Fall Colours

At this time of year in the north east we enjoy a blast of colour courtesy of the forest trees which  turn all shades of yellow and red glowing against the sky. Summer grasses have turned golden and rustle on the wind.

When weather and time permit, I'm out the door anticipating the possibility of recording images during this time. Working with paint and brushes poses many problems but it is the speed of working in this way that attracts me.

The speed of work required just to keep up with the sun is an art in itself. The gesture drawing technique I learned in school to capture models changing poses every twenty or thirty seconds comes in very handy. It is a very physical process and demands full attention and quick reflexes. So here I was standing in a marsh in about a foot of water just at the top of what I call Fenerty Brook. The temperature was about plus two in the sun and it was late afternoon, light and temperature are changing very quickly. My gestures are reduced to stabs and scrapings but I was glad to be there all the same, taking it all in.

Studio

As a student learning and unlearning painting, hours were spent translating a three dimensional world onto a two dimensional surface. Recently, I found a book at a local second hand store, published as a show catalouge for an exhibition at the Tate Gallery in London, England. Fifty cents bought a read through some of the ideas expressed in the classes of the seventeenth century artist JMW Turner. Who, it turns out was also a lecturer on the subject of perspective. His stories reveal some of the roots of practice in early European studios and contemporary ideas and methods that he himself developed to measure and quantify space.