Peterborough Artists Open Studio

The Peterborough Artists Open Studios weekends have almost come around once more.

If you had told me 10 years ago that I would have ever considered exhibiting I would has answered 'Don't talk rubbish'.
This will be my second year exhibiting with my friend Prue Pye in her Home and Studio in Atherston Avenue, Peterborough.

This is our entry in the current 2008 catalogue

Prue will be painting in a marque in Central Park next weekend the 28th & 29th June at the Peterborough Festival event as part of the Open Studios 'Meet The Artist'. This event helps to raise the awareness of the Artist Open Studios among the general public.

New Abstracts

These three new abstracts acrylic canvasses are now finished (well I think so anyway) I've been working on them for a few months now. I need them to be finished ready for the Peterborough Open Studios weekends in July. I've used allot of red paint again. I just love red!

Life drawing

The 'Life Drawing' classes at The Stamford Art Center have become a Thursday morning 'must go to' for Prue and me. She's always enjoyed Life drawing and skillfully turns out really good pieces. From a nervous shaky start I'm beginning to regain my drawing skills. Life drawing takes quite allot of concentration to get the form, shape and texture of flesh to be half believable.The classes are very well attended as this form of art class are few and far between in the area. The class next week will be the last one until the Autumn but luckly another tutor has quickly arranged another set of sessions to help fill the gap. I wish they would find a desent couch for the model though! I really feel for them on the make shift affair they put together.

Life painting the Nude

Lucian Freud's 1995 life size canvas of Sue Tilly, a Job Center Supervisor, has just sold in New York for a phenomenal record $33.6 million. The painting called 'Benefits Supervisor Sleeping' has been nicknamed rather cruelly 'Fat Sue'. This lunch time Sue an attractive 51 year old lady was interviewed live on ITV News and objected 'on air' to the female news reader calling her 'Fat Sue'. The fleshy light, shade and character on voluptuous curves are far more interesting than those on stick thin modelsAlthough I'm not a great great lover of Freud's work I do appreciate the technique and the style he uses in his paintings. Although I feel some of his paintings are cruelly real like his portrait of the Queen.

Freud's painting makes my humble pencil drawings done over the last two weeks at a 'Life Class' in the Stamford Arts Center look extremely insignificant. But then, this is my first time at attempting Life drawing. I was nervous at first, not because of a naked bodies, I've seen a few of those over the years! but I didn't think my drawing would be good enough.

After the first class I found I had thoroughly enjoyed it and I had produced two pencil drawings, The first one not good, but then I found my 'eye' and made another better attempt with the second pose. Our model was actually covered all over his back with tattoos.................I left them out. He was a really interesting character

The second week we had a female model. My position in the room for her first pose produced a strange drawing I didn't like but the second pose I managed a much better attempt.

Getting the dimensions of the body and limbs correct and getting the pose to be believable take me a fair bit of concentration. I have to think carefully about 'negative space' and that helps me to get limbs in the right position.

White Tendrills

I started to expirement with texture before I went to Canada last September. That was when I started this trio. I started by using polyfiller. It wasn't very sucessful and difficult to work with.
In Vancouver I discoved texturing paste at the Opus Art store on Granville Island.

Brushes to paint with

What do you paint when inspiration has gone to sleep. Well, the paint brushes of course!
This water colour study was done in Prues studio. Oh and they're her brushes as well.

more figs

It was a morning for painting with Prue today. Casting around for something to paint I decided to finish this water colour I started back in November whilst I was in Canada. The background and the figs were almost finished before I brought it home so I had to finish painting the apple from memory. Much easier when the item your paintings in front of you!

water colour on rough paper

Oh yes, and I ate the figs as they were so ripe the juice was seeping out of them

Another red picture

I don't know what it is about red paintings but I just love them and am instantly drawn to them. I saw a red textured abstract painting in the Vancouver Culture Crawl last November that I could have bought If only I had enough dollars left and a suitcase big enough to get it home in.
The alternative was to attempt to recreate a similar one of my own.

This is my effort. I think its finished but I need to live with it for a few weeks to be sure. In the mean time I'm doing a second one as the canvases were prepared last September before I went to Canada. The paintings are acrylic on canvas and the base paint is a dark brown. The finished colour's are reds dark brown, black and gold leaf.