Category Archives: New paintings

‘Noctilucent Clouds withThe New Moon, Earth shine, Mercury Jupiter and Saturn’ Oil on canvas 90×180 cm 2022

3rd painting finished this year. Again it’s been a work in progress for almost 5 months, and has gone through some few changes along the way. As I start paintings I may have a vague idea of what the painting may turn into. This vagueness is always excitment and always unknown knowledge….. that whatever vague idea I may have is often just the wish to create an artwork, whatever direction it takes is a creative process a kind of a conversation and is as much up to what happens on the canvas, in the landscape and during the whole process….as it is with those vague thoughts/ideas. And the vagueness is absolutely deliberate, a well developed sense of lets just see. The problem is if I start with a definitive idea of what is to be it short circuits a large amount of the creative process that might take me in unexpected directions…..and the work I do is already more than sufficiently constrained……
 
In this case it begins with direct observation in sketchbooks sketches that don’t stop being done just because I start the painting, I may go back to the point of view and see whats happening and so it evolves over time. And in this case several terrific experiences happened that I just had to work into the painting.
 
The cirrus like clouds are an observation of noctilucent clouds, these are tenuous high level clouds that are only visible when the sun is about 6 degrees below the horizon, then there was the appearence on the 12th Dec of the new Moon with prominent Earth shine Mercury above and to the left of the Moon Jupiter above and to the right of the Moon and Saturn also to the right of Jupiter…..
 
Title…..
 
‘Noctilucent Clouds withThe New Moon, Earth shine, Mercury Jupiter and Saturn’ Oil on canvas 90×180 cm 2022

Second new painting of 2020

 

Second painting finished this year. So today was great fun. Built a crate for two paintings….finished another painting – this one…..and had a short bike ride…..
So this one I am going to have some fun with the naming. I have not quite got the wording right yet so this will take a few days of thought
Being somewhat enigmatic the painting resides in several genre’s it has aspects of the mythological and the factual, historical and literative influences abound and goes back and forth between them all quite resolutely at home in all the places it can be said to exist separately in each and at the same time concurently in all, and all at the same time….
for the moment then it is 90×180 cm oil on canvas
Such is the power of art…..to not just transcend boundaries, but fundamentally to make them illusiory delusional and completely irrelevant….
Well have fun working that out

 

 

 

A new painting

On the easle today for just a few minutes…..it has taken several months to complete this peice, and as yet the painting remains without a title. 90×180 cm Oil on canvas 2021. £3400

 

 

Three paintings ‘Sol – Teg Hager Awel’oil on canvas……. No.1, No.2 and No.3

‘Sol – Teg Hager Awel’- The title is partially in latin at least the first word ‘Sol’ is derived from the latin name Solis for the sun and ‘Teg Hager Awel’ is Kernewek – Cornish which roughly translates to Beautiful Winter Storm. And so these three paintings being inspired from my stay on the Isles of Scilly are titled accordingly and in respect for the hard won survival of the Cornish language.

All three are inspired from several most intense experiences of  winter storms on Tresco, Bryher and St. Mary’s

‘Sol – Teg Hager Awel 2’ Oil on canvas 90 x 170cm  is more directly a point of view, from below tregarthen moor and is as close to the sea as I could get. I sat and watched this winter storm as the sun was setting just beyond the edge of Bryher. The waves were huge and it was an absolutely overwhelming experience. I had just a sketchbook with me and spent several hours scrambling and changing my viewpoint to experience the storm. This painting is titled partially in Kernewek (Cornish) Teg Heger Awel translates to Beautiful Winter Storm, and Sol comes from latin Solis. In many celtic cultures Sol was the name for a sun god. the name Scilly is itself derived from Sulis who was the ancient celtic goddess of the sun. On the isles of Scilly she was known as Sulis she who watches and there is a Roman mosaic in Bath that depicts this goddess. So the painting is about nature but it also references many things at the same time including my fascination for understanding nature and how that knowledge evolves and changes over time, and on the back of the painting are the co ordinates of the sun and some brief info about the sun.

Sol – Teg Hager Awel 2. Oil on canvas 90×170 cm

‘Sol – Teg Hager Awel 1’ oil on canvas 90×180 cm and ‘Sol – Teg Hager Awel 3’ oil on canvas 90x170cm are much the same experiences

Sol – Teg Hager Awel 1. Oil on canvas 90x180cm

Sol – Teg Hager Awel 3. Oil on canvas 90x170cm

Four paintings in one……

This painting grew in the making, and became more than just a single work of art. My interest in astronomy and mythology continues to inform the work I do to an ever increasing level, and one evening in mid summer 2021, after several long and difficult weeks working on the Garrison campsite, my son and I and other staff members were relaxing over a few beers and some food. It was a glorious summer evening. That lovely king’s Blue of the sky, long wispy sirus clouds streaking across the sky and there framed in the sky by these clouds – the waxing gibbous Moon. The atmosphere was clear and it was easy to pick out several large features on the surface of the Moon including mare serenitatis, mare tranquillitatis, Mare Crisum, mare fecuditatis, Plato crator was just about discernable as was Tycho crater, Mare Firgoris, mare imbrium, and mare nubium.

The Moon as always is captivating and the conversation faded for me at this point as I just stared at the Moon. It always fascinates me as it seems to be there in complete calm and absolutely beautiful. It reminds me of The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy in which Arthur Dent asks the wise old bird in exaspiration what is keeping the cup in the sky from falling, and the wise old bird replies ‘art’ that it is artistically correct.

The Moon always seems to have in a far more serious way that feeling of being in absolute harmony, perfectly placed, artistically correct. Call it a feeling of awe and beauty and connection with nature.

As always when I observe I draw upon a wealth of knowledge gained over many years and I start to rumage through what I can remeber of the names of the surface features, the history of the Apollo missions, humans landing on the Moon, and the theories of how the Moon formed, that as moons of the solar system go, in comparison to other moons and there parent bodies the Moon is exceptional in it’s size compared to the Earth……

Here is the first of the paintings inspired by my own observations of the Moon.

 

Four paintings in one, as the painting is rotated through 90 degrees a new painting with a different title is revealed. The titles are as follows…..Daughter of Theia. One Light Second. In contemplation of the infinite. From within….that…Pale Blue Dot. Oil on canvas 80×90 cm 2021

During my contemplation of the Moon that evening I considered once again the origin of the Moon, oddly I had been reading a new article on this subject involving a collision between the proto Earth and a Mars sized proto plant named Theia 4.4 billion of years ago.  and that evidence for Theia or whats left of Theia are buried deep inside our planet. So there I was sitting contemplating that deep beneath me were the remnants of Theia and above was the Moon both consequences of that immense collision, and that those remnants deep in the Earth may also be cause the Atlantic magnetic anomaly…….. And at the same time the reasons for the title of this painting are also intimately linked to the naming of ‘Theia’ and the mythological stories behind Theia, which are fascinating.

The four orientations…..

In greek mythology Theia was the Titan goddess of sight, (thea) and the shining aithre (ether) of the bright blue sky and right there we have the first visual connections as Selene one of the three children of Theia is the orginal name for the Moon, hence the title Daughter of Theia and the observers gaze is directed towards the Moon in this painting. The bright blue of the sky is representative of Theia – goddess of the deep blue of the sky. Theia also in mythology endowed silver and gold with their brilliance and lustre and so the bright silver luster of the Moon is also a direct reference to the goddess Theia. It is the focal point as it was mine on that evening – Theia bore the titan Hyperion three children Helios – the Sun, Eos – the dawn, and of course Selene the Moon.

The three children of Theia are also implicitly though indirectly in this painting. The painting has no particular refernce to being a dawn or a sunset there are no references to any particular time of day except for that time of day when I once again was caught up in contemplating our understanding of nature, but only for the purpose of the beginings of this description and so Helios the sun is part of this painting for without the sun how is one to see anything, also the painting could be after dawn and so Eos is implied and of course Selene – the Moon is the focal point.

The painting then conspires to present to the viewer all these aspects in one view. The mythology, my fascination, and our contemporary understanding for the origin of the Moon……and contiguously even through the four orientations of the painting, this remains the same …. and hence the title –  ‘Daughter of Theia’