March has almost marched by...Winter is still here.

It's almost the end of March! Spring is not here yet either... ...we have had sleet and snow all day today, and more of the same forecast for the next week. I was to go fishing today, but decided I'm not that stupid and stayed at home instead, only venturing out as far as the post-office and my studio. I am glad to say the heating in my studio is working well...

My paintings are going slowly, but they are getting to where I wish them to go. The drying process is very slow with the conditions we have, the studio door needs to be opened to allow a good airflow for the oxidization of the oils to take place. With all these cold spells air temperatures are not high enough to leave the door open yet. Consequently drying is very slow.
This has a knock-on effect on the work, as reworking and continuing with paintings has to wait until the previous work done is dry. I am working on some of the ideas from our trip to Connemara at the moment. At the moment it seems a long while ago, not less than two weeks, but I have been rather busy since. I am still in the process of trying to organise two or three events, which means I am trying to contact and arrange meetings two or three days a week for one thing or another in between working in the studio.

It's mid March already, St.Patricks Day has gone...

Iam just back from a week in Connemara. Doing a little painting en Plien air, and generally having some rest and recuperation. I have had a few more breathing problems/ asthma attacks and consequently I have not been posting or painting much. The situation is still not fully under control, I am surviving on steroids still but hopefully the consultant is now on top of the problem. Connemara was beautiful, we stayed in the Abbey Glen Castle Hotel in Clifden, see the photos, room, view and castle.

We spent some time in Carna and driving around taking photos and painting plein air all the way around Cashel bay, towards Recess and Glinsk. We drove to Lough Inagh one evening to eat, but the Lodge was not open yet, it was too early in the season, which was a pity as the food is beautiful there. However the food in Ballinahinch Castle was good and excellent in the Abbey Glen, so we did not starve....

Now I'm going to have to get stuck in and do some painting.

PS. the Helicopter is not mine, I drove the car.

Slow work...slow progress

I'm still affected by my breathing problems and work is not a priority at the moment. I did manage to do more work though, this is one of the new pieces, but I'm not 100% happy with it, I'll leave it aside in the meantime and continue working on another one before revisiting it later. I know I need to rework the fish's tail fin to try to make it less solid looking, when I do that it may make a large difference to the work, but I still feel it looks unbalanced and will need more work in the background.

I will update as I continue.

More misery and grumbles......

I'm back coughing and wheezing, meanwhile I'm waiting for an appointment with a Respiratory Consultant again. Consequently there is very little painting being done. I have been suffering with this complaint for over four weeks now and it's not improving. Steroids have given short term relief but not cured the problem which comes back as soon as the dose is reduced and I can't take the steroids long term either.
With all the respiratory problems work is almost impossible, and I find it very frustrating, both on the health side and from a work perspective. The bottom line is that I am feeling lousy, unwell and frustrated at the same time. The up side is that I am feeling too unwell to pay much attention to my frustration.....

.........and if I jump up and down I just rattle from all the pills....LOL.

A plein air Study

I did a little study of a Hill-farm near the upper Liffey in Wicklow today.

There is a small touch of spring appearing in the air... with the couple of days of (relatively) fine weather I decided to do a little outdoor work. The painting was completed within an hour, it is not that warm yet, so speed was essential before frost-bite set in.. LOL.
I like the perspective in the piece though.

Starting work again at last....

I have been into the studio and made a start on another painting. I did not manage to get a lot of work done, but I feel better for starting. Although I am back on more steroids I still have a bit of a wheeze and remnants of the cough. My energy levels are quite high, but my fitness levels aren't, so I start something and realize halfway through I can't carry on.
I have planned out and laid the base coats on the painting, and left them to dry out. At the moment the background layer is just a strong dark deep red, which will more or less dissapear as the work progresses. My next step is to start adding details into the base painting of the sea-bream so I can be fairly set in the colouring and style of this aspect before I work on the peacock feathers and the background. I will take a photo of this first stage before I start, and another at the end of my next session. I am not sure if I will post them as works-in-progress though, I may post the full series with the finished piece in one post, or I may not post them at all. I think it will depend on how the work progresses, and how happy I am with the way it has gone.
Working on and through ideas, does not always allow the process to be visible, as they can become very confused and cluttered and even worse unresolved. I see the proposed painting in my mind, and at first it seems to gel and work, but when it becomes a physical object that can be analysed and studied it often shows weaknesses not apparent in the planning -- a bit like a dream not reflecting the reality.

I am hoping to start the work using previous studies and images rather than the actual still-life subject (another sea-bream) due to the short bursts I will be working in. With so little fitness short spells of work are going to be called for and I will end up using a lot of fish during work on one piece if I don't. I will save the fish in the freezer until I start working with the peacock feathers. I will need to see the way one of the feathers lays across the fish, as I intend to have one doing that in the painting -- but this is subject to change.

I still haven't been into the studio. My breathing is quite bad at the moment and I am not physically able to get stuck in. Mentally, I'm raring to go, but unfortunately the body isn't willing.
I hope to be able to work soon though, I think when I do start work I'll produce well. I may need to tidy the studio first, just to start with a clean slate and lots of working space. In the interim I will see the Doctor again this afternoon and hopefully they can do something for me.
You really miss your health and fitness when you don't have it any more, and it's surprisingly easy not to pay attention to these things when you are healthy. At the moment I feel like an old crock. Mentally I'm still in my youth.... sadly the physical facts are not so delusional LOL.

Inspiration comes in many ways...

This morning I have been looking at some of my pieces based on the sea bream. There are four of them hanging above the fireplace) Now I have finished my webdesign course I am back in painting mode, I have a number of peacock tail feathers in a tall bottle on the mantle beside the artworks and I have noticed the strange co-incidence of the colouring of the peacock herls and this particular work, now beside each other in the photograph below.

I am very interested in taking this further. I may just have to create some works with both the fish and the feathers. I was looking forward to getting back to painting. Now I am even more excited by the prospect.

It is amazing how inspiration comes knocking at opportune times, or maybe it is just that an artist needs to be ready to work to see what is in front of their nose. I have been looking at these two things within ten feet of each other for the last three months.

That's all for now, I'm off to research a few references of Peacock Bass, another fish from south america..... I wonder if there are any in the natural history museum or the aquarium at Bray?

If not, there are plenty of Sea Bream left in my freezer..

A bit of a Wheeze.

I'm sitting here typing on the PC between coughing fits. Wheezing all the while. I spent a large part of Sunday in the Emergency Dept of the local hospital on oxygen and nebulisers, and I'm still not particularly comfortable in the breathing stakes.
Needless to say I'm rather miserable :(

I am obviously not going to be painting this week. Hopefully I'll be improved by the weekend, the treatments should have worked by then, if not I'll have to think about another trip to the ED.
In the meantime I'm very tired, unable to sleep for more than 30 or 40 minutes due to waking up with a coughing fit and shortness of breath. At least I am improved from Sunday AM. My breathing was so poor that I was marched straight in and put on oxygen before I was even fully registered. I hate being ill! All I want to do is feel sorry for myself, and yet there are many worse off. Just look at Haiti.

A thaw has set in.

I have just passed my certification exams for the web-design course, one of the reasons I haven't posted in a few weeks. The course is finished in two weeks and I'm looking forward to getting back into my studio and painting.

We are just now starting to get some milder weather, we have had snow and freezing weather, the worst since at least 1982.
Now Dublin has water shortages due to all the burst water pipes around the county, as do other areas of the country. After all the heavy rain and floods earlier in the winter, we have lots of 'river' or reservoir water, just not enough of it treated for human consumption. There are rolling water stoppages, low pressure when the supplies are on and general chaos.

However whatever problems we have, it is a lot better than Haiti. Hopefully the aid will flow better and the rescue parties will have many successes.