Blackberry and Apple Crumble

Blackberry and Apple Crumble
43cm x 63cm 17in x 25in
Watercolour.

This is the first of a small series of “pudding paintings”, large watercolours about food. I don’t cook much, David is the chef in our house, but I really enjoy making deserts, or a goodly pudding. So here is an early autumn favorite, blackberry and apple crumble. There was a full moon last night so it is a pudding by the light of the silvery moon.
I would be interested to know what you think of this one as I have been working on my watercolours, trying to push them forwards and I find other peoples opinions very useful. I quite fancy a cookbook illustrated with paintings like this and full of our favorite recipes.

Kitchen Door

Kitchen Door (buildings 6)
It is a bright cloudless morning, not cold but a fair wind blowing. The sort of morning when it seems that all of your senses are heightened, it could almost be possible to hear the lizards scurrying across the stonework. Everything is in sharp focus, the trees, leaves, each stone and even life its self. Energy is defiantly flowing at full force today.

25.5cm x 20.5cm. 10in x 8in.
Watercolour. Painting 019
This painting is for sale, matted and costing:
85 pounds (UK) 170 dollars (USA) and 126 euros (Europe). This includes the postage.

Waxing Gibbus Moon

Blackberry.

SOLD
Blackberry. (landscapes 4)

As readers of my ramblings will know, I often enjoy a peculiar type of time travel. The other day was a particularly vivid moment and I wanted to try and capture it in a painting.
I was picking blackberries; they are rampant and very fruitful this year. I was crouching down amongst the thorns and trying to weave my hand in to retrieve a group of succulent black fruits when I looked up through the tangle of thorny stems to the late summer sky. I was small again, out on a blackberry picnic with my Mum and brothers, a lazy late summer afternoon spent harvesting the bounty of the hedgerows, hands scratched and stained by the thorns and fruits. Everything about it came flooding back in sharp focus, in particular the macro landscape of insects and deep undergrowth, the heat of the sun on my back while I peered into a shaded fairytale world of impenetrable thorns and hidden riches.


25.5cm x 20.5cm. 10in x 8in.
Watercolour . Painting 018

Willows

Garden.

SOLD

Garden. (landscapes 3)

Every now and then the summer comes back. The occasional evening spent around the table in the garden, enjoying a bottle of wine, watching the stars. Sometimes the morning brings enough summer sun to sit outside and paint the remnants of the evening before. Roses have been pruned back in the hope of a second flush during an Indian Summer while the Hydrangeas litter the lush greens with outrageous pinks and purples.



25.5cm x 20.5cm. 10in x 8in.
Watercolour . Painting 017
This painting is for sale, matted and costing:85 pounds (UK) 170 dollars (USA) and 126 euros (Europe). This includes the postage.

Two Paintings

SOLD
Blue Jug and Apple.
24cm x 24cm. 9.4in x 9.4in.
Watercolour.

SOLD

Peaches
26cm x 21cm 10.2in x 8.3in
Watercolour.

Two paintings today that are nothing to do with my 100 painting project.
I have been busy teaching so have some luscious objects set up. I love the colour combination of blues with a dash of crimson in the jug painting and the fuzzy texture of the peaches (which are smelling beautiful and begging to be eaten!)

August Field Feels Like October

Our Daily Bread.

Our Daily Bread. (working life 4)

The baker works through the night, in the still, muffled silence. Everything is soft, the light seems soft, like the dough, yielding slightly then bouncing back. The sounds are soft, as if we are listening through blankets. I don’t know whether it is the flour crumbling everything or the night outside; everyone else’s sleeping dreams clouding the air. Because of these senses I have tried to paint this scene in a soft and glazed way, softening and blurring edges, like looking through clouds, saying to myself a mantra “soft, soft, soft” I sound like a loo roll advert!

25.5cm x 20.5cm. 10in x 8in.
Oil. Painting 016
This painting is for sale:
85 pounds (UK) 170 dollars (USA) and 126 euros (Europe). This includes the postage.

Sea Tea.

SOLD

Sea Tea. (not part of the 100 paintings project)

After the last title, "We Are Changed" you may be forgiven if you thought that I have completely changed my style of painting, I haven't changed, I do these from time to time because I enjoy doing them, simple as that. Good rainy day paintings. Tiny splashes of colour on a grey day. Having tea in a small café on the beach after a cliff top walk. Rain is hitting the windows but inside is warm and steamy as our wet clothes begin to dry. Hot drinks and interesting china, cliffs and stormy seas.

6cm x 9cm. 2.5in x 3.5in.
Watercolour, ink, gouache.
This painting is for sale, framed.
Dimensions when framed are 10cm x 12cm or 4in x 5in.30 pounds (UK) 61 dollars (USA) and 45euros (Europe). This includes the postage.

We Are Changed.

SOLD

We Are Changed. (not part of the 100 paintings project)

Sometimes there is a cross over between paintings and illustrations and this is the result. I call them dream paintings. They have soupcons of found poetry which make slightly surreal stories, wafts of iconic imagery that weave together to make these pictures.
Over the years many of these kind of pictures have gone off to live with other people and each one has “spoken” to their new owners. I really enjoy that. Also I thoroughly enjoy painting them as to make them is a kind of meditation, a wander in the deep forest of my mind. Fortunately, for me, not too many monsters lurk there and it is possible to take a picnic and have a day out!

21cm x 28cm. 8in x 11in.
Watercolour, ink, gouache.

Cider Making.

Cider Making. (working life 3)

Inside the cider shed, it is cold and wet but the air is filled with the smell of over ripe apples, like autumn in essence. The feeling here is old, ancient and enduring, about harvest and celebration to come, putting up and readying for the winter, the turning of the year.
I must be feeling wintry with subjects like this.

25.5cm x 20.5cm. 10in x 8in.
Oil. Painting 015
This painting is for sale:85 pounds (UK) 170 dollars (USA) and 126 euros (Europe). This includes the postage.

Soy Jug and Rice Bowl.

Soy Jug and Rice Bowl. (not part of the 100 paintings project)

Just for fun on a rainy afternoon I am getting lost in colours and patterns. I found this soy jug today in a junk shop so added it to my collection of still life objects. Actually a rainy afternoon in the middle of summer does hold quite a lot of pleasures. It is good to come inside, make a nice cup of tea, put the radio on and enjoy a little painting. The colours seem brighter when outside is so green and grey and wet!
It is so horrible I may even light the fire, in August!



6cm x 9cm. 2.5in x 3.5in.
Watercolour, ink, gouache.
This painting is for sale, framed.
Dimensions when framed are 10cm x 12cm or 4in x 5in.

30 pounds (UK) 61 dollars (USA) and 45euros (Europe). This includes the postage.

Sunday Morning.

SOLD

Sunday Morning. (not part of the 100 paintings project)

Sunday morning in a friend’s kitchen. She has been cleaning as we are all having Sunday lunch together. The fruit has been taken out of the glass bowl so that it could be washed. Lunch is cooking slow and fragrant in the oven, sunlight is flooding into the dark kitchen through the flowers in a vase by the window, skimming the apples lined up on the newly scrubbed table and filling the room with the slow dance of Sunday morning.

33cm x 46cm. 13in x 18in.
Oil.

Morning Light.

SOLD

Morning Light. (buildings 5)

Today’s painting was the demonstration that I did for my visiting painters. It is an unusual process talking your way through a painting but it can be very useful to think about what you are going to do and why. The morning light was highlighting the plants in the garden and the vine on the end of the barn. Doing this made me realise just how important the effects of light are for me when approaching a painting. I love backlighting and the drama it creates and the unexpected textures and patterns that appear.
Finally we are being blessed with some steady summer weather when it is only possible to work outside for the first few hours of the day and later on one seeks out inviting pools of inky shade.


25.5cm x 20.5cm. 10in x 8in.
Watercolour. Painting 014This painting has already sold.

demo in action!

Summer Days.

Summer Days. (seascapes 3)

A little family meandering along the beach with buckets looking for treasure. The little ones stopped every now and then to collect another precious thing. It is a beautiful life. That is as good as it gets, wandering along the beach with your mum, finding wonder in the world, knowing that she has your lunch safely in her backpack and, even more exciting, it is a picnic! Summer holidays, stay with us forever I think. Maybe that is why the beach brings with it such a deep sigh of calm.


25.5cm x 20.5cm. 10in x 8in.
Watercolour. Painting 013
This painting is for sale, matted and costing:85 pounds (UK) 170 dollars (USA) and 126 euros (Europe). This includes the postage.

Kite on The Beach

Lane

Cooking.

Cooking. (working 2)

This is David’s domain; he is as obsessed with cooking as I am with painting. He was mincing meat to make a Bolognese sauce when I saw this pose. Light pouring in through the open doorway, reflected shadow on the copper pan and eggs and tomatoes creating lovely shapes in the foreground. I really like the indistinct quality that looking into the light gives, it forces you to look at the shapes that are of that moment rather that the shapes as you assume them to be. It also bounces off surfaces and reflects colours back into the shadows. So here we are, a recipe…take one solid chef, add in some shiny and some smooth objects, a pinch of bright colour, shine sunlight through it all then let it peculate through a paint brush for about two hours until nearly set…Voila! A slice of domestic working life.

25.5cm x 20.5cm. 10in x 8in.
Oil. Painting 012
This painting is for sale:85 pounds (UK) 170 dollars (USA) and 126 euros (Europe). This includes the postage.

Sunday Morning.

Sunday Morning. (cafes and bars 2)

A peaceful Sunday morning at Lamore Plage, just outside Lorient. There is a good Sunday market and fine coffee to be had in the cafes. This painting happened because I was interested in the greys, the amount of greys that are apparent on such a soft misty morning, the lady reading her book with her grey hair almost blending into the colour of the sea. I love watching people in cafes and I have a hope that when I am old I will sit in cafes, sketching or enjoying a good book along with a sublime cup of coffee, ultimate luxury!


25.5cm x 20.5cm. 10in x 8in.
Oil. Painting 011
This painting is for sale:85 pounds (UK) 170 dollars (USA) and 126 euros (Europe). This includes the postage.

Sunlight and Rain

Sunlight and Rain (landscape 2)

One of the good things to come out of this summer of rain and storms is the dramatic cloud formations that fill the sky. Towers of fairy tale proportions, soft landscapes formed from billowing pillows of mist and rain. Some days the sky appears bigger, arched overhead like a domed ceiling, massive and impressive, an instant Sistine Chapel. Then the clouds part to let fantastic shafts of lights through which highlight the impossibly green fields.


25.5cm x 20.5cm. 10in x 8in.
Oil. Painting 010
This painting is for sale:85 pounds (UK) 170 dollars (USA) and 126 euros (Europe). This includes the postage.