I'm back from the South of France. In truth all plans went out the window when we got there. With bright blue skies and temperatures in the low to mid twenties we spent most of the time either walking or sunning ourselves at the beachside cafes. Wine, espressos and warm sunshine with the gentle music of the sea to accompany them. We did visit Cannes, and Menton but the rest of the time we spent doing much of nothing and practicing my pigeon french with waiters. It is a sad fact that their english is usually far better than my french... but I do try!

I did do some painting, here I am with my morning coffee on the apartment patio painting the tree in front of me.... also photographed by Christine...

Yesterday I went into the studio and finally did a clearout. I then got stuck in and painted for a few hours, the sketching I did while away got the juices flowing. Either that or the sunshine recharged the batteries.

Either way I am raring to go and get to work.

see ya!

I'm on my travels again....

I am busy for the next couple of weeks, I need to send in a completed application for funding by March 31st. This doesn't sound too bad, but I'm away in the south of France for a week! I am applying for funding towards my trip to Starry Night Retreat in New Mexico next April.

I am organising a studio sale of older works in June or July, this will be held in a local gallery over one weekend. It will allow me to reduce the number of older works in the studio, and it will allow some of my art collectors to obtain works with an earlier slant. My work has evolved over the last decade. It became quite dark for a while, and these works in particular are not likely to be seen again. I have a few very realistic still lifes too which are unlikely to be repeated as I now use my still life studies for more expressionist work.

There are one or two very large works I will have on sale also, I tend to work smaller now since moving to my current studio. I am going to use this studio sale to fund my International Competition duties in September, and hopefully also go a long way to funding my New Mexico trip too. When I return from the French Riviera I will have to go into organisation mode for this as I need to firm the date and get invites/postcards printed for mailing out. I will be taking some watercolours and paper with me to France, but I don't know how much painting I'll get done this trip as my main reason is to visit the art centre of St Paul de Vence and the Chagall museum in Nice (Biblical works). If we have time I'd like to visit Le Cannet again this year.

I am glad to say that they will open a Bonnard museum later this year in Le Cannet. I will just have to make do with the Renoir Museum in Cagnes sur Mer this trip if we have the time. So much to do- so little time to do it- We are determined to get to the Friday Market in Ventimigilia across the Italian border this trip. But plans are made to be flexible in our case... we may find something more interesting sidetracks us again. It's always nice to leave a reason to return. :D

Pancakes and Parlaying.

Yesterday we had another Tallaght arts forum get-together. I provided pancakes in honour of shrove Tuesday... yes I slaved over a hot frying pan for an hour :D. We had another enjoyable and varied discussion bouncing ideas around. The artist's forum is a great bonus to individual artists in the South Dublin area, giving a monthly opportunity to talk with other artists about work, work practice, and other relevant ideas. It also allows us to meet and get to know each other, ideal for forming liasons for collaborative works. The artists come from all backgrounds, multi-disciplines, some arts degree educated, some self taught, in other words a wide variety of artists and those employed within the arts.

The venue is supplied by Rua Red, (Tallaght arts center) and this month three of the Artists with studio spaces in the center opened their studios to the forum prior to the meeting. Many of us hadn't seen the spaces prior to this. One of the difficulties working as a Visual artist is that most of the time I work alone, in isolation from others. The forum gives me, like others, an opportunity to interact with other artists which allows me to discuss ideas and problems that may come up in normal working environments.

Now I need to start preparing applications, both for my Starry night retreat trip in New Mexico, and my fishing duties in the UK in september

New Mexico and Cambridgeshire....

I have just sent off my "official" application to Starry night retreat in New Mexico to confirm my residency for next year. I am looking forward to it, but I will have to start working on funding applications shortly. It is going to be a busy year this year, I need to try to raise some sponsorship towards my International team fly fishing duties this year too. (I have set the date for the residency as April 2012, just in case I hold my team place for the spring International, in March ;) though the Autumn competition in September again would suit me better)
I hope to get organised soon... ... for some reason I seem to be at sixes and sevens at the moment. Too many irons in the fire I think.
I will hopefully be back to general chaos shortly, that I can handle. :D

February 20th!!!

Where has the time gone? !Shock and Horror! It's almost a month since I posted on my blog.
I have been busy with angling club AGMs, both attending and organising, add to that some re-decorating of the house and I have been rather busy.
On the art front, Starry Night Retreat in Truth or Consequences in New Mexico have offered me a residency. I am hoping to go next spring, after my International Angling duties in the Autumn.
I am looking forward to going to New Mexico, the landscape in the State looks ideal for me. Hot dusty red earths in a very interesting landscape. I am just waiting confirmation on the availability of my chosen dates now, and then I will have to start seeking travel grants towards the cost of travelling. Flights to New Mexico are quite expensive, alongside all the other costs.
I think I can produce some interesting work from the area, I am hoping to go for six weeks which will allow me to produce about two dozen plein air works as a basis for finished pieces and maybe one or two further finished works on site and in the studio provided by Starry night as part of the residencies.

More on this later, in the meantime I need to get back to sanding and filling walls before stripping wallpaper from the next room on the agenda... This really isn't the kinda painting I like doing, but it needs doing before the fishing season starts. ;)

Turner at the National Gallery

I visited the Joseph W.M. Turner exhibition in the National Gallery. Luckily I had taken my new reading glasses so I could examine the works.. Needing reading glasses still feels wierd, I have had them less than a week and I'm still coming to terms with needing to put them on while reading or looking at things closely. I have already started hanging them halfway down my nose and looking over the top of them and reading when looking downwards. I'm like an old fogey :D

Meanwhile back at my studio, it is in dire need of a spring clean... I nearly need to play hop-scotch in between the boxes bags and other bits over the floor going from one end to the other. I need to re-stack some paintings too. I am in a new broom mood though, I am going to take some of the works and dispose of them to reduce clutter. I am also considering a studio sale to sell off a number of others, I really don't have the space to store all I have, and many are too old to exhibit in a Gallery. I may hire somewhere to have a sale early in the spring, and sell off a few before updating my website as a lot of the works on it will be included in the clearout. More on this later.

My new cards...

I recieved my new business cards and some postcards today. They are double-sided glossy cards from vistaprint, and were due in December but they got lost somewhere in the ether.. Vistaprint had no problem resending them to me though, which is nice customer service. I'm not sure if the glossy double-side business cards will be any more effective than my last ones but they do look nice.

The print job on the back side is a little dark but the quality of the cards is excellent for the price.
The colour balance on the postcards and the front of the business cards is perfect.

Enought pre-varicating though, I must get back to finishing off an exhibition proposal... that is after all why I switched the computer on..

January can get very busy, particularly if you miss the first half through laziness.. ;)

Tests, and testing a new method in the near future..

I have booked an appointment with an optician for this afternoon. ( After a lot of prevarication.) At this stage I nearly need to get arm extensions to read fine print....

... I guess I need to sort out my eyesight before the fishing season. I need to be able to see the flies to tie on the cast. :D
It may help my reading too, but these days much of that is done on the laptop, which is at a distance that is comfortable to read. I seem to be having never-ending tests for this and that so far this year. Check-ups for this, tests for that, it's time you had this checked etc.. old age is catching up with me :D

I fully intended to start work on a new lino cut this morning. But again I am prevaricating and having booked the eye test in Tallaght while I am there for the afternoon anyway for other tests it just doesn't seem worth while getting started on something that I'll have to leave. I am still deciding what I want the lino-cut to be. I have one or two ideas, but I need to be sure that what I do is suitable on the scale I am going to work, which is quite small. I am doing this by creating small simple paintings in flat colours. These then will be pinned up and left for a few days, until I decide which are more interesting and if they can be improved or not.
When I paint, I can rework the pieces. When I cut into a sheet of lino, that is it. No reworks available. I intend to keep a record of the process here, as it will also help me to clarify the difference in the work practices involved in this media for myself. While I have comfortably worked in lino-cut printing with one colour, and in a four colour work using seperate blocks, this is the first time I will use the reduction method.

The reduction method was much used by Picasso can be used to produce multi colour prints from one block, making the lining up process much easier. Each colour is printed in turn on the entire edition of the print before more of the block is cut away before printing the next colour. This is repeated until the there is very little left of the original block. This method has its pitfalls and needs planning but is an exciting way of making colour prints. The main disadvantage is that you have to print the complete run of the prints as you work. I will keep this project to a run of about 12 prints, If it works well, I may invest in a printing press rather than printing by hand as I currently do.

11 days in to the year already...

It's nearly time I got back into the studio. It has been cold, damp and dark for the last while and I just haven't bothered to go into the studio at all. I went into the studio for a while yesterday, put the heating on and looked around at the tidying needing doing, picked up my watercolour gear, switched off the heating and came inside again. I did do a couple of small watercolour paintings in the house, just to get my hand in while enjoying the warmth and comfort. I don't know if I'm really ready to go back to work yet, I have the itch to paint but not the energy. I think I'm suffering from lack of sunlight.

I spent today shopping and visiting... anything other than work... even the dog was in danger of getting a walk, but time caught up on me so now I am typing with herself playing the look at me game. ...I'm here play with me....

....Ahh well there are worse things a body could be doing....

J M W Turner @ the National Gallery

Now it's nearly a new year. For 2011, I will make a resolution, I'm resolved to actually getting to the National Gallery in January to view some of the Turner watercolours. We have here in Dublin the largest collection of them, and they only come out in January when the sunlight is weakest. I have missed them for the last couple of years, putting my visit on the long finger as it were. This year I won't.

Looking back on 2010, it was quite a success for me. An International award for my art, a place on the International fly-fishing team for next year and a diagnosis and sucessful treatment for my breathing problems. My painting has been going well and I am now happy with (most of) the work. How could I complain? Just the hiccup of the motoring accident injury, which seems to be almost sorted out and hopefully 2011 will be pain free. I'll wish you all a prosperous new year, and catch up with you in January.