Painting again

I have been back in the studio today. Painting!

I managed about two hours of work, but I was feeling the pain even before I stopped.

I'm glad I made the effort though, it's nice to get back to it. I'm suffering back pain after the session, but at least I was able to produce some reasonable work. The pain shows I'm stretching and pushing the muscles, which will be beneficial in the long run. It took me three days to recover from last Friday's Physio, he really worked on my lower back area and the saying no pain - no gain means I'm getting a lot of pain while I'm being sorted out.........

I let myself loose today, using a knife to create a painting -- which I hadn't done for years, but it allowed me to work quickly and express myself without worrying too much about where the work was going. It is a smallish triptych, 3 - 16 by 12 inch canvases.

The scene is towards Roundstone in Connemara. I purlioned some of Christine's Oil paint to create it. Her paints contain a lot more filler than mine do, and I couldn't afford to use this amount of my paint -- I laid it on thick!

I enjoyed it so much I did a second 14 by 10, also a painting from my Connemara sketchbook.

Now I just have to figure what to do with them.

The Arts in South Dublin.

I spent this morning at a South Dublin Arts consultation meeting. What struck me most was the lack of complaints arising from the last five year strategy. All seemed to realise that a lot was achieved by the Arts office over the period. There was discussion as to what else was needed, gaps in the system and what we felt was needed as artists and facilitators. There seemed to be a fairly good consensus from most contributors, so much so that some who were asked for their view stated that their ideas were already there added by previous speakers.
There was an idea that struck a chord with many of the individual artists (as opposed to the arts organisations) to have a 'local' social networking site for the arts. This will allow us to discuss items of importance offer some mentoring or support, organise collaborative projects or just arrange get-togethers. A simple idea that has been missed even though many of us use social networking already. There is a move towards a forum/regular get-together starting in September facilitated by the Arts office.

The Arts are looking bright in South Dublin.

Personally, I had my second visit to the physiotherapist this evening. Hopefully Iwill be improved enough to start work soon. I've an itchy paintbrush, it's a pity about the body that will use it.

I have started Physiotherapy...

I am paying someone to half kill me with pain, physio is a lot like S&M... LOL!
However it seems to have reduced my 'chronic' pain considerably. I'll know by how much in the morning. I am hoping I may be fit to paint in a week or so, it will be a relief as I'm getting rather annoyed with myself and the lack of work.

I have been looking at http://coppermine-gallery.net with a view to using it on my re-design of my website. A friend has used it on a website he built here http://www.irishdebs.ie/cpg15x/thumbnails.php?album=1 it is based on php script. What I like about it is the fact that it is a searchable Gallery, so visitors can look for work by date, price or particular subjects. This will save me creating different galleries on the site, I will examine the system coding to see how easy it is to adapt over the next few weeks, and of course check my current hosting will handle the php, the script for the process is 37mb. I am not sure how this will effect the amount of bandwith usage, so I'll check this out.

It's July, Holiday time for all school kids...

In the meantime, I'm still on enforced holiday with neck pain and lack of movement. I'd love to get back to my work but I can't concentrate on it. If I can't concentrate I'm only wasting my time trying.
I've been filling in time with a little bit of Web designing, and watching the world cup. With the Final getting close I'll have to find something else to occupy my time if I am not fit for physiotherapy soon. It is quite annoying, as, with all this hot weather I would be able to work quite fast. I'm missing all this good drying weather, I know that oils dry by oxidisation rather than evaporation, but heat and dry weather still make a huge difference in the drying time. But apart from the aches I cannot even hold my palette in comfort (without pain) and I'm too conscious of the pain to be able to ignore it.

I considered going up to Sligo to look at our cottage last week, but even travelling short distances in a car or the Van is very uncomfortable and painful. I am not quite confined to the house, but I think twice about the need to travel somewhere and don't as a rule go too far.