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.

Wishing all the Best for 2010

A happy and prosperous New Year to you all!!.

I had a nice relaxing Christmas and New year celebrations, and now it's time to get back to work. I have another 4 weeks of my web-design course left, and then I can get back to my painting again. I am looking forward to it.

We have had snow, a heavy fall on New years eve -- well for us anyway --and it has stayed with temperatures down to -10 C. So much for temperate Ireland! normally it wouldn't go below about -3C here. I will probably lose some of my plants, certainly some of those not quite hardy ones left outside for the winter, but even some of my mediterranean ones inside in the conservatory will possibly suffer from the frost and cold. Roll on the spring thaw!
lol!

Almost Christmas...

I have everything organised. But I have been a little lapse in posting here. I suppose I have been quite busy (with everything except painting) but I will try to post more often next year. See! I'm starting early for New Year resolutions LOL.
I have about 6 weeks left in my Web-design course, so that will keep me occupied until the end of January. I will get back to painting seriously again in February, just as the light starts improving again. I am looking forward to it at the moment, I've been missing my studio time- but not enough to give up the occassional day's fishing....

December has arrived....

I am still very busy with the web-design course, along with the couple of exhibitions running. I need to leave work into a third exhibition on Saturday. This will leave me without 'new stock', at least framed stock anyway. I have one or two I can get framed if someone is looking for work in a hurry, but most of what I have is just what is on the website now, and there are a few of them sold too. I raided the studio for three of the older landscape works last week for another group show I was asked to put work in at the last minute. I think they were expecting me to put some of my recent work in, but to be fair, if they wanted new works they needed to allow time for framing of the few bits I have left.
I seem to have work in nearly every group exhibition this Christmas! I guess the new work has gone down well where it has been shown.

Life is Good.

Healthy sales in the pre-christmas market. My new work has been well recieved.

The group exhibition has been going well, half of my pieces sold within 24 hours of the opening and I hope a few more will go before the exhibition is over.
I leave a few more works into another group show tomorrow. If it goes as well as the other I will be very happy. My new work has been received very well, with lots of interest in a quiet market. Sales in general have been down, but my works have sold very well, with further buyers who have shown interest in some of my pieces still to come back to make their purchases according to the show curator.
It has been a pleasant surprise, as there was always the doubt, in that dead fish were not an ideal subject matter to garner sales in a hard market. On the other hand, the old motto still stands true, Quality sells! And the fact is I was happier with this work than I have been for a few years, I feel I am back from firstly my lay-off due to ill health and then further strife with the studio in Marlay Park.

Leaving the studio was the best move I could have made, since then it has improved and lightened considerably. Looking back the latter works from the Marlay studio were all very dark and depressing. Since I moved into the new studio by the pond my work first brightened, and then became free-er and less contrived, I have now come back to more structured work again, but I have managed to keep the life and energy within it.

I am looking forward to 2010, and the promise of a very successful year, both in output of work and sales.

Time marches on, the pre-christmas shows have started. I have collected some work from my framers to go into a group show next week. The work looks very well in the frames I chose for it. I am hoping some of them will sell, but one problem with the Christmas group shows is that they usually have twice as many works hung as would be normal. As a result they can look very crowded and my work is not particularly bright and brash enough to stand out at first glance. I am exhibiting five altogether, they are from my fish series, all square in shape ranging from 10 inches up to 18 inches. It will now depend on how and where they are hung, hopefully they will be hung in proximity and not split up here and there as can happen when the people hanging are trying to squeeze extra numbers in.

I am still progressing with my web-design course, but not really able to do much work in the studio. I am hoping I will get a few commissions after Christmas. I usually do in early January, and my web-design course finishes in mid February, just in time to let me get stuck in to any commissioned work that comes in.

I am going fishing tomorrow, I need a day's R and R. The weather is going to be wet and very windy again though, but still, the fresh air will do me good.

My new website..

My Angling website has gone 'live'. I finished it and uploaded it to the server.
I haven't changed the content as such, but I just replaced the tables with CSS and a bit more design with the images and layout. I also have a full page image on the index page which will switch into the content homepage automatically after 5 seconds (If the link isn't clicked beforehand). All work was done purely with raw code using plain notepad.

I've finished playing with the site for now and it is a lot cleaner than the older one. I am now considering re-working my art gallery site, and replacing the template I am currently using with a completely new build.

If I've any sense I'll wait a while first..... LOL. Well at least until we start using dreamweaver.....

....but who said I was sensible?.

Time is flying by, It's a third of the way through November already. Sadly the web-design course is taking up so much of my time I am not getting time to paint. I have almost finished revamping my angling site though. I will probably upload it in the next week or so. I built it the hard way, using nothing but code, both htm and css.

I built the header image in fireworks, but I have built the hotspots for the links in the image using pure code. The fish is the near 7 pounder I caught late last year, I have another composite image built for my index page but I don't have a copy of it on this computer to upload.

I have a few paintings to collect from my framer this week, they have to be delivered to a group show at the week-end, it will be nice to have a few exhibited, it seems ages since I had an opening.