It’s typical that on a week when I’ve got so much say, I’ve got so little time to say it! So now I’ve set the scene, let’s rattle through the latest news!
Atelier Open Private View
The Atelier by the Sea Open Exhibition had its Private View last Thursday night, and what a jolly occasion it was! It was great to see so many people there and I had a lot of lovely chats with people that I very rarely get the opportunity to see or say hello to. Sadly I did an appalling job of documenting the evening, but here are a couple of pictures:
Aside from the obvious treat of seeing my work on show and a little bit of socialising, what was so wonderful was being out on Brighton’s fabulous seafront on a beautiful summer’s evening!
There was such a buzz, not just in the gallery space, which was obviously great, but along the entire seafront. It was a wonderfully life-affirming moment about how lucky we feel to be living in such a wonderful city!
An Instagram-inspired painting
I’m sure that anyone that’s familiar with my work will understand why seeing this post from the wonderfully inspiring Philippa Stanton has me pressing on the ‘save’ button!
The image is from inside the house that Philippa has recently moved to in Cornwall. I immediately knew that I’d love to try to paint this image, but that the time would have to be right! I’ve kept on looking at it, but on this occasion, something inside just seemed to say, ‘let’s do it’.
Here are a few progress shots:
And finally the finished painting:
I’m most grateful to Philippa, not just for the inspiration, but also for the permission to share this painting and for her kind and generous comments about it – in which she said I’d made it look better and more romantic than it is in real life!
Brighton Painting Group
The next meeting of the Brighton Painting Group is on Saturday at Hove Park. We’ll be gathering at the cafe at 10am before dispersing across the park to paint. We’ll reconvee at 2pm back at the cafe to share our work and experiences of the day!
While it’s a beautiful park, it’s not what I’d call my natural subject matter. I had some time off work on Monday (the second hottest of the day of the year ever!) so thought I’d try a little recce to see if I could find anything to inspire me!
Naturally my main priority was to find a view that had some decent levels of contrast that also allowed me to paint standing the deepest shade possible! I think it was my focus on this criteria that lead me to completely overlook the fact that I was setting up right next to bin. On the hottest day of the year ever (to date!).
Aside from the shade (and the aroma the festering contents of the bin), what drew me to the view was the contrast of the light and shade and, in particular the dappled light on the path.
It was a really challenging experience. Painting watercolours in this temperature seems distinctly futile! It’s so difficult to keep the paints wet and to control the moisture of the paper when everything is drying out so ridiculously quickly!
What the conditions did force however, was the need to work at breakneck speed, which is no bad thing!
This certainly isn’t what I’d describe as my proudest moment, but everytime I paint plein air, I feel I learn something new, as well as becoming increasingly comfortable with just setting myself up somewhere and just getting on with some painting without worrying too much about passersby. On this occasion, there weren’t very many people in the park and those that did stop to chat or have a look were all incredibly polite and supportive!
Hopefull the weather will be a little more conducive to painting on Saturday, plus I’ll have much more time to play with so I’m thinking that I might try to do a couple of paintings, and I’m hopeful that at least one of them will be half sheet, which is larger than I usually paint when on location.