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