Trusting the process

I have been experimenting quite a lot recently. Trying to find a path. Trying new colour ways, new styles, new everything. But I always come back to the same place. I have a distinct colour pallette I like to use. Paynes Grey, Raw Sienna, Raw Umber, Dark Gold Hue, Silver Hue and lashings of Titanium White. Very occassionally a touch of red or cyan creep in just to lift certain areas. But basically that is it. Paynes Grey is the most wonderful bluey almost black, that gives depth without being heavy. The Raw Sienna and Raw Umber are sooooo earthy, and the gold and silver are there because I live in Essex.

Layer upon layer.

 This all takes time !

Still working on lining paper at this point. I have a yachtsman's all weather chart of the river Colne lying on the table. The shape of the river meandering past Brightlingsea and Mersea Island up towards Wivenhoe is lovely.

Not sure where to go with this, I start to write 'Namu dai bosa' over and over again on the land. It took an entire afternoon, but wonderfully emptied the mind.

 Next was the sea: 'My heart is a thousand years old, I am not like other people'...in white ink. This is fast turning into my version of a mandala.
Snippets from an old book were cut out and I started to lay them along the footpaths I had walked. It became confused and messy. So that idea was abadoned and I discarded the piece of paper.
Time to start on a proper canvass.

 Live your adventure, is the working title for this next piece. Funnily enough I have had encountered a few instances this week where I have been forced to 'trust the process'. An encounter (albeit virtually) with someone I haven't seen in years, highlighted just this. She and husband have been transported from uncertainty in London to an exciting new venture in the Far East, all they had to do was to trust the process and opportunities opened up. I guess we also have to learn to do that with the not so good things that spring up from time to time too.

Same theme, as on the paper, this time on a largish 70x100cm canvass. Much in the way of musings. Thoughts meander their way accross the land and sea.

Not finished !



New Beginnings

A New Year's day walk blew the cobwebs away. The biting wind was a refreshing change from the lethargy induced by a wood burner heated house, over Christmas. Both body and mind need a shake up. Much thought. Sea air is such a tonic.

A  spring clean in the studio was called for today.....out with the old in with the new and all that. A clean sheet on the painting table, the paints and brushes all tidied up...ready to start. I want to start with some 'mindful' painting. A meditation. Taking time to prepare the surface and mix the paints, focusing totally on the job. I am deliberately using cheap materials, poster paint and lining paper, so that I don't become bogged down with doing a proper painting. I want to allow the brush to do the work.

Gesso on the paper, gives a good surface on which to work.

Choosing a Chinese calligraphy brush means I have little control over neat lines !

I didn't want to have a subject either. Like the work we do in the expressive painting workshops, I wanted to not think about the end result. I chose the Zen Enso as a shape to repeat. It's hard to get a good enso.....flowing, circular and paint consistent. But I found the more I let it flow, the more consistent they became.

 I carried mindfully on and on until I had used up all the paint.

 Mixed up some white and repeated.

 Not sure what I wanted to do beyond that, I just sat with it while as the wind and rain lashed against the studio window. Without thinking , picked up a pen and wrote what was in my head today. Thinking about 'how interconnected everything is and how people and events in my life are reflections of my state of conciousness'.  Something happened then, that kinda proved that.

 A tipex pen is very useful for drawing white lines.

Tomorrow is another day.

What A Life !

Howzabout that then.... I'm in the January edition of Essex Life !! Very many thanks to Jonathan King for thinking of me and writing the article.

A short walk but the journey is long

I have everything up to date and finished in the studio. What a relief. 

I like the serenity of this piece. The more I look at it the more I like it. The temptation to clutter it with boats was big. But it doesn't need it. The calm water and drifting gulls finding moments in time and space. Memories lifting out of the water, leaving no trace.

I can now start on the 'Pilgrimage'. For weeks now I have been carrying a small book around with me, jotting down ideas, words, scribbles, scraps of magazine cut outs etc.

I know where the pilgrimage is going, I just need to gather everything together and start making a work. I sat for a long while looking at the blank white canvas, make a start, make a start.....in the end I got some very dilute paint and threw it on, letting it dribble down the the white gesso. 

I also really like the idea of making a wooden 'book'. Something with hinges that opens like a triptych. Like opening a book on my life, a short walk from here to there. I need to start the walking. Today, with a beautiful start, the sun breaking through the rising mist, was the perfect day to walk at Alresford Creek.

Such a beautiful spot. There are not many houses I really covet, but this one I do. The perfect setting as far as I'm concerned. Well ok there is a gravel pit close by, but it's still lovely. Right on the edge of the creek. wading birds and clanking halliards are all that disturb the peace. Who needs a garden when you can walk out of the door straight on to this?

The sunlight on the mud is lovely, making it look metallic. reminding me again of gold leaf on a triptych.

Where do I go?, why do I go? Do words explain the picture.

A view like this really needs no words to explain. It communicates a truth beyond speech or silence. Triggering something deep.

A disused boat shed. Rusty hinges, rotting wood, tangled corrugated iron, steel left in the salt water to rust.

(note to self)

Footprints in the mud.

Channels in the mud resembling an Andy Goldsworthy.

It's all in the subtleties, that's where the discoveries are.

Pilgrimage

I am working on a collaboration with a group of fellow artists and like minds. We are planning a travelling show of our work for next year. An exciting venture where four people who work using different media are coming together under a working exhibition title of 'Pilgrimage'. We have a couple of venues booked and await news on a couple of others ...so watch this space!

‘A Pilgrimage is a journey of risk and renewal. For a journey without challenge has no meaning; one without purpose has no soul, by difinition it is life changing. A pilgrimage to lose yourself or to find yourself’ – Phil Coustineau

I want this show to be an opportunity to steer myself away from work I have been doing over the last couple of years...whether this actually happens, remains to be seen! I am hugely inspired by the work of land artists such as Richard Long, Hamish Fulton and Robert Smithson. Words and calligraphy have an important role in my work, not only for their meaning but also their pattern qualities and the shapes they make on the page. I love the idea of using words to map a walk and video footage to create an atmosphere....the sound of the walkers quick breath or the sound of footsteps. I love the impermanence of land art.

My pilgrimage is to the sea, it is both renewing and balancing. I am constantly drawn, into my car down the busy carriage way, until I reach my destination. The smell of the sea, the pungent smell of seaweed and mud, the scrunch of shells and pebbles beneath my feet, the clanking of halliards in the wind. I sit with a big rock I my hands, letting it find its own center. The balancing of a rock is like the balancing of my body in zazen, each vertebrae stacked one on top of the other, and when the balance s finally found, not a muscle is needed to hold me in place. I sway slightly in the light breeze. In the same way a stone rocks gently as gravity tries to pull it one way or the other. It takes concentration to feel your way, adjusting slightly as the weight shifts. When the rock eventually finds its centre it suddenly becomes weightless, I can feel it stand away from my finger tips, the whole universe is channelled through that balancing rock into the earth. The once incredibly heavy lump of a boulder can balance on the tiniest slither , its an extraordinary feeling. Sometimes they only last long enough for me to stand in awe and other times they balance seemingly precariously for hours until a vibration sends them crashing.

I also love to walk along the rope walk at Brightlingsea, or along the old railway track, so this may form part of my work.....There are Buddhist monks who live on Mount Hiei in Japan, who since the 9th C, have circumnavigated the mountain so many times, that after seven years they have walked the the equivalent of the circumference of the globe...WOW. Not sure yet how this will transpose onto a canvas....we'll see !.....exciting.

I think it was Hamish Fulton who said that 'Art is not about form, it's where that form takes you'

In other words, it's not the finished art work, but what it invokes in the viewer that is important.

All done

These will be on show at the Waterside Marina gallery Brightlingsea from Nov 12th for a month.