Christmas 2013

The light was fading on Christmas Eve as I went into Glastonbury, and thought possibly that my car would not get through the floods.  So I started this yesterday and seem to be 'there' today.

Christmas Floods on East and West Waste 2013
oil on calico on board 120x100cms

Floods at Upper Crannell early 2013

I have been thinking about this period earlier in 2013 when the area was inundated - the original islands emerged, and God's Island was visible (thats what Godney means, ney means island). This painting now seems to be done.

Upper Crannell 2013 oil on linen 150x120cms

Incredible Light

In the kitchen, a red towel flung over a chair to dry, and the geraniums vermillion behind, the sun streaming through at 8am creating dramatic shadows.  This is how I see it; and of course, I am still in Godney, continuing my very local project.  My neighbours Annie and John were over the other day early in the morning, but as yet I cannot get people into this body of work. They MAY come someday.

Incredible Light 2013 oil on linen 150x120cms

Wells Art Contemporary and MA at Bath Spa over - a new painting

Its time, after doing no painting since very early September to start again.  Homage to Stanley Spencer, and a new painting is starting with very lurid artificial flowers, and dark shadows. End of day one -  here goes.  And now, quite a few days later, things are starting to happen, figures are emerging...and then disappearing.

Resurrection of Godney Churchyard

All Roads Lead to Godney

20th August, and I have just had a positive tutorial from Dexter Dalwood, so I am feeling quite good about the work that I shall be hanging for the degree show...he helped me re-arrange it and was interested in the new images, even to the extent of saying that my work had REALLY progressed!  Well, what higher praise can I have than that from one of my painting heroes: that there is really something interesting in the way I have used roads, and that the paintings need to be looked INTO - a small house floating in the sky can seem un-nerving.  'All Roads Lead to Godney': this is the final piece of the series. you have to travel along a motorway to reach anywhere, we are none of us immune from the real world.  This image shows HOW I see: it might be unnerving to some to travel with me.

All Roads Lead to Godney 2013 oil on canvas 163x131cms

Final hang for the MA - now 4 pictures.

MY WONDERFUL STUDIO FOR 3 MONTHS

I Think its Called Something Rude LIke F***

I Think its Called Something Rude LIke F***

I was told the story of an elderly lady who when sitting in the back of the car with her son-in-law driving, looking at the over-brilliant rape seed fields said the above. I really dislike the way the countryside is taken over by this plant in May, and eventually realised after many tries, that a painting would work if seen in the headlights of a car,  (we were coming back from a birthday party by the back roads one night when I realised this).

I Think its Called Something Rude LIke F***
oil on board on canvas 120x100cms

Another View oF El Greco's Tor

I HAD TO RE-DO THIS PAINTING
and as I thought about it, I thought I would paint as I see things, double vision tortion and all
so:
'The Way I See It Is..'

NEW SUBJECT MATTER
13 05 06. and the sun is shining, everything looks clean washed, and so I feel a joyous spring urge for clear colour in the clear air, a willow against a bright sky










13 04 30. Today I feel that I am getting on with El Greco's Tor.  This is what I see from my window, the shining town of white houses around Glastonbury Tor. Sometimes there are storms: this sky came from Toledo. it has been painted in oil  on  a large 164x131cms canvas, & paint using flake white, ivory black, alizarin crimson, prussian blue, lemon yellow and yellow ochre.

El Greco's Tor

Homage to Caspar David Freidrich

x

THE INVENTOR'S SHED

This red shed should emanate energy - a bit like Dr Who's Tardis..what great ideas have been cogitated in this space. another of Godney's 'Monoliths'.

oil on canvas 120x100cms

MURAL - Where the Wild Things Are

this is the life of a jobbing painter - makes me feel joyful!

TOR PICTURE

13 03 04.   Tor picture, as yet un-named, 164x131cms oil on canvas. The trees so brutally pollarded have a first world war trench feeling, but set against a Magritte sky, the atmosphere changes. the trees are shaped like Rodin's Balzac. I started on February 27th thinking about the palette to use and mixing some colours.  In daylight things have changed.  I have decided to use cobalt blue down to pthalo blue in the sky, and ultramarine in the river water:  the mauve in the cloud to be of cobalt and vermillion, following the Sargent pattern of his flesh tints – no alizarin or ultramarine on flesh, and for this none in the sky. Not of course, that this is flesh, but this way the orangey white (vermillion and cadmium lemon) sing more.   Works in the sketch.  The rest to be using alizarin, lemon yellow, ultramarine and vermillion.  No black this time.

GODNEY MONOLITHS

The Bateman Feeding Circle

On an early morning when the sun was burning off the mist, this cattle feeding circle loomed out at me, steaming, making me think of city gas containers. This is the fourth painting in my series for my MA exhibition later this year.











Phil's Digger


When I walk past this abandoned digger, I think of the generations of peat diggers, and the labour in the diggings that has occurred round here for at least 2000years. I shall make smaller paintings of 'monoliths', things I find iconic in the area, paintings measuring120x100cms, and the larger paintings, those 164x130cms to be landscapes

RETURN TO MA STUDIES

I go back to Bath Spa after a long break to finish my MA fine art this September. I intend to make a body of paintings about now, creating a dialogue about how I see the world and my attitude towards it, myself, in that environment. 6 largish paintings measuring about163 x 134cms, and a similar number of smaller ones, 120x100cms, oil on canvas, or calico on board to exhibit in an appropriate space. I am greatly influenced by William Sasnal’s paintings seen in London in 2012.. He appears to do a lot of preparatory work, so that when he eventually makes a brush stroke, it is often a virtuoso, ‘zenned’ as in Chinese watercolour painting – the breath of the stroke is visible. Other painters that I have been researching are Josef Albers, (for his ‘Interaction of Colour’) Rosie Snell and Alex Katz, (for their reductionism), Dan Hays, (for his understanding of the phenomology of colour) and Gerhard Richter, (for his catholic approach to painting)

Putting Godney on the Map 2012 164x133cms oil on canvas

Gods Island  2012     164x134cms      oil on canvas

Boris and Igor 2013     164x134cms      oil on canvas