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