Bowl of Images...

yes, a bowlful of images ON a bowl.. the 1st of many, and all because I happened to see a pile of wooden bowls & plates for a tenner at a local market.. and I'm intending to paint them all. One & a half down, five & a half to go. I prime them white, & then go outside & see what calls to be drawn on them. With the 1st one I didn't get across the grass at the back of the studio - I thought I was heading out onto the fields, but no, it was a warm day, my eyes wandered over docks, buttercup, vetch.. the 1st bowl was filled with shapes in no time.

The one above is in fact the 2nd one I started, but the 1st I have finished painting. That time I barely got out of the door. At the back of our barn where my studio is are some fuchsia bushes.. they would have jumped up & down if they could! In fact they were really, or that was their effect in energy terms. This one drew itself really quickly.. honest guv, I just hold the end of the pencil.

It feels such a great way to draw, letting the shapes arrange themselves around the bowl. An obvious step, now that I have made it, from the way I have been working on my canvasses. And there's SO much more to do! All over the land here are more plants, trees, places that are intimating they want to join in this process too. This could go on sometime...

New Artwork...

I have been writing that I have started on a new series of paintings, and here is the 1st finished one.  I have always been disatisfied with the process of going out drawing & then making a painting in the studio,  so,  I have taken to going out and drawing straight onto the canvas.  Duh!  I find it a much better way of working for me. 

I treat the whole process as part of my spiritual practice,  and so it is an extension of meditation/prayer/journeying/dreaming  to go out on the land here & ask the Spirits of the Place for the next painting.  Thats what they have invited me to do.  This way I stop in unexpected places , where I feel 'called' to,  & draw the multiplicity of extraordinary shapes I see around me. leaves, shoots, branches, seeds...   its endless.  It becomes an abstract drawing,  but each element is something I have observed on the fields here.

The rest of the process happens in the studio,  where I decide on a pallette of colour, & how it can best bring the painting to life.  This too is an endless dance,  each colour added affecting all the rest,  the balance of the picture.  And this too is working with the Spirits,  the 'unseen' world,  especially when unexpected combinations suggest themselves...   an excercise in trust again.

Its a scary, joyful,  very time-consuming way of working..   and I wouldnt want to be without it..