#63 / Sunflowers

#63 / Sunflowers

These cheery flowers are everywhere now adding an extra splash of colour to the Provencal landscape and I feel it is my duty to have a bash at painting them.

I don’t know what it is about Cadmium yellow, but whenever I use it I seem to get the stuff all over me. I have also found it on the car seat and on one of my shirts which was hanging on the washing line.

Vincent Van Gogh springs to mind (rather predictably) whenever I set up a still life or paint a landscape when the subject matter involves sunflowers, cypress trees or fields with crows.

I wonder if any artist after Van Gogh has managed to paint the sunflower without the specter of those famous paintings by the Dutchman hanging over them?

#59 / Ancien Pont de Mallemort

#59 / Ancien Pont de Mallemort

The bridge which takes us over the Durance to Mallemort runs alongside this older one which is now closed for safety reasons - the planks of wood which form the road are twisted and cracked, so there is are three metre tall concrete walls blocking the way at either side of the river.

When I showed this painting in our village a few years ago, the Mayor kindly visited and told me the story of how he and his friends (in younger years) used to walk along the beams which ran along under the length of the bridge as a dare… reminds me of that scene in Saturday Night Fever…

There is a sign which for years confused me slightly. It reads Interdit de Fumer I always thought it meant that you weren’t allowed to smoke on the bridge which seemed rather unfair and a little over the top. That was until my better half pointed out that Fumer not only means ‘to smoke’, it also means ‘to manure’ (that’s obviously for the horses) so that gives you an idea of the age of the bridge.

#41 / Lac de la Grande Bastide

#41 / Lac de la Grande Bastide

This fishing lake (about 400 metres from our house) is a great spot for walks and BBQs – and of course fishing -  I nearly caught a Trout with my Hardy split cane rod last year but it is rather hard work for fly-fishermen with trees and people behind one and the mistral blowing from time to time. The flies end up decorating the branches of all the surrounding trees like tiny, shiny reminders of one's incompetence and the local fishermen with their spinners and lead weights all stare in bewildered awe as the crazy Eeengleeshman struggles to unwrap himself from his line and yet another aborted cast…

#40 / Blue Bottle

#40 / Blue Bottle

We ran out of internet credit last night as I was in the middle of posting this, so is yesterday’s painting which I will follow with this morning’s painting.

It took me ages to find the tube of Prussian Blue in the old studio, so I started rather later than I had hoped to this morning. Sticking out of the top of this vase is the most enormous white Iris that has the most incredible scent of sweet almond. If it lasts in the vase, I’ll try painting it this week.

#38 / Walk through the forest

#38 / Walk through the Forest

There is rather a back-log of paintings piling up in the behind my easel as I’ve struggled to connect to the internet from home over the past week. Here is my painting from today – later (fingers crossed) this afternoon I will post yesterdays painting…

Behind our house we have an enormous pine forest which forms part of the Parc National du Luberon and tumbles down a gentle slope from the foot of the mountain to the back of our property. The Luberon is laced with routes for walkers and we are lucky enough to be able to walk from our house along the road one hundred metres, turn north towards the mountain and join one of the many paths that take walkers through forest, mountain and glade.

This is a view of the Petit Luberon from half way along the path from our house to the mountain.

#36 / Onions

#36 / Onions

One and a half onions… Again raiding the pantry before dinner. The colour and tone of the onion skin was not so different from the wood surface they were sitting on – a few nice marks here that I was happy with… otherwise there is something missing in the painting, a little yellow ochre perhaps in the skin would have helped. A few more greys – a little more subtlety. So, another subject to come back to in the future.

#35 / Picnic in the Luberon

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#35 / Picnic in the Luberon

Yesterday we took our son out for a picnic in the forest behind his school. It is the starting point for the school’s randonnées in the Luberon which they take every few weeks during the spring/summer months.

Again I scraped the oil paint onto the poorly pre prepared canvas having not had time to prepare the surface properly myself, became very frustrated and ran out of time as we needed to take our son back to school for the afternoon. So this painting was finished in the studio. I hope that it gives the impression of the deep shadows, rich greens and bright Mediterranean sky…

#34 / Orthodox Painted Eggs

#34 / Orthodox Painted Eggs

We celebrated Easter yesterday (as I’m sure many of you did) with a roast joint of lamb and chocolate eggs (more or less at the same time), a few films, a little too much red wine and a good deal of laughter.

In the Russian tradition, we plunged the twenty five eggs into their various lurid predicaments to decorate the Easter dining table - what we do now with the eggs, I’ve no idea… One solution was to paint some of them. I’m guessing lots of eggy salads, eggy sandwiches and eggy breakfasts will be the way to go next.

#31 / Aubergines

#31 / Aubergines

  

Today I found out how hard it was to paint dusty, folded up and uninhabited old spider’s webs. The mark on the wall behind and to the right of the aubergines is my attempt at painting the spider’s web… it looks more like an attempt at making a Whistler style insignia. Anyway, as always it will be something to tackle again on another day.
Aubergines are lovely to paint and some of the colours on my palate went on straight from the tube. My palate is zinc white, naples yellow, yellow ochre, cadmium yellow, sap green, oxide of chromium, cadmium red, alizarin crimzon, french ultramarine, blue black and van dyke brown.  

#30 / Carottes de la veille

#30 'Carottes de la veille'

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'Yesterday's carrots' These carrots are from our local fruit and veg shop which sells off slightly old vegetables on the cheap. We have profited many times from what otherwise would be taken out to the bins and nabbed by the freegans.

#29 / Portuguese Pear

#29 / Portuguese Pear

My son was off on a walk through the Luberon today with his school so after packing him off with his packed lunch and suncream, I had a little more time to paint this morning that I usually would have had.

I thought I’d try another pear with this coloured sheet of paper behind it to look at the relationship between colours on the canvas.    

#28 Pair

 

#28 / Pair

Yet again this morning was spent doing things other than painting. Our neighbour had requested some measurements of boundaries be taken and my signature was required on numerous sheets of paper (the famous French love of paperwork in action again). So another quick painting from just after lunch…

I received a letter this morning from the Mayor of our local village informing me that my bid to open a market stall on Wednesday mornings had been successful! So I’m very excited and am now shopping around for gazebos which are sturdy enough to hold off the Mistral! Any tips would be gratefully received! Also, if anyone is coming to Provence this Summer then please pop by and say hello!

#26 / Asperges de Provence

#26 / Asperges de Provence

I started out with a square canvas sat on my easel this morning, primed and with the mid tone I painted on it last Friday, but the subject went better in a rectangular canvas so I painted over an old unwanted still life (of mine) instead of using the square one. It’s an interesting exercise trying to create a new painting over an old one, to fight past what is already there and find your way by marks, lines and colours to the new painting. The results can sometimes be interesting with parts of the canvas still showing some areas of the previous painting. Although it may not be what you were expecting as a finished piece, it sometimes works well enough to leave it showing through.

#22 / Penguin

#22 / Penguin

Obviously the Penguin isn’t commonly found here in the Luberon, but I’ve always liked their characteristic shape and distinctive colouring, so here is a painting I made this morning from a photograph I found. 

#21 / Catalan Clouds

#21 / Catalan Clouds

I did a painting on Friday (#20) but couldn’t get it posted, so I shall post it during this week.

We are lucky enough to be (relatively) close to Spain to the West and also to Italy to the East. This is a painting of clouds over Cataluña, an area we have visited a number of times whilst we have been living in France and a fiercely proud region fighting for independence from Spain. We have practiced our ‘Adeo’s’ and are not quite sure if we should say ‘gratheeas’ or ‘graseeas’, still, they put up with our fumbling efforts and if all else fails we communicate in French as they are so used (particularly on the border between France and Cataluña) to French tourists booze cruising over the border and back again.

I tried to paint this mostly with a palate knife so that I didn’t get bogged down by detail, only being more precise with the shadows the clouds cast on the mountains and hills in the distance.

#19 / White Canary

#19 / White Canary

One of my favourite paintings is this little study of a Goldfinch by the Dutch artist, Carel Fabritius. The economy of brushstroke, the colour and light are so beautifully represented in this little gem of a painting.

Having this image filed in the gallery in my brain, I thought I’d go down to our local Bricomarché in Cavaillon to look at the birds they have there in the Animal section of the shop. None of the birds would pose for me other than this White Canary who was quite reasonable and calm while all the others flapped about from one perch to the other.

I painted over a yellow ochre coloured ground. Some years ago we bought some pigment from a shop in Roussillon and for the first time I have been mixing some of it in with white Acrylic Primer, partly fight off the oil-sucking tendencies of the pre-primed canvas but also to knock back the white and start my paintings with a mid-tone. This is a nice warm tint which I will use again when I go out and about in the many and varied villages around and about us.

#16 / Squash with Leaf

Our lovely neighbours Rene and Claudine, who live in a far grander house than ours and have an enormous Potager, produce fruits and vegetables all year round: Aubergines, Sharon fruit, Raspberries, Tomatoes, Apricots, Artichoke and as you can see, Squashes. They call every now and again to tell us that they are going to come to the archway in the four meter wall that separates our two properties to hand over surplus bounty. For this we are both very grateful and slightly ashamed as we only manage to grow flowers, grasses and Peppers. Not enough Pepper to be generous enough to hand over, and not enough nasturtium to garnish more than one salad… still, the vegetables keep coming from Rene and Claudine and yesterday they called and drove over with two great heavy pumpkins. Here is one of them, I will paint the other one too and hand the canvas over through the archway in lieu of something more edible.

#15 / Kilner Jar

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#15 / Kilner Jar

I try to finish each painting in one session au premier coup, usually one hour but it can be a little longer depending on whether my son is tearing about the house on his school holiday or safe at school under the watchful eye of his maitresse! This one took two hours...

#14 / Clementine

I had a tutor at Heatherley’s called Susan Wilson, who during our two or three week long projects would read to us in her gentle Kiwi accent as we painted. A little Don Quixote… some Tolkien, I think we also had a bit of Gabriel Garcia Marquez (much easier going having it read than having to read it oneself!). There was also music and if memory serves me correct, she put a CD of Hawaiian music on... very calming. I heartily subscribe to the idea that listening to something can disengage the analytical part of the brain and free it up to paint more instinctively. Many artists are absolutely against the idea of playing music while you work, but it seems to work for me. So after not listening to anything for the fist thirteen paintings, I put my phone into my studio’s MacGyver speaker system and pressed ‘shuffle’.

#9 / Nuclear Flamingos, Camargue

I’ve had this image hanging around for a while now and not had a go at it. The Flamingos were really glowing in the bright sunlight and almost disappeared in the reflections bouncing off the water. Only their forms separated them from the water behind them. Sometimes the sun shines so brightly, its hard to open ones eyes to see anything at all

I like the juxtaposition with the power station in the distance. Not quite the romantic view of the Camargue that might otherwise be promoted, but it’s there so it had to be painted…    

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