Travelling and staying in

I'm writing this on an anniversary - 40 years ago today, we left England to work in Tanzania with VSO. I had only been to France and Austria before this. I was young. Tanzania was to teach me so much - about people, politics, development, learning and teaching English, myself. It changed my mind, my career direction, my perception of everything.

As we drove to Heathrow, lights were on in homes and curtains not yet drawn. I could see people inside, apparently living cosy, safe lives as we set off into the unknown.

I've been in Berlin two days now. It is cold and rainy. I haven't been out much. I recognise it as a pattern that goes back 40 years. Having reached my destination, I hunker down awhile, as if I need to inhabit the idea of being in a new place before I can inhabit the actuality. Because I know this is how it goes, I am happy to wait, knowing it's all out there when I'm ready.

The space (East Africa) acrylic on card

Catching snatches

I am carrying sketchbooks of at least four different sizes on my journey through the mountains. In the very smallest one, of an evening, I've been writing and drawing snatches of memories from the day.

Click on the photo to see some of the pages from Thun and the drive to Disentis-Mustér.

A change of scale

On my last day in the French alps, there was low cloud covering the peaks and some rain in the air. Instead of going higher, I drove down into the valley and parked by the stream. A dog watched quietly. A man continued repairing his car. I started walking up the path alongside the stream.

And a small despair crept into me. I didn't actually want to be doing this damp walk on a grey path alongside grey water. It was too reminiscent of walks with parents as an unwilling 11 year old - I had always found more pleasure in staying at the bottom of the hill with my book.

It was a change of scale that shifted my mood after I took out my camera and started looking more closely. Then I could see the bright splashes of colour in berries and hips, and notice the peculiar colourings of leaves,

The feeling of despair was dispelled by giving my attention on this smaller scale. I recognise it as the scale of many of my paintings; a scale that speaks to my soul.

Watching how night falls

I am not sure why I had to come to the mountains on my way to Berlin. But here I am in Albiez Montrond above the Maurienne valley in the French Alps. Yesterday's rainstorms brought snow to the tops.  

I am watching how night falls. I am here to look, listen, attend. To sit, awed by the landscape, feels right.

Preparations afoot for #Berlin

If you have subscribed to my regular Newsletter you will know that I am off to Berlin for a year. I will be artist-in-residence and Fellow on a project about metaphor and film at the new Cinepoetics Centre at the Free University.

It now seems to be time for my art practice and my academic research into metaphor to interact more than they have to date. I'll be blogging here about what happens in the studio and as I explore and join the art scene in Berlin. And there will be metaphors.

Meanwhile, it's packing up and preparing for the long drive to Berlin.

               I can go back Acrylic and collage on canvas panel, 55 x 65 cm, framed. £420.
 

Behind the painting

As an expressionist painter, there was one task on the course that I especially loved. It centered around the colours violet and yellow, finding tones / shades and proportions that resonated with the emotions of an experience.

I drew on an experience earlier in the day in the coffee shop. A couple next to me were finishing bowls of porridge. When the woman stood up, I could see she was hugely pregnant. She moved her hand over her bump in that arc that mothers make - from the top, over, down, under. Her partner wrapped her coat tenderly around her shoulders in another arc.

Drawing: arcs and shapes from the coffee shop

Our eyes met and I asked if she had long to go. "I'm having contractions every five minutes, so I hope not," she replied.

My skin prickled into goose bumps.

I searched for words, remembering.

"It will be the best day of your life."

Her partner with eyes like a scared rabbit.

They walked back to the hospital. And I went to paint.

Pale lemon yellow: cold fear

Ochre: human warmth

Dark dark violet, made from indigo and crimson: deadening pain

Lighter violet: the rest - holy, sacred, amazing, huge

Colour and contrasts

I've been in London for two weeks taking a course called 'Colour' at the Slade School of Art, which is part of UCL. It was fun to be in their high ceilinged studios and good discipline to work from 9.30 to 5.00 every day. Lots of contrasts going on - of hue (red/green; blue/orange); of tone (light and dark); of texture; of scale.

Coming back to the country was quite a contrast too...

Clearing out

The studio is being painted - is that meta-painting, I wonder? Anyway, I had to clear it out on Sunday and that involved shifting the piles of work under the table and leaning against the wall. It made me realise how much trial work comes before a finished piece. Most of it is not really preparation - some of it is warming-up, some of it is colour-mixing, and some are failures waiting for a covering of gesso and a new start. I threw lots away but I couldn't dispose of this one:

                                             All the town rivers  acrylic on card

Painted on a piece of card that was lying around, it has custard yellow and jelly red sky, some lumpy trees and a small black rails or perhaps a railway. Oh, and some patterns. The trouble is, it knew its name as soon as it appeared. And driving through Kalamata in the Peloponnese a few weeks ago, I encountered the (dried-up) town river with a smile of recognition. Then there's the river Aveyron that flows through Villefranche-de-Rouergue, and the Arno through Florence, and the Seine through Paris, and the Cam through Cambridge, and the Bagmati river through Kathamandu. It seems that town rivers are somehow important for me.

The painting will sit around the kitchen until one day I'll find some part of it in another picture and understand why it had to stay a while longer.

The weather and painting

Monet used to have several paintings in progress at once so that each one could be painted at the same time of day in the same quality light. Moving between Greece and England these last few weeks, has meant a huge shift in light, and also in temperature and weather. I use acrylics, which dry quite quickly, and in Greece almost immediately. That meant a shift to much more watery paint and spraying the paint on my palette and on the paper. I also had fun rubbing the paint into the paper as it dried.

Now, back in chilly England, I've been painting more in the same series but the paint handles so differently that the paintings are shifting into a different mood.

The Moon and Scarlet 6

Art and politics

An article in the Financial Times this weekend talks about Albania, and how art and politics are interacting through the ideas of the Prime Minister, Edi Rama. He is an artist turned politician. I also like that the former headquarters of the communist rulers has re-opened as the Centre for Openness and Dialogue.

In Greece recently, I was recalling how, in the early 1990s, people would warn us to be careful of the Albanian refugees who had escaped that same communism and were living in the rocks outside of town. Now there are many Albanians living, working, swimming and going to school there - one even makes the best moussaka in town.

Cartographies Acrylic, collage and Nepali wool on canvas. 50 x 60 cm. 2014

A change of focus

Saturday after a busy painting week in Greece. This year I have a great outside space and have so enjoyed painting on large sheets of cardboard on the wall and on the ground. Almost like Anselm Kiefer... (There's another post there about giving ourselves permission to occupy space..) 

I can tell my eyes are tired from painting so hard and today it's time for a change of focus - literal first with a metaphorical shift following close behind. Time for the water, for swimming slowly around the bay with the eyes focused towards the horizon.

Thank you

for supporting my recent open studio: to the people who came along to look at the work (and those who just came to see inside the cottage); to those who stayed awhile to chat and look  longer; and to those who bought paintings and prints - I hope you are enjoying finding new spaces inside them that delight the eye and that open up for the mind to wander through. 

After a hectic few weeks, I'm taking my paints to the Mani for a rest and a change of scene. Back soon.

Coming to an end

It's the final weekend for Bucks Open Studios and I hope Saturday and Sunday will be busy again. I've sold three paintings so far, and several prints. Each time, the buyer took a long time to look into the depths of the work - it seemed to me that they were seeing whether they felt at home there. I love to witness that kind of interaction with my work - even if there's no sale from it. What matters is that someone takes the time to look, really look, and that the looking provides a rich experience.

The second weekend begins

Bucks Open Studios continues and I'm open 12-8 on Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I'm starting a new collage/painting in the studio using a photo I took in the rose garden of Palmerston North, NEw Zealand earlier this year.

Hanging in the domestic gallery

Sleepless night. Early phone call. Sudden clarity that the new paintings need to be in the other room. They need more space around them to shout and leap.

Today is varnishing

Some people still use the French term "vernissage" for their private view just before opening - that's when artists used to varnish their work. I'm doing it today. It's a delicate and quite scary process since no more changes can be made and the surface needs to be exactly right.

so far, so good...

Open Studios preparation

Today's tasks include checking the edges of all the canvases and making sure they are clean and white.

Let's hope the rain stops this afternoon so I can deliver local invitations.

It's published!

The Wonder World for Enid poem is published in The Psychologist magazine. Click here to read the article

And the painting is done

I think... although there appear to be no roses. Here's a glimpse of the corner. The full painting will be revealed on 5th June to mark the opening of Bucks Open Studios. My lucky Newsletter readers get a web preview! Sign up here if you'd like to join us.

Day 3

I turned the sketch book upside down, and the (absence of) shell yields a lovely shape for the painting background