Friday 31st July
Even though our house purchase fell through, we have continued, if a little less hectic, to sort through stuff in the house. With a free weekend for once and Dylan in Manchester, we tackled some cupboards and a wardrobe in Dylan’s room that was full of old bedding and bags of clothing we’d not looked at for a while.
We made piles for keeping, the tip and possibly selling. There was far more stuff than we anticipated!! We also found some old photos and an A3 portfolio of mine. I had no idea why it was in there. It was heavy and when I opened it contained 10 paintings on board which I did about 15 years ago. They were unusual because they were an experiment I did for a few weeks using acrylic inks on canvas board. Most are in bright colours, oranges and yellows but all have black skies and a moon. They all had symbolic hares, crows and owls amongst standing stones and were very flat and stylised. A couple were in blues again with hares, owls, crows and one has a deer and a dark sky and moon. I did use hares, crows, deer and owls in other paintings for a while but these are different. A couple of larger versions I had in my studio sold at AITG. My neighbour, Sheena has one on her wall I gave her for hosting the event in her garden. The technique was interesting. Using acrylic inks on canvas boards is unusual but I then scraped into it and even used sandpaper on the surface. The overall effect gives a slightly weathered appearance.
As is my habit, once I started on these I did quite a few. I even put some in an exhibition at Trident Galleries Gallery, in Leicester and sold some. The framed versions I sold at AITG were returned from that exhibition.
The ones I discovered in the cupboard were part of this series. I also remember doing some smaller 20cm x 20cm ones which I sold or gave away. When looked on the back they were all titled. Many years ago when I was painting for Washington Green, I was doing so many paintings that I was finding difficulty in coming up with the non-generic titles that they required. I asked Natasha’s dad Tony who loved that sort of thing to come up with some titles for my landscapes. He provided me with 3 A4 sheets of weird and wonderful titles, many of which I used. I noticed that several of these slightly surreal landscapes had got titles provided by Tony. Some were mine.
They were all varnished but having been stacked together in the portfolio in a cupboard for years some had slight marks on them, mainly in the black skies.
I decided that these would be a good addition to this years AITG and so I took them to my studio and touched up the damage before re-varnishing them. They would look great in frames but time and expense might prevent that.
I also managed to crack on with my 20cm x 20cm seascapes. I managed to do 22 on canvas board and 4 canvases. These can be added to the 18 I’d already done. I had painted the previous 18 with oil on either deep-edged canvas or standard canvas. At the beginning of the week I swapped over to acrylics. With this size canvas (20x20cm) the delayed drying time of oil paint can be more of a disadvantage than an advantage. The fast drying acrylics helped me paint the 26 small paintings quickly. I had re-ordered some 20x20cm deep edged canvases which have arrived. I’ll paint these next week. The edges need painting on these canvases which I will need to do before varnishing. As for the rest I will need to varnish the oils with my oil based varnish and all the acrylics with my water based varnish. There should be plenty for AITG which is rushing towards me.
I also need to produce and laminate my posters soon and sort out the rest of my stock for the event. It’s going to be a very busy few weeks ahead……
This weeks image shows some of the recently re-discovered paintings.