CEDARS HALL, WELLS. Fantastic architecture, I feel so privileged to be one of the artists exhibiting in this new space

COLOUR IN A CONTEMPORARY SPACE

Lisa Wright, Susanna Lisle and Kate Noble

Three SouthWest painters are showing their work in the new Cedars Hall building. These three painters work responds in colour and mood to a fantastic light filled contemporary space which reflects the surrounding landscape.  Lisa Wright's portrait glows out of a vibrant emerald background and Susanna Lisle's work graphically captures a tense winter tangle of white and deep green. Kate Noble's scaled-up artichoke, suspended at eye level is a dazzle of brilliant blue and green.

Chosen for WAC 2016

Chosen for WAC 2016, Wells Art Contemporary

the Road to Bath 2016, oil on calico on canvas with resin

more high colour and shine

I have been asked to submit something for an exhibition called FEAST to co-incide with Wells Food Festival in October, at Heritage Couryard Studios. A combination of water melon and luscious tulips, scarlets, pinks and vibrant orange, using oil paint, water colour and inks and resin.

Cocomero and Tulip

INDIA an exhibition of paintings at Heritage Courtyard, WELLS from August 11th

I have been working on making colour as high as possible to reflect those fabric colours that are seen in Gugerat and Rajasthan. I have been using inks, watercolours, and resin. AND I think I have succeeded in getting that brightness, using puppets as subject matter.

Lotus Cafe 40x30cms

Kanjari Woman40x30cms

Banjari Man40x30cms

Bho[pa Woman 40x30cms

Dungawar Hunt 30x40cms

Pushkar Shepherd 30x40cms

Bandit Queen 40x30cms

Exhibition with Heather Jane Wallace open Tuesday through Saturday, 10am to 4pm 

tel 07894701734

www.katenoble.co.uk

What We All Fear - new painting Arborization Goes Quickly

Arborization Goes Quickly

I dont know whether this painting explains itself well enough, the ageing brain, from images of atrophy of axioms at a course I did on introduction to neuroscience in Oxford recently, gradual loss of neurons, in Alzheimer's arborization goes quickly.

Arborization Goes Quickly 2016 oil on calico on board 120x100cms

Bath Society of Artists Annual exhibition 2016

The exhibition opens on Saturday 23 April. There were queues around the block, in the freezing cold and drizzle to enter. I am exhibiting another India painting, Orchha Sunrise.

Orchha Sunrise 2016, oil on calico on board 110x80cms £1650

Exhibition of 2 Painters at Red Brick Building, Glastonbury

The exhibition is up, and the opening was a great success. It was wonderful to see so many people there. Meanwhile, here are 2 unhung paintings, for which there was not enough space.
One could of course be a homage to Howard Hodgkin, whose Indian paintings I have found most inspirational.
I have now made the painting of the Woman at Udiaphur much more lively, and will send it in to the Millfield Open 2016. The paint surface now works with epoxy resin

Another India Painting, the Pink House at Poshina, Gugerat at dawn

I am having a show of my India paintings at the Red Brick Building in Glastonbury starting on April 5th, sharing it with Philippa Threlfall who has a fine line in nostalgic paintings of northern workers fro the 1960's, workers whose industries have in many cases now become defunct. Pure frustration at a painting not going well, so it became a Hodgkin Pastiche....

Pink House Poshina 2016 oil on calico on board 110x80cms

Hodgkin Pastiche, 2016 oil on calico on canvas 40x30cms

ON SHORTSIGHTEDNESS.

I had my first pair of glasses when I was 5, a massive -3.50Dioptres, eventually landing up with great heavy lenses at -11D. Then contact lenses for years, and eventually bilateral cataract surgery leading to a blissful unbespectacled period of time, followed by the partial loss of sight in one eye and a return to glasses. But I love my small clear world, which I have had all my life. My paintings are clear, because as I use photographs and sketches for reference, and paint on a canvas, everything within that space of under a metre is clear. Beyond that all is a haze. So I want to celebrate that clarity whilst I can. I sometimes use the permanent double image that I have to make paintings, as I feel it makes for interest ‘copy’. I think that this is the reason why I cannot think in abstract terms, my attempts at abstract paintings have been meaningless to me: my brain needs to find a reality – the fusiform gyrus is strong. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20617881)

Poshina Pond 2016 oil on calico on board 110x80cms

Orchha Dawn, 
Madhya Pradesh 2016 oil on calico on board 110x80cms

Rajasthan and Gugerat Paintings

I visited India in December 2015. I have an exhibition in April at the Red Brick Building in Glastonbury so a lot of preliminary sketches, and feel that the series can now start - a series of paintings, oil on calico on board coming up.

Dusk Road 2015, oil on calico on board 110x80cms

  Rajasthan Motorway 2016, oil on calico on board 110x80cms

Red Palace Dungawar 2016, oil on calico on board 110x80cms

Old paintings revisited in October and November

Half The Seed of Europe, One by One 2014-5 oil on linen 163x131cms

I have been re-thinking some old work which I still like. firstly, 'Half the Seed of Europe, One by One', where I simplified out the landscape, and now works well, so well that it has now been sold. An angel flies over Godney graveyard, its light blinding the youth...or is he just on his mobile phone?

I have also revisited a work from 2012 Soul to Sole, the Ecstatic Greeting of Two Women in  a Shoe Shop in Berlin. The Shoes have become jazzier, and the hard edges of the boxes and women softened.

 Soul to Sole, the Ecstatic Greeting of Two Women in  a Shoe Shop in Berlin, oil on calico on board, 120x100cms

Somerset ArtWeeks 2015 Over

Fabulous hang of my work at Shakespeare Glass, Langport. Kate has displayed it so sensitively, so that the objects and the pictures work perfectly together

Back to Landscape

July has been a quiet month, and I have gone back to landscape, remembering the eclipse of 4th April this year, which I photographed as a reflection. The abandoned Moorlands Factory, now surrounded by Howdens and Screwfix and other small industrial units is a haunting place at night.

Moorlands and the Eclipse 2015, oil on calico on board 120x100cms

Making a copy

My daughter wanted this, so I have done it as a present. I've never made a copy before, of something I have done. Quite difficult, and hard not to 'pick' at it.

Stanley as Goya's Grandson, 2015
oil on calico on canvas 30x40cms

Homage to Piero

Sheridan Tandy said that my work reminded him of Piero della Francesca. Nothing better could be said. So here are x6 family members wearing headgear from Masaccio, Piero, Ghirlandaio and Georges de la Tour.  Against a jet sky.

Homage to Piero 2015 oil on calico on canvas 85x61cms

A new project, back to portraiture

Today 24th May, all finished, quite big and brash and bright, but I think it works

'I Am The Family Face' 2015 oil on canvasses 193x97cms

My 2 months spent investigating Goya's work, his portraiture, has led me to starting a new project, another family portrait group. By simplifying Goya's markmaking, this is translating into a new way of looking at portraits for me. There will be 21 in the group eventually - the age range from 1 to 102 years.(Ani born 2013 and Nellie born 1913). The first group was called 'I Am The Family Face, Flesh Perishes, I Live On' Thomas Hardy. This second must surely have the same title.

I am the Family Face, Flesh Perishes, I Live On' 2012

Goyescas continued

Tomorrow is International Women's Day. I am going to speak to people at the town hall in Wells, along with other local artists. I have added to my Goyescas the Duchess of Alba clothed and naked, which I though might make for interesting observations from people.

Mayas Clothed and Naked after Goya 2015, oil on calico on
canvas 40x30cms each

February, more Goyescas and after Stubbs and Sasnal

I am finding a way of making my paintings as simple as possible, with intended rather than random brush strokes.

Dona Isabel de Porcel after Goya 2015 oil on canvas 30x40cms

After Stubbs and Sasnal 2015 oil on canvas 40x30cms

New Paintings for a New Year

A new lot of paintings coming up, influenced by a visit to Wilhelm Sasnal's exhibition at Sadie Coles, and my love of Goya. I have made up a lot of small canvasses, 30x40cms with calico covering the canvas. Here are the first three:

 (Goyesca3) 2015 30x40cms oil on calico

another Goyesca, 30x40cms oil on calico

New Year 2015

January night, The moon on Tuesday was fantastic, enormous and bright as I was driving at 6.30pm. Half an hour later the magic was gone.   The pollarded willows look remarkably like growing axons of neurons...axons carry messages to the next neuron and also nutrients etc to the axon tips..... so they are busy transporting important messages etc.  so the willow has a trunk which is active and pushing upwards to the night sky. A visit to Wilhelm Sasnal's exhibition at Sadie Coles made me see how important using the quality of the surface is, oil on calico on board, thin paint and simpler areas.

January Night 2015, oil on calico on board, 100x120cms