painting, painting, painting, and some print-making

After my last post I knew that somewhere I had old family photos of kayaking on the North Norfolk coast, probably at Bacton or Walcott. My dad’s family had a bungalow in Bacton for summer holidays and used to decamp from Norwich for the whole summer, taking the bath with them, and the maid. (sounds a bit entitled doesn’t it, but managing a family of 4 kids without a washing machine and other mechanisation demanded another pair of hands if you could afford it) This is what my mother told me anyway, she got it from my dad and his family of course. They were keen photographers so we have a few black and white prints from this time, early 1930’s. I found them on my old imac’s hard drive;

there is no record of who these unrecognisable people are, except that there is also a photo of my teenage aunt floating in a big inner tyre ring and she is recognisable, so I imagine that this guy is my grandfather

and these two are her brothers, though which ones it is impossible to tell (there were 3 boys, older than her, but all of the children were born between 1915 and 1919.)

Here are the 3 boys, my dad on the left, Nor in the middle, the eldest, and the tallest by about 10 inches as an adult, and Travers on the right looking innocent and angelic. This all looks very idyllic, but I know they had a very hard time at school, I think my dad was neurodivergent, possibly Nor too, there were terrifying fights in the schoolyard, and the classics teacher, poor guy, had lost his hand in the First World War and had a hook, which he knocked the boys about with. And at home children were to be seen and not heard, with physical punishment of course. My mother related being hit with a walking stick, but never showing tears – too proud!

And one of their stereotypical wire-haired fox terriers on holiday in Bacton. The dog lived with the boys and gave them fleas, slept on dad’s bed, went wandering off where and when it fancied, avoided them when out on the lam.

I started by making some watercolours directly from the photos.

A kayak is a seagoing one person (or sometimes 2) boat developed and used by the Inuit and Yup’ik and Aleut peoples in Arctic waters. Made of wood or bone/ivory covered with sealskin to keep them watertight. These were probably plywood covered with canvas.  Very different in shape from a canoe.

My idea, the one I came home with after seeing the show of paintings by Samoan New Zealander Andy Leleisi’uao “Seeking Homonoialand” at Scott Lawrie, was to put kayaks into the water that reflects the moon and trees in my Findo Gask paintings.

Sometimes I have a weird idea that I just have to go with. This one has resulted in seven paintings …

I started with two really small ones, on panels 5 inches by 7 inches, holding them in my left hand while painting with a palette knife with my right hand .. this Opera Pink from Michael Harding has upped the ante a bit, it looks very tropical.

I love the rather undefined messy effect. Under this layer of paint are at least 2 layers of left-over paint put on various things lying around the studio to use it up.

In between, a visit to Graystone Gallery in Edinburgh for the preview of their Festival show, to see my painting and pose in front of it.

A new canvas, 120 x 100 cm starting its process on the lawn.

Layers and layers using firstly oil sticks and then washes of solvent, and more layers of liquid paint. Because it’s oils it takes a long time to build these layers up, and I spent the time making several smaller paintings, basically researching into how this idea could work out.

this is a chunky wood panel 50 x 50 x 5 cm and I have painted the deep edges or sides. It had been receiving various washes of paint, and had a fine array of pale pinkish irregular stripes from paint runs which were perfect for Scots pine trunks. The Opera pink from Michael Harding for sky and reflections instead of the reds I had been using as an underlay for the first set of Findo Gask, and a lavender colour, which changes the atmosphere. Is it a tropical lake or a Scottish lochan? There might be waterlilies.

Discovering new ways of painting trees with a palette knife.

Meanwhile Bims enjoys the heat as long as she doesn’t have to go out walking in it.

The echinaceas are drawing in a lot of white tailed bumblebees. My neighbour Margaret had a colony nesting in the clematis in her fence for a couple of years, and I saw masses round the corner on two parallel hedges of cotoneaster in flower earlier this year.

my pot garden in front of the ex-garage is doing well. Something nice to look out of the studio window at.

Another chunky panel with less done to it, but I prefer keeping the landscape and having the kayak really small, so this will become something else.

Redoing another one, this is an uncradled piece of ply.

Like this. 30 x 30 cm.

A gorgeous walk on a sun-and-cloud breezy coolish day, from Dairsie round to Pitcullo and Pittormie and back.

The beech trees on the road down to Pitcullo in all their summer leaf.

A bit different to paint on, a canvas, 40 x 40 cm, and quite a lot of impasto and expressive abandon.

Although this bit was more deliberate.

Then I brought this big ugly thing indoors,

with a little friend. But I did another layering and calmed down most of it with runny white/pink paint. And it sat there drying while I did more smaller ones, and was still tinkering …

We went to the beach again, and this is just beach creatures, birds and sand collaborating on a very pleasing drawing.

Working into another canvas, the sister of the little friend, which I actually liked a lot, only it was acrylic and very abstract, so I was trying to incorporate some of its essence into the new painting. Writing messages to myself too.

A lot of the creamy white central part is still there as a shimmer, white cloudy sky reflecting, or the reflection broken up.

The horizontal ripple shimmer in this case.

Leaning up against the big canvas which has now acquired a green scarf, put on with crumpled newspaper, over a coarser unprimed linen piece I had stuck on while adding layers of primer. Not painting linen, but a remnant from a yellow linen shirt I made myself.

Then I had the idea, directly taken from the small painting, to pour these lines of solvent and white paint trickle over the green. Gravity helping out.

and yet another smaller painting happening …

The two in some kind of dialogue.

At this point I can see some of how the big painting is going to turn out, because there’s a bit of collage that is very boat shaped.

And maybe I can start to put some tree kind of marks in. But inevitably ending up scraping off, solvent pouring and interfering with marks I’ve made that I don’t like –

but hey, Hetty Haxworth to the rescue,  Lucy and I had a day doing drypoint printing at Ladybank with her. I knew I wanted to keep pushing at this subject

so I took my sketchbook with the drawing I did at Findo Gask about 15 months ago. With a transparent acrylic sheet as a plate, you can trace a drawing or whatever directly onto it with the engraving tool.

I elaborated from the original drawing, but all the elements were there.

First attempt, quite nice but not enough mood.

This is better, I have left more ink on the plate. Basically you can do monotype effects over the drypoint drawing.

Like this. The lines are leftover ink from the previous print, and I have painted the colours in with a small brush directly onto the plate.

And here there is a mix of the remnants of the monotype (not cleaned off) and more ink applied. A really successful day, and a shattering one! Lucy also got some beautiful results but I don’t have images of them.

So now I knew pretty much how to tackle this … in progress …

I worked over and around those pieces of collage, they are not completely lost.

the little deer. And lots of spotty texture.

Kept most of this along the bottom just as is.

allowed some of the collage in the middle to show through too –

and here it is, all 120 x 100 cm of it.

Now what to paint!

I have some sewing to do but the kitchen is not available for that just at the moment, I am touching up the skirting board that got mangled four years ago when the flooring was done. Eventually dear Dave came and filled and sanded it, and I decided summer was the time to do the retouching …. and summer is nearly over. Amazing that the original paint is still usable almost 6 years later. The cupboard fronts needed a bit of attention too, after he single-handedly replaced the old counter with beautiful oak but very heavy pieces of it. Poor Dave has been ill again with chest infections and has not been able to carry on with the bathroom yet.

summer goes back and forth – last week it was hot, this morning it’s cold and rainy again. So grateful for the rain.