back to the blog

well here I am again and it’s more than 18 months since I posted. Here is Bims on the beach at Tentsmuir this week. So things have not changed too much.

it’s October 11th and a few trees are already withdrawing the green from their leaves. This beautiful sweet chestnut is in the old orchard path between the leat and the Eden burn in Cupar.

in my garden the asters are coming into their own. some of these were bought as culled plants from Cambo gardens during covid, others grown from seed, bought from Chiltern seeds, so I seem to have 3 kinds, here, a more pinky one, and a longer petalled one as well as the huge tall thing that flops every which way with smaller flowers.

the yellow rudbeckia seem quite happy and have increased a lot from last year. I bought them as small plants from a pavement-side sale in aid of charity In Cupar.

the echinaceas are mostly just seedheads now, though still quite colourful. I am collecting trees to keep small – proto bonsai. the garden has been a big inspiration for my paintings this year, after I made one big painting of it last year. Tell me you’ll come home. it’s 120 x 100 cm.

It’s now in the collection of the University of Edinburgh’s School of Sport and Education, on their Holyrood campus, hanging in the main building’s gathering area.

here is the latest one, i haven’t got a title for it yet, it’s 100 x 100 cm, lots and lots of layers.

some details – the visible far off trees and fields. Cupar is in a valley, so there are vistas between and over rooftops.

the kind of textured surface I like on my paintings – similar to on my old ceramics – made by pouring solvent to cut through a wet layer of paint to what is underneath – which has been spread on with a handful of crumpled newspaper.

I do love painting these echinaceas

the proto-bonsai have become this rather decorative leaf growth from an area of deeply cut paint.

here you can see the painting continues around the edge on the sides of the painting.

love-in-the-mist represented here.

that’s me in the greenhouse with the faithful watering cans

and sunflowers along the back fence.

back at Lucy and Scott’s, where i stayed a couple of nights last week after a minor procedure in day surgery. B decided I needed to be pinned down. no more arbitrary disappearances.

a friend sent me this, he took it in 2006, almost 20 years ago.

19 years later – in front of another garden painting this summer.

and I’ll end with more photos of Tentsmuir and Bims