as an artist that fuels this obsessive compulsion. Sometimes its the actual subject that creates these difficulties, like tricky lighting conditions or in this case a very odd clash of acid greens and reds. Today was a marginal improvement and some laboured painting.

Lorbottle. Day 4

DON'T OVERTHINK IT

just paint. This is the advice I would give to my young self setting out to college. Of course I would just ignore it, then spend the next 35 years slowly learning the lesson. Now I can do it, but is it too late? I could be an Alfred Wallis type character undiscovered until old age, I don’t mind waiting. Will I develop sufficiently over the next 25 years, that is the gamble. Fortunately I enjoy painting so I will carry on regardless. I sense a stylistic shift, this does not surprise me, its gone more Bruegelesque, which means I will pull out my Bruegel books and head off in that direction for a couple of weeks.

Lorbottle. Day 3

AN INFINITE VARIETY

I had some doubts when I first moved here a year ago whether all the effort of moving was going to be worthwhile. What I have found here is an infinite variety of spectacular landscape that really motivates me to paint. I have come to realise that even if I took on Van Gogh’s work ethic I would never exhaust the possibilities here. This is very reassuring, prior to this I flitted from idea to idea, and this has been the pattern since I left college in the 80’s. I am assuming that with consistency of work and subject the rate of improvement should accelerate.

Lorbottle. Day 2