spring perhaps, then winter again, part 2

On Tuesday (21st March) my car told me it was 14C as I was driving back from our walk at Tentsmuir. But it’s not spring  without chiffchaffs, and I haven’t heard any yet. Normally they arrive in mid-March.

a week ago the nights were so cold the freshwater running onto the beach froze and left these flakes of ice, like huge salt crystals.

I think by next week we may be back to the frosty night or two, but in my garden all my prairie perennials have new shoots above the ground, and the ornamental plum is in flower.

Meanwhile the studio has been less chilly due to the sun coming around and beaming in.

Spring may almost be here – there are new baby coos at Blebo, three at the last visit, and a field of ewes and lambs, although most sheep seem to be waiting for more sunshine – that field always has the earliest.

I am keeping on with work on paper, though the best things always happen in the sketchbooks somehow.

And my photos using the Hipstamatic app are so painterly they have to be feeding into the work.

Although this one of the reedbed at Kinshaldy pools echoes things I have already done, so it’s the other way around.

I found this mysterious and joyful artefact on the beach last week and then on my visit to galleries in Edinburgh by happenstance this ripple piece in found wood

by Adrian McCurdy at the Scottish Gallery echoes it. Or was it the origin of the sand thought?

A beach fort that has survived the winter.

These beach walks are so important for both of us. Glorying in freedom of movement for her, and a space and breath and wonder for me.

And always texture and pattern.

Also in Edinburgh, at the And Gallery, Mary Morrison’s Gazing Heart show was the beach brought into the gallery.

And at the Open Eye gallery this huge Barbara Rae piece, Exit,

full of texture

and colour. This was in her big solo show which was in August. I am never going to go to Edinburgh in August! You really can’t take in a painting like this from book illustrations, so I was very glad to see it.

Fo a couple of weeks before that I had been working on various canvases with the linen and gesso.

and here a new experiment has started, furthering what I did with the yellow and green tree painting.

Elements of a photo I took of Lucy and the scenery in the Trossachs at the beginning of the month, which Hipstamatic had made blue and pink, and I  am quite excited at bringing the human figure back into my work. When I am out for a walk with her and her husband Scott they are often there in the photo as I fall behind while taking pictures.

The finished painting – 100 x 100 cm –

I am trying to keep all the texture and markmaking that I use in the abstracts alive in this one too.

There is paper under here …

and quite a bit of the abstract work underneath, plus some words. I have entered it for the John Moore Painting Prize as Outset/Outer (Lucy at Glen Clachan).

In January we went to Almond bank near Perth, and there were some shots of L&S under a big chestnut, which I am making into a painting.

working in watercolour on the idea

And hoping to transfer some of this translucency to a bigger acrylic – that may be difficult to keep hold of!

but the watercolours are pleasing works in themselves.

Transparency and paint granulation – it works best for me on smooth paper. This is just an old square sketchbook.

Letting the pencil wander a bit.

making a start on this – the canvas that was so badly split in transit, and is the origin of this batch of canvases treated with gesso and fine linen. Really fine linen – for hankies and shirts – but unbleached.

Progression as with the watercolours –

feeling a bit stilted –

so I got out a big “mop” style brush and watered down the paint –

after trying to be too painterly-

so this is quite true to the watercolour in its own way so far

but I will have to experiment a lot more, I think with some gels and media in Frank Bowling sort of way – or even like some parts of the Barbara Rae. Think with colour and texture but keep that transparency and glow.

We shall see ….

meanwhile the Hipstamatic app continues to inspire

and mediate –

present options.

I am continuing the experiments in watercolour

but I haven’t given up abstract either!

there will be a series of these panels

combining collage and paint.

And in the garden where the first things I ever put in, bare-root hellebores, are at last starting to flower.

Postscript – today, Sunday 26th March, there were two chiffchaffs singing at Cambo in East Neuk, so despite the hailstorm shower we received, Spring must be here now!