the end of summer

What does one expect of summer in the UK? Hard to tell, in Scotland we had a week of slight heat at the end of June and the rest has been quite cool, but comfortable for walking the dog. If there’s any sun she lags on hills, not striding out at all. When we do have heat waves we get up really early and brave the ticks in the wood. (They seem to get up early too)

The garden has been very happy with all the showers and downpours and sun in between. I have a glut of runner beans, whereas last year I hardly gave any away. Ditto courgettes. The two plants are enormous and overcrowding the bit of salad leaf sowing I did with odds and ends of half used seed packets.

And the tomatoes are doing quite nicely in the greenhouse. I used some “extra strong” farm manure this year, which is probably why the plants are so enormous without producing a massive amount of courgettes. Or they like the clay soil perhaps.

I bought three of these, a peachy pink, the mauvey blue in the photo on the crate, and yellow gold. They are ensconced in the front of the greenhouse. Although the front garden has more sun, it seems to be a very harsh environment.

So a bit of garden celebration seemed apt. Hearing a conversation on Radio 3 about a piece of music called Cavatina at Midnight (Cecilia McDowall 2008) set me off, a homage both to that beautiful slow movement in Beethoven’s quartet in Bb Major, Op 130, and to the nightingale in Keats’ poem, as well as the first live broadcast of birdsong in 1924, in which the cellist, Beatrice Harrison, played well-known songs in nocturnal duet with a nightingale in her garden. I did start with a large string instrument in the middle of it, but that got defeated in a battle with a garden chair.

It was painted over a large mostly yellow abstract, and the yellow stuff underneath helped a lot. I didn’t have a real plan for this painting, except that I had made a couple of watercolour sketches in the garden, so I was referring to those in my head, and I just sketched in the basics from those first.

I do find it helps to make another small painting at the same time, so I did this from indoors, as another night painting. Only 8 x 10 inches, a gessoed board which also had originally had something else, a painting of sweet peas in the kitchen, mostly blue and pink. Quite helpful colours. The roller blind being that blue!

I enjoyed painting objects for a change.

I love watering cans. I once did a cardigan with watering cans embroidered over it, from a collection of old ones in a book about a beautiful country house in France. And I made a few ceramic ones – I still have this one.

Although I don’t have any exciting old ones, even this blue plastic one is fun to paint.

The little bistro table is the one in my garden in Bale, fancier than the one I bought this summer with its two chairs.

which are dull grey. perfectly ok but not great for my painting. But they made good models, and I did paint them from life. The shape is quite tricky.

Still a bit unresolved at this point. The chairs are dancing, but what about the area above them?

Collage came to my rescue, I pushed the whole area back with more paint, and added an extra section to the greenhouse, knocking out some of the fuss around its roof, and putting even more stars in. In fact you can only see the main constellations on a clear night, but this is a re-imagination of my garden at midnight.

Good old wrapping paper again. And I knocked out the bits of garden each side of the greenhouse to something vaguer and hopefully more magical.

The next day when it had dried I put a coat of clear glaze on, and then feeling it was a bit strident with the blue and black, I did some more glazing with a transparent red over some of it. the yellow “title” at the top has Cavatina at midnight scratched into it. So now I have put it away in the shed, and I’ll submit it to something and see!

After that was done I popped into Edinburgh to catch this exhibition at the Scottish Gallery of Elizabeth Blackadder’s paintings.

They ranged in date across her lifetime, some having been bought at auction, others were still in her studio at the time of her death aged 89, two years ago.

I had never seen much of her work, so it was a real treat.

To get close up and look at her mark-making,

as well as the wider scope – landscapes and oils, when she was mostly known for the flower and cat paintings in watercolour.

Yes there were some of those, but they have a kind of awkward elegance that makes them much more interesting than they sound.

In oil paint she was a confident maker of abstraction and pattern from objects and landscapes.

and a great colourist.

Just a shame these gold (or silver) frames really don’t do the work justice.

I really enjoyed looking at them from close up.

as always –

You just don’t see the details in the books.

The shell at the bottom of this painting is deliciously rendered with these fine but quite loose pale lines.

Looking at this Bonnard, one can see his influence (and Matisse) I am sure, in the flattening of perspective, and the positioning of areas of colour and pattern. A lot here for me to learn. A lot of paint to fill my head up with and take home.

Other influences ….

This abstract painting, by Karl Beilik, a London painter, for it’s fluidity and colour, shapes and mark-making …

and a whole huge retrospective in Australia, of paintings by Elisabeth Cummings, whose book has gone out of print .. another Elisabeth, in her 80’s, still painting en plein air in the bush, and making these wonderful really big paintings in her studio.

back to Cupar …

strong-smelling sweetpeas

honey-scented heather hillsides

too many photos

and more work on this one, from a walk in November up and down Birnham Hill near Dunkeld.

A way to go with it since I put it on one side in June.