Daily Musings

July 31st.

Post travel tired. Fatigue releasing the tight ropes of detail. Loose, floating. Pre-conceived notions cut adrift and the essence of what’s over there on the water ripples over here to the easel and constructs itself in a shimmer of marks, strokes and lines.

July 30th.

I was traveling today so snatched half an hour at the airport to sketch the passengers queue up.

July 29th.

I nipped into the National Gallery today, snagging a small notepad on the way, which I used to do a few brief gestural sketches of the folks looking at the paintings as well as a quickie while we had lunch in the restaurant there. Favourite paintings seen today were a fabulous juicy George Bellows “Men of The Docks” and a small , beautifully coloured Monet that had somehow slipped by me unnoticed “Water lilies, Setting Sun”

July 28th.

Sunday morning in the centre of London. Out of the window pigeons are roosting and everyone seems to be carrying a back pack or a bag. A fleeting look at them, I put pen to paper and then they are gone.

July 27th.

London rain this morning. I chased the scurrying umbrella-wielding pedestrians around the street with my biro. It’s tricky, you have but 2 or 3 seconds as they shift and change position before disappearing out of view.

July 26th.

We are in Central London for a few days to attend a family wedding. I deemed the timing and luggage issues too tricky to bring my painting gear, at the last minute just throwing in a sketch book. There will be no daily paintings for the next few days, but I will try to do a sketch from life on the streets of London to keep my eye in and the project rolling. Today I sketched the view from the room in the Z Hotel, with a spare biro and short notation pencil I found in the room, looking at all the busy shoppers below. We are on the edge of Covent Garden and the mass of people is continual.

July 25th.

I painted from the window of the studio/attic space, looking out at the steep pathway up to the old town, as the sun flooded down it. It was a spartan, abstract view and I was painting pretty blindly with the light streaming in, just able to make out approximate tone on the palette but not colour. The first time I saw the painting clearly was when it was finished and I stepped away from the window.

July 24th.

I’ve really struggled to get the feel of the water in the marina here, partially because as I paint into the evening it changes colour, heading to much darker greens from an off yellow, but also I think I am letting my brain superimpose what I think I see. I had a pretty good loose block in of these reflections and the French flag in the foreground but wasn’t too enamoured with the end result. Overworked perhaps. I’ll try something instinctive tomorrow.

July 23rd.

Wired! Lost in a sea of halyards, sheets, lines and cables. Deployed the palette knife to return to familiar waters.

July 22nd.

Shapes on the water. Busy busy busy. Disconnect the preconceived notions of the shape of a boat and look for the pattern of abstraction. Once it’s down, revisit and pick out the lines of a boat but not so much that the wooden boats become well…wooden.

July 21st.

I set up on the banks of the river Vilaine looking back towards the marina of La Roche Bernard. An anchored tall ship in the foreground and the impressive suspension bridge spanning the river in the background. A lot of elements to control. It was a little like being home in Bermuda subject-wise.

July 20th.

An iconic Pyrenean stage of the Tour de France dictated a late start. I painted the stern of an old wooden boat with a hand tiller and its buoy being pulled taught towards it. When I gestured in the water it had a nice loose impressionistic feel to it, but I wanted to also portray a sense of the ripples that were bouncing light from the sky and the lighter yellow green at the back there, so I tightened up in this area. It’s one of those situations where you could go either way.

July 19th.

Place du Bouffay, the old square at the bottom of the high street in La Roche Bernard.  I painted at around lunch time. The pink café, “Le Rochoir” is where we often have a morning coffee or a pre-dinner apero. The restaurant next door, Le Vieux Quartier, is another favourite for outside dining and great seafood. Dogs welcome at both establishments!

July 18th.

It was raining this morning, so I painted the view of the marina from the conservatory. Lots of abstract shapes all jumbled together. I treated them as such, not wanting to get waylaid with detail or trying to include every single boat. It’s an impression, not a portrait.

July 17th.

I set up in the old artisan section of the town looking down a cobbled alleyway to some alfresco diners. Fifteen minutes in, lunch was over, the guests left and the waiter dropped the umbrella. The joys of plein air painting. I continued on and filled in the missing elements using memory and imagination.

July 16th.

A view that would lend itself to one of my stretched out panoramic paintings. Comfortable familiar subject matter for me, but the water is a different colour than home.

July 15th.

Le Sarah B, seen from our bedroom window with the late afternoon light flooding in through the doors. A one-time sail loft and workshops for the old wooden boats that used to ply their trade from the port, it has long since been a local landmark, a restaurant and sometime concert venue and theatre. It is named after Sarah Bernhardt, the original Bohemian, an iconic actress and dancer who had a home on Belle Ile just offshore. It’s a place that she discovered and fell in love with while visiting with the painter Georges Clairin.

July 14th.

It was humming with activity in the town for Bastille day. I painted towards the end of the harbor, incorporating the rag tag buildings meandering up the hill, including at the left our house, but all in a loose sketchy background style . To celebrate the day, I incorporated a tricolour “drapeau” near the centre of the painting hanging limply in the still air from a back-stay. It was a complex view to tackle, but I think I managed to keep all the elements pretty much in harmony. It was a cool vibe, painting while families wandered up and down the banks stopping to picnic, sailboats cruised in to the theatre, and someone played traditional French music on an accordion.

July 13th.

I set up on the other side of the Lilliputian harbour from the house, orientating myself to paint two boats tied to the dock wall with the canopy of the bar next door to us, Le Flibustier. As the light slid lower at this late hour, things happened pretty quickly. I made liberal use of the palette knife to tackle some of the rigging and the reflections.

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July 12th.

I arrived back home to La Roche Bernard in the late afternoon after a couple of days spent in the interior of France visiting relatives. It had been all vast rolling plains of cut wheat and sunflowers out there and it was nice to return to the smaller pastures and the water of Southern Brittany. I came back with a third dog, a young cocker spaniel, Sammy, who will be integrated into our family. I’ll be storing my painting gear above spaniel height for a wee while.

Fatigued from the drive, I set up on the handy terrace here and picked out the corner of a boat with a fender hanging off the stern to paint. While working, the water reads as a mustard hue, but looking at photographs I have taken afterwards it appears as more of a green. The eyes seem to pick up different nuances to the camera. I don’t know the science behind this, perhaps the camera takes an average reading.

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July 11th.

An overnight stop in the Poitou-Charente region in “France Profonde” for a family visit. Morning cloud cover a welcome relief from the recent heat wave, I painted across the road from the house, moving a few elements of the painting around to make a pleasing composition. Drops of rain began to fall on my palette as I finished up the piece.

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July 10th.

I focused in on some of the organic shapes of the wooden boats and a buoy. Dialing right in, where the composition becomes a fluid sea of colour and geometric shapes and what they are is secondary.

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July 9th.

We walked along the river path with the dogs. I stopped at this field and painted the haystacks, or rather hay rolls as they are these days. The morning light was bouncing off the big geometric shapes. I can see why Monet returned again and again to haystacks to record the changes of light on them.

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July 8th.

The Summer muse of the lovely wooden boats by the house from the terrace. I wanted to keep the painting loose and suggestive. Not to get too bogged down in detail but to use the information in front of me as a guide rather than recording every last detail I could see.

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July 7th.

Along the quayside of our little inlet and to the river, perhaps 100 meters or so. I painted down river, where the banks are wooded and have cool rock cliffs. The boats in the middle of the painting are on a floating pontoon that is accessed either via a dinghy or a pulley system. The palette knife has come into play pretty liberally the last couple of sessions. I’m not sure if that’s the different subjects, or the unfamiliar paint colours I’m currently working with, or for no particular reason. I just find myself reaching for it again after a hiatus of several years.

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July 6th.

I returned to the same spotwith the intention of painting a close up of the buoys in the foreground of yesterday’s painting. However, there was a chap sitting on a deck chair in that spot already, so instead I set up very close by and orientated myself towards a motor sailer that was tied against the harbour wall, which I shortened to fit my composition. It was a bit tricky to portray the highlights of the boat against the warm wall of the building behind, but I hazed my eyes and went to the dreaming place of tone and shape, and it seemed to turn out ok.  The gentleman on the chair watched intently while I worked, intrigued, and once I had finished, Jo turned up with the dogs and we chatted to him in our pigeon French. He lives in a city further inland and owns one of the small sailboats in the harbour that he uses to  cruise up the river and through the barrage at Arzal for some local coastal cruising.

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July 5th.

I ventured round the marina opposite the house to a very handy walkway/viewing station and set up at eye level with the boats. I cut my teeth painting in Bermuda during the ocean race regattas and this was familiar subject matter. Abstracted shapes of sail boat paraphernalia over lapping and interlocking in a big tumble of masts, hulls and bright colours; the scene reflected back up from the water an even more abstracted version of reality. For anyone interested, the old “port de plaisance” here at La Roche Bernard was a working sea port for centuries. Our house was a cooperage and perhaps a sail loft at the top. Most of the boats sailed around the forbidding coast line of Finisterre and on to Wales, where they delivered local timber that was used for pit props, and returned loaded with coal.

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July 4th.

A switch to oil paint. It feels strangely odd, yet familiar. I don’t currently have my usual array of colours (some are on the way) and the plein air easel I had stashed here is much bigger than the minimal gouache set up or the one I use at home. So much real estate makes my Dailies look a little diminutive perched there. I used pretty much the same view as yesterday, as I work on getting my eye in and my oil mojo up to par. I’m excited to see how the French series unfold and whether I centre it around the gorgeous harbour by the house, chock full of old wooden sail boats, or if I ed up wandering further afield to the countryside beyond the town.

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July 3rd.

We arrived home in Brittany where we will be based for the next three months. After introducing the dogs to their new surroundings and a long lunch, I set up on the terrace and painted some of the old wooden boat shapes with the gouache I have been travelling with. I have a supply of oil paints here at the house and time for them to dry, so will likely switch over in the next day or too. I imagine that the boats will become something of a muse in the coming weeks but then there is so many other things to paint here too!

July 2nd.

A random stopover en route to Brittany found us in the town of Villers-Bocage in the Calvados region of Normandy.  We took lodgings and supper at a Logis hotel at the bottom of the town, where I was able to hop out of the window of our first floor room and position myself on the roof of the portico to paint this scene of the rolling hills with a cypress tree in the foreground. The slightly yellow warm evening light and the iconic tree gave the view a feel of somewhere further South, more Mediterranean.  While walking the dogs earlier, we had noticed a lot of photographs of the town’s devastation during the 2^ndWorld War on boards spread around the streets, something to do with the recent D-Day 75th anniversary commemorations, we assumed. On further reading, it turns out that the town saw major action in the days after D-Day in the battle to secure the city of Caen to its East. The fields I had painted where littered with tanks and infantry during the Battle of Normandy. Then two weeks later the town was pretty much destroyed by 250 RAF bombers in Operation Epsom. The kind landlady who welcomed us and our dogs was, I imagine, a young child when all of this happened and would have grown up after the war in a town of ruins. We had somewhat of an interesting conversation with her to that effect, but our French was not sufficient to fully comprehend all of her tale. Random stops on the road in unknown places that offer up visual and factual portals, connections with strangers, the enrichment of travel.

July 1st.

6 months in, half way. A small, pretty hamlet in Kent, a church, a field full of wild daisies, a beautiful evening. An unlikely spot to have my first failure. A long, if attractive, drive over the Peak District this morning, a lengthy chat with a slightly eccentric lady who was walking her dog, all could be used as excuses as to why I didn’t pull it off but really there is no reason. Sometimes you go fishing in the best spot but no fish. It’s all good, I spent an hour or so communing with nature and connected with a stranger, I left a little energy encapsulated in a spot on the ground in a moment in time. I include the image deemed not worthy of this sublime location prior to it being scraped down.