Daily Musings

March 30th.

I focused on the cottages on the point at Cambridge Beaches.  Wow, what a view the guests wake up to!  A world of turquoise and serenity.  Then there are the sunsets…. I zoomed my “eye camera” right in and juxtaposed the building block human forms of the cottages interlocking against the natural forms of the rocks. I made an early decision to really highlight the slithers of roof lines and umbrellas that were catching the sun that was low in the sky by now. I also consciously used a limited palette with a few of my “go to” colours off the menu. Counter intuitively, if done well this limited palette can make the pure colours “sing” like the high notes in an aria.   I lost the light and the drama mid-way through my session as the sun dodged behind clouds, but it didn’t  matter. I had left the sun lit roofs for later and been working diligently on the mid-tone structure of the painting.  It was simply a matter of adding the icing on the cake from memory. I used the palette knife pretty liberally towards the end. I’m trying to find that sweet spot where there is ample suggestive brushwork, and also some strong textural and affirmative strokes, but not so much as to make the painting wooden.

March 29th.

With no chance to get out in the heavy rain, I went out armed with the secateurs again and returned with some roses from the garden. I set them up against a dark background in a vase and made a good start. However, at some point in the process I lost the impressionistic, loose feel of the piece, everything became very wooden, and ultimately I deemed it not good enough. Despondent, though wiser, I scraped the panel down. It would be my first non-daily of the year which bothered me. It was late in the evening by now, so I kind of cheated, grabbed a couple of tiny studies of boats in a harbour at sunset I have lying around in the studio and used them to work up a happy little painting. It’s familiar territory and I was able to paint confidently and quickly.

March 28th.

Nasturtiums. I love them. A sign of spring here, they can be found climbing over old walls, meandering across pathways and generally adding their bright orange and yellow exclamation marks in every nook and cranny. They hang around for a good few months before the intense Summer heat scorches them away. I tackled this profuse mound spilling out of an old fountain in the courtyard at Sea View, a close up inspection of abstraction and pattern. It’s good practice and a familiarity was logged for future paintings where I might want to incorporate a splash of colour trailing into a back lane, or bursting out of a dark corner.

March 27th.

An evening start again. With ample opportunity to paint earlier, I think I have rumbled my subconscious plan. My theory is that I am shortening my window in order to paint faster, fluidly and not have the time to over work a piece. Of course, other forms of self-discipline could address this, like stopping earlier, but it’s harder than you would think…Just one more stroke…oh and another… I hit the beach and focused on my usual muse, closer in than normal, and tried to pick out the busy sun-sparkling sea. The sky behind Daniel’s Head was super warm too but a value or so down from the sunblind reflections bouncing off the lively waves. In a situation like this you have to paint the “feel” of what is before you. An impression. It’s futile to try and paint every wave as they careen around.  A lone kite surfer skidded across my view and I thought for a moment about capturing him; but just for a moment.

March 26th.

I went out in a monsoon with some secateurs and brought a limb of oleander back to the studio to get intimate with. I had slipped off rather a lot and consequently got rather muddled with so much in front of me. I worked back and forth with both the plant and the variety of shadows on the wall and ended up with a busy piece packed inside its little 6 inch box. I got a lesson in oleander structure and will likely have another go on a future rainy day, but perhaps selecting a simpler composition and maybe a neutral background.

March 25th.

I wandered down to the ocean after a long tiring day full of the crashing sounds of demolition as we renovate our home. The sea was flat, no crashing waves thank goodness. Silent and a blanket of serenity.  I looked North and the water was turquoise. I looked South and it was this milky yellow grey which is what I wanted to capture. I used the spit of rocks as the central focal point that curve away at the end of Cambridge Beaches. We walk here of an evening with a sundowner and the dogs. They are emerald green at low tide alive with weed and mussels.

March 24th.

Tough gig. The tumble of spring colours cascading over the pathway that leads round to my studio. Lots of botanical elements all thrown together with a profusion of colour notes. Lots of interlocking areas to get lost in. I wanted the sky at the top right for some calm and chose that theme early, along with the dark shadowed area of the tree also at the top of the painting. The path too, to ground the chaos. Beyond that I went with the kaleidoscope before me.

March 23rd.

A revisit to a favourite spot late in the day. I’m intrigued by the light effects: looking at a distant shoreline directly into the sinking sun, the veiled atmosphere condensing everything, squashing the values together and simplifying the picture. There are still decision to be made for sure – where to place the horizon?  Is the focus the water or the sky? Do you emphasize the boats or the nuances of the shoreline?  How far can you push the sun sparkling on the water? How to make a sailboat mast half a mile away sit true in the painting without leaping forward and distracting the viewer?  Things happen fast and change by the second – do those changes add to the overall betterment of the piece? Does it add energy, or tell a story, or is it too much?  Paint fast!

March 22nd.

A similar aspect to my January 19th daily, but this time I was higher up on the bank, not on the beach. After a solid start I got bogged down in the left-hand quadrant where I over fussed, adding a plethora of different vegetation. It was top-lit by the sun and although it was rather attractive in real life, it looked busy and distracting in the painting. I ripped it all out and replanted some simpler bushes. I also altered the tree shadows on the water that were reading as dark against the turquoise shallows but ran out of muted tones for the areas that were darker still in the foreground bushes.  Today was what I would call a “save”. The knowledge of what went wrong and how to address it is a learning skill.  I imagine there is plenty else wrong too but I’m too blissfully ignorant to know that yet 🙂

March 21st.

My muse, Daniel’s Head, and a welcome break in the weather. The veils of light rain were lifting by the time I set up at a little after five o’clock. The scene was alternating between the water reflecting the sun in a shimmer, and more muted with the sky taking its turn at centre stage. I nailed down a passage when the sky was glowing warm behind the headland, nestled in various soft greys, and the distant water lit up against the cool blue greens of the foreground. A few moments later things changed, then changed again, but I stuck to the plan in large part.  Although the edges look meandering in the sky, I deployed a palette knife to get information down in quite a few areas. It can be a versatile tool used for much more than a sharp edge.

March 20th.

The third day of persistent rain. That’s relatively unusual for Bermuda, there is usually a break in the weather to get outside and paint. While it is possible to crouch in the back of the van and work looking out of the tailgate, the winds were high and I opted to tackle a view from the porch as an alternative strategy. I painted our first boat, “Jonah’s Whale” (or sometimes called the banana boat) a vessel that holds many happy memories of our early days in Bermuda. It’s an old Yankee Dory that’s basically now a garden ornament. It hasn’t been overboard for many a year.  We have had it for nearly thirty years and it wasn’t young when we got it. It was our wedding carriage and was used to ferry across the harbour from Salt Kettle, where we lived at the time, to the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club. It’s got nice shear lines but sits squat with its flat bottom.

March 19th.

Rothko came to the Island in the form of great horizontal bands of colour drifting in from the West. I got really excited trying to note down the imagery as it unfolded. I kept reminding myself to work efficiently and not panic as I laid down the information. Edges hardening then disappearing. Subtle shifts sometimes growing to deeper contrasts, at other times fading into nothing.  The smallest change in a grey scale painting can scream out. Although I used design in so much as I picked the initial composition to block in, I let nature do the rest and tried to follow its teachings. I don’t know if these will be considered finished paintings by others, that’s up to the viewer and subjective. To me they are finished in their own right but perhaps also a pre-cursor to something else.

* I’m finding it very tricky to capture the images with the very grey paintings so they may look a little different on the screen. if you are on Island you are very welcome to come and see them here at home.

March 18th.

Rain continues. I’m super excited about my new studio space so this make me happy.  We had friends stay over for the weekend, amongst them were Justine and Graham Foster, who kindly brought some bright yellow tulips.I set them up in the studio this evening on a black shiny surface where the spot lights threw shadows on to the newly painted rough limestone wall. I imagine there is a danger of spending way too long painting a still life, as unlike outside, you have constant control of your subject.  With this in mind I tried to work fast and fluidly, noting down and gesturing in the shapes. It was kind of fun actually, though I wouldn’t call myself a still life painter.  I prefer the changing light and challenge of outside overall.  I was happy that although the painting looked somewhat different than the subject in front of me, it had something and the colours remained rich.

March 17th.

There was a steady drizzle outside, so I set up my gear in the new studio space we are building next to the house, where it was warm, dry and bright. I painted myself painting in the mirror where I was painting myself…you get the idea. Although it’s loosely a self-portrait, I was really looking at the shapes and light variations within the room and my physical presence became just another shape to incorporate, all be it an organic one. There are still various bits and pieces of construction paraphernalia left by the construction crew, who have been very much part of our lives over the last few months.  It’s a bit of a landmark moment working from the now pretty much completed studio space. Jo and the dogs joined me there afterwards for a bottle of wine and some ceviche. It was a happy gathering charged with anticipation, as yet untapped creative energy and future possibilities for the space.

March 16th.

I set up by the beach at the back of the house, and orientated myself to paint a family boat that had dropped anchor in the bay. It looked happy there with the kids on the back and a couple of kayaks bobbing around tethered to the stern. Just as I began, the skipper headed up to the bow and hauled the anchor. That’s plein aire painting for you!  I focused instead on a tree to my left that was leaning over at an angle; probably bent over by a storm. Younger branches had grown straight up from the “leaning tower of treesia”. There was a tapestry of shadows all over the foreground cast from the tree and a nearby bay grape. The beach was not quite visible below the bank, but the shallow water throwing up sand yellows told you that it was there. The composition is a bit of a departure from my usual selections; very graphic. That’s good, I’m trying different things.

March 15th.

I took a walk (not long enough to call it a hike) with my gear in a backpack down towards the bottom of Mangrove Bay Road, with no particular subject in mind. I set up on the bank overlooking the bay.  I was standing pretty much where yesterday’s Daily was focused, from a couple of miles away. There is a drop off down to a small beach with lots going on. I wavered for a moment, tossing up whether or not to tackle such a complex subject. Looking down, the perspective is tricky. I was amazed to discover that the down sloping limestone rocks in the foreground actually read as slanting above the horizontal plane. The sand at the bottom of the piece was bright yellow white, but I punched the colour deeper and brighter in hue to save the near whites for the boat. Yes, the boat! Looking down on it, with no horizon, it was wriggling on its mooring in the breeze. The water ranged from bright yellow green in the shallows with fissures of light reflections bouncing around to cooler blue greens off in the distance. The transitions were tricky, subtle and elusive. I could talk much more about the thought process of this piece, but suffice to say that I think I got lots of information down in that small 5 x 7 panel and although it’s not perfect (are they ever?) I managed to pull it off. It’s something I would not have been able to do with any degree of success a while ago.

March 14th.

I was tired this afternoon and it was gone 4pm before I managed to get the gear out. I took the van round to a favourite spot at the far end of Mangrove Bay, opting not to cycle there. I find that fatigue sometimes works in my favour. Being a Gemini, when I’m firing on all cylinders there can be a situation where two artists are busy giving too much input and throwing an excess of enthusiasm into what is a measured, if inspirational, process.  One look and I knew it was a sky day.  Interesting silver and gold effects were unfolding with the lowering of the sun. With the familiar view and the weariness self-regulating the amount of data being processed in my mind, I was able to see clearly and work efficiently.  Much of the superfluous detail is edited out already. I added the gesture of a red hull that wasn’t there to the smattering of boats that were bobbing off by the distant shoreline. It was tempting to start another piece as the excitement of creating and recording the feel of the day energised me. I’m glad I didn’t though. The light changed to a light soaked ocean as the low sun found its way through the skudding clouds and I would have been caught between two different paintings had I continued on. There is always tomorrow…and the day after…and the day after that!

March 13th.

Another session with the freesias in the garden, using the strong graphic of the tree with its heavy shadow coming straight towards the viewer. It was an exercise of looking for warms in the cools and cools in the warms. How far can they be pushed and still read as true?

March 12th.

We had rain pretty much all day. I walked the dogs behind the house and scrumped a big bowl of loquats. Abandoning hope of getting out to paint as the light faded, I set up my gatherings to have a go at a still life. Not a discipline I spend any great deal of time on, but it’s all shapes and colours, right 🙂  I plonked the bowl on my painting tableau where the light was good, initially intending to grey out the background, but I ended up painting in all the squeezed out paints on the surface. An artist’s palette is very personal; I liked my still life nestled there in the centre.  The loquats are big and juicy with deep oranges and yellows. I tried to keep the tones rich and steer clear of too much chalky white, scooping up brushes full of pure warm pigment. Afterwards, I pitted the loquats and made a crumble (a cobbler to you folks to the west of us here).

March 11th.

A brief cycle to the public dock at Mangrove Bay; always something to paint here. I tackled a favourite view of the rocky foreshore framing the boats further out in the bay and the village off in the distance. There were lots of gin clear winter shallows, that read green and yellow, in front of the rocks, but I refrained from trying to include all the detail. There would have been too much going on had I included all that too.

A few weeks ago I painted an almost identical composition from  the same spot, but it was earlier, and I was looking directly into the sun. The paintings are radically different and a graphic example of why artists like to return to the same spot to tackle the different light effects of tide and time.

March 10th.

Carpets of freesias are doing their thing here at Sea View. Spring is well and truly here. How to paint them though? Dappled light, random chaos that’s weirdly sort of organised. A million elements in a kaleidoscope of nuances yet all within a fairly narrow colour spectrum. I subjugated the background and muted the lawn to give me a full range of possibilities for the carpets of flowers around the trees. Freesias are white, but not starched bedsheet white. There are yellows, creams and oranges in there. In shadow they cool to blue and mauves, but not the darker blues that are deeper down in the shaded grass.  They are wild and scattered not a formal bed of plants. I tried to emphasise that random element, but at the same time impart the feeling that they are all facing the sun in a sort of rag tag sweep of mutual observation. I hope they last for a good while, they are fun to paint.  Then there are the nasturtiums….

March 9th.

An hour of wrong and an hour or so of right. The first effort was launched onto the grass in frustration after a futile attempt to juxtapose the shallows against a graphic foreground with a railing leading the eye down to the beach. Not very zen! A few deep breaths, I scraped the painting down and set the panel back on the easel. Things were happening offshore, cloud systems creeping in over flat transparent water. A weekend boater dropped anchor, I went to work. Fast, fluid, bands of colour, editing out superfluous detail. Exhilaration, a rush as the scene before me is recreated on the panel and reads true.  The boat pulls anchor but I have it.  Energised, let’s go again!  The clouds are thickening off shore now, but the water is still soft and milky in the still air. Above the clouds the sky reads the lightest warm grey. I frame Daniel’s Head against the scene, deftly working away, knowing that the light will go in perhaps thirty minutes and it will rain. I’ve recently been studying the work of Paul Henry, an Irish painter of skies and mountains; I subconsciously channel his vision.

March 8th.

I had to go into Hamilton early and took my gear with me. A preliminary stop at Spanish Point on North Shore was postponed for another time because, despite the clear as a bell vivid views, there was a fresh breeze coming straight out of the North. I was sans coat and decided that 2 hours of being motionless standing painting, where the heart rate tends to drop as you meditate into the process, was not a wise plan. Around the headland then, back through town ,and I pulled into Waterville, The National Trust property at Foot of The Lane, a sheltered spot with lots of interesting water views. I cut my teeth as a plein air painter here a good few years ago with a series of works of the buoys, some of which were later reworked in the studio in sizes approaching thirty square feet.  Here I was years later and at the buoys again. Quieter works than back in the day. More measured, more harmonious but perhaps less exuberant. Bands of greys, some yellow in the shallows and underneath the mangroves and some bluer in deeper water or when reflecting sky. Then bright abstracted forms made by man (or woman, it is International Women’s Day today) floating, levitating amongst nature.  

Bill Zuill, an old rugby comrade who now heads up the National Trust, came by while I worked and extracted a promise of a painting donation for their upcoming fundraiser in June. I was very happy to oblige, they do wonderful work.

March 7th.

Tween Walls, a favourite haunt a short walk from home. It’s not the easiest place to pull off a cracker despite the gorgeous possibilities, I think because the light tends to fall up and down the lane rather than across. My first painting of the gatepost and loquats was a struggle. I overworked the complicated pattern of leaves and it was only retrieved after scraping back much of what I had spent an hour laying down and then going in again. I was tired, and pretty cold by the time I had worked it back up but I stayed and had another bash.

The second piece went much more fluidly. I largely used the flat edge of a pretty big square brush blocking in shapes and not getting distracted by small stuff. There are quite a few edges of elements that are very close in value (for example the top of the wall at left and the shadow on the road) that needed subtle shifts to make the painting read. I was in the zone because the first piece had warmed my brain up even though the rest of me was stone cold by the end of it.

March 6th.

Breezy, breezy. One of the skinny palms next to the house. Not Eric; smaller, but possibly a Washingtonia too.  The breeze was pushing the fronds all to one side and it was quite tricky to get a reading on the shape as the palm sprang back and forth and swayed. Light got richer as the sun got lower and big white clouds skudded by as I worked.

March 5th.

The three palms I painted a few weeks back, but this time I incorporated the garden in the foreground and pushed the focus of the palms lower down the pecking order, though they are still the highest element and framed against the sky. We have had the match-me-if-you-can bushes cut back recently so that they will bank in steps like an auditorium when they grow back rather than present a wall. The dark below them where they have been cut back is what had originally caught my attention. Even on a muted morning with a dirty yellow grey sky they glow with warms. The tangle of other palmetto palms I treated as a blue mass, which is what they were, just picking out minimal detail in there. I added the edge of a cedar tree at right that I think helps to stop the painting slide out of the picture on that side.

March 4th.

I didn’t start my painting until shortly before sunset. This was somewhat by design, on the grounds that I think I have been spending too long on some of the Dailies, sometimes in excess of two hours, which can result in overworking. The rapidly changing light at this time of day gives you a much shorter window of opportunity and is a moving target. I used the familiar motif of Daniel’s Head, so I did at least have a very familiar subject to tackle in this compressed window. It was dark by the time I had finished and the painting borrowed several elements from that passage of time as the sun sank and the sky lit up. Things were edited out and added on the move. In the end though, it reads as a cohesive piece and is very representative of what we see many evenings when we take a drink to the beach and watch the sun go down over Daniel’s Head.

March 3rd.

Rain threatened. Inside or under cover was the order of the day. I set up in what will shortly be my new studio space; some outbuildings on the property which lately have been a construction zone as the studio takes shape. It’s been insightful watching the skilled workers create a new modern space from splendid decay and it’s been very much part of our life recently.  Wheel barrows, cement mixers, piles of building sand, big yellow buckets of paint.

March 2nd.

“There is a crack in Everything.”  I set up to paint the backlit coconut palms bordering the garden, but became distracted by the filtered, watery sunlight diffusing through the cloud cover. What was meant to be the backdrop to the subject became the subject itself. The focal point was the source of light (the sun) and the clouds twisted around it, causing fissures of light, continually changing in volume, shape and tone. It wasn’t unlike staring at a lava lamp for an hour. A million possible compositions, a million decisions within a stripped-down subject. Painting…the first step to madness

March 1st.

I peddled up to Heydon Road, a quiet back lane that has a junction overlooking the reefs off the West of the island. I have painted here before. It’s mind boggling though how a similar scene can be so radically different due to times of day, the way the light is falling and what the weather is doing. It’s always an inviting view, the way the foliage frames a view of the ocean. I was a bit sloppy with my initial block-in and paid the price for this mid-way through the painting. I got in a mess with all the overhanging palmetto fronds on the left-hand side. I had the good sense to scrape them all back and rework that section. I edited them out completely on the do over. They were taking over the painting and too distracting. There was a time I would have continued throwing paint at the problem rather than standing back, considering the conundrum and then redesigning. I’m happy that some of the dragged brushwork directly against the sky and the water is suggestive and natural looking. Those extreme darks against lights can look very blocky and two dimensional if you don’t tread softly round the edges.