Moonlit Garden!!

Planned a moonlight garden painting last month, and started working on the composition and staring at the moon at every opportunity .  With all that in my head I decided to paint it in situ outside during a sunny day but try and think moonlight colours!!..... and this morning was the day.  No trace of wind, warm and sunny, no distractions except for Biscuit who I had one eye on the whole time.

Biscuit- not much help!

Painting in garden

Bloom

Garden Flower Arrangement 92x76cm oil on canvas

I have been working on new work for my next solo show in 2015, and have been working on a lot of flower and flower-based paintings. So armed with my secateurs I raided the hedges and flower beds around the house and managed to collect enough for a large flower painting.  Finally finished it on Friday and mindful of our annual Bloom in the Park and not being able to get there this year, have painted it instead.

Earlier this week in my studio

brought the flowers into the house

Ordered Chaos

This is me in my studio earlier today working on my latest painting......

Working from still life objects in my studio, and composing them into a painting.

Hampstead Affordable Art Fair 2014

Still life with garden produce 71x71cm oil on canvas

Garden Terrace 71x71cm oil on canvas

I will be showing these new paintings Still life with Garden Produce and Garden Terrace as well as work from my recent show Scheherazde  at this year's Affordable Art Fair in Hampstead, London from 11th -15th June 2014, represented by The Doorway Gallery stand H2

Spring is Sprung

Daffodils 2010

Spring is here, screaming its song and steam-rolling its way directly towards summer.  It's turmoil out there: the birds are desperately nest-building, while trying to control their patch, defending it from rivals, predators, high winds and torrential rain storms; and then there is a lull... the sun comes out and its so beautiful - full of promise.  I love this time of year, the earth has been cleared and stands black against the gaudy  colours of the  newly planted  bedding plants.  The grass is beginning to intensify its dense greenness, and the daffodils reign supreme.    Gathered up and crammed into vases, they help to cheer up the dark corners and north -facing windowsills inside the house.  I always find myself painting a vase of daffodils around this time of year, I find them a painting challenge, and they continue to evade me, so I will continue to try and capture in acid yellow, their startling beauty.

Daffodils 2009

Daffodils from my student days 1980

Daffodils in my studio

Daffodils 2013

Daffodils 2012

Recent Daffodil painting

Painting Heroes - Sir Matthew Smith 1879-1959

Matthew Smith Nude, Fitzroy st.  

I can never get enough of Matthew Smith's paintings, and his work is frustratingly under exposed, very rarely will I see a book or postcard or anything that gives this master colourist a mention.
It was way back in 1983 that I made my way over to the Barbican Centre in London to see his major retrospective and it was a wonderful experience and still lives with me today.  It is no surprise to me to find out that this painter spent a short while at the Matisse Art School in Paris, and was very influenced by the Fauvist and Post-Impressionists that were working in Paris before the First-World War.  This painting Nude, Fitroy St. No.1 1916, was obviously painted when he was back in London.

As can be seen by this landscape painted during his war years, how influenced he was by the Irish artist Roderic O'Connor who would have been living and painting in France at the same time that Smith was there.

Favourite things

Matryoshka blue vase

I have been working on a series of flower paintings.  I feel so happy with a vase of flowers set up in front of me in the studio, especially during the dark gloomy days of winter.  I came across some very pretty michelmas daisy-type flowers in my local supermarket, and they had a strange dusty antique quality about them, and created the challenge that I was looking for.  I find working from life stops me from becoming too formulaic in the way I paint, as the permutations are endless when it comes to form and colour, as every leaf and petal presents a new challenge visually. 

Matryoshka daisies

 My paternal grandmother had a lovely flower painting above her fireplace, painted by one of her artist friends(loveday), I inherited it and it was probably one of the first examples of a portrait of flowers that I would have seen as a child. 

loveday flower painting

 I have always loved Dutch still life paintings with their intense observation giving nature centre stage.  I think I re-visited my preconceptions of a vase of flowers when watching a programme on the TV on van Gogh I realized how large and daring some of his sunflower paintings were.  They were certainly standing up on their own in all their glory, unapologetic and beautiful.  As a student my favourite flower painting was Vuillard‘s mantelpiece painting, a busy divine painting about nothing and everything, a time-snatched incidental composition, but so beautiful and spiritual, like a prayer.

Vuillard The Mantelpiece

  There is nothing more complete than painting an inconsequential vase of randomly picked daisies from the garden, it is so simple yet for me defines everything that is important in this world. However Duncan Grant’s Parrot Tulips are far from spiritual they are of this world rich and earthy, exotic and sensual the velvet cloth they stand on is tactile and warm and the whole composition for me is perfection, vibrant and masterful, it was exhibited at the Camden Town exhibition in London 1909.  

Duncan Grant parrot tulips

  
My theme this year is Matryoshka which means Russian Doll, as I am looking at Russian textiles and culture for inspiration, and  these recent flower paintings  will be at the Brussells Affordable Art Fair with The Doorway Gallery this February 2014.