It’s been a funny old month, October, with the painting progress having slowed still further (not least due to the abandonment of the ‘double black lines’ & flattened cans project, with the next in the series having been scraped-off after a couple of weeks’ work), but not entirely unproductive, with the evidence of a work-in-progress pictured above (with apologies for the blurry-in-places photograph, courtesy of the fading light of the first afternoon following the turning-back of the clocks, which caught us somewhat unawares: it was, after all, only 10 past 4 – disastrous time of year for those of us who paint under natural light conditions).
By way of brief explanation, what is in progress, then, is one of the recently-acquired more widescreen canvases (4′ x 2′), which seemed, after consideration, to be the most appropriate format/scale to explore the potential of the subject matter of the conveniently-situated woods beyond the back garden fence of the grounds of TOoT Towers (ironically a bungalow!). Primarily planted with pine & Japanese larch (an abandoned commercial venture of some years ago), with silver birch interspersed, the woods provide a suitable combination of the vertical & horizontal, & textural & tonal, with which to begin a painterly investigation of various ‘snapshots’ of what is a large site. A few drawings were made of the environment over three summers ago now (so, again, it’s another idea & developmental intention that’s been percolating for a while), & can be viewed on the July & August 2013 archive pages.
