Autumn is upon us....

Summer has reached it's evening with the end of August.  Like on Lough Owel, pictured below.

I took this photo coming back from our latest trip to Sligo.  I'm working on a plan or work-up for a painting of a Lough Mask landscape for a commission and found this on my camera.  I'd forgotten I had taken this shot but it expresses the calm slow end to a summers day.  The light struggling to creep through the hovering clouds, with the wind ripples almost totally disappeared from the surface of the water as if they too were off to bed for the night...
It's how I feel at the moment, realising summer has all but gone, and winter is on the horizon.

Summer sunshine

I'm still on sabbatical...
I haven't lifted a brush in an age, but to be honest the break has been good for me.  I have a few ideas swirling around, mainly to do with our future plans and needs.  This means that I couldn't really get involved in my work to any extent anyway, as I find it hard to compartmentalise.  In the meantime I'm looking forward to the future with great anticipation.
I know that when all our plans are made and ideas settled I can go into my studio and just get stuck in.  I don't feel any pressure to create at the moment, and I know that when I am ready the work will flow, it's starting to itch in the background.  It's not bad enough to need scratching yet though, and we all know when you start scratching an itch you just can't stop until it's gone.

For now I'm going to relax on the swing-seat in the shade of our pool-side birch tree outside the studio and contemplate.

In reality, that too is part of being an artist, but we sometimes forget it's relevance to our work.  Possibly because it's so un-grounded, and as a professional artist, I tend to see art as a business rather than the artist as a Bohemian figure.

Others may see things differently, but that is what makes us artists as a body so diverse too.

Sunshine on Lough Mask.

 A few photos showing the changing light on Lough Mask in County Mayo.