Every Picture Tells A Story

 

The sentence “Every Picture Tells A Story” was famously the title of a Rod Stewart Album in the early 70s. I liked that album but at the time I thought it was rather a strange title. But then, albums in those days did have strange titles (maybe they still do but I don't keep up well).

Today Rod Stewart's title sprang to mind. I was thinking about the demand by social media for artists to post 'stories'. The work we create is of course the result of much thought, trial and error, rubbings out, overpainting etc – and this is all part of the story, the journey. The digital image may be misappropriated, and appear online without reference to its creation: but this can only ever be a pale reflection of the real work with the richness of what has gone into the making of it.

I used to think that “the story” attached to a picture was like an explanation of what it was supposed to “mean” – why use words when you have the visuals?  But in the age of AI, I'm thinking that the story behind a painting or a drawing is what authenticates it. This is my image: I have created it in this way – I have felt this emotion and made these marks. It is REAL!

So, rather reluctantly, my resolution for the New Year is to come up with more stories about my work: my emotions, my reaction to a place, why I've chosen a particular colour palette, and so on....and the challenge is to make the story interesting to read, relevant and not pretentious.

I'm relieved to get to the turn of the year - it's been hard for me to get going again since my husband died in October. But I've been out sketching and also been working in the studio. And I'm determined to keep going. In 2025 and beyond.  In the meantime, here are some works in progress....I'll tell you the stories later......

 

Thanks, friends, for all your encouragement.

The Agonies

 It's less than 3 weeks to the opening of "Our Fragile Land" in Gairloch Museum, and I'm just in those pre-exhibition agonies.  Deciding on which paintings should go up on the wall and worrying about the quality of the work.  I know it's always the same before an exhibition...the same old agonies.

But, to start with, I'll follow on from my last blog and show you what I developed from that winter woodland sketch in the oakwood.  Here it is - in acrylic.

After doing this, I decided to have a go at a slightly different version of it in mixed media, on a canvas.  Here's how that one is coming along.

 Interesting...Huh?  I was so pleased with the initial one, but now I think I prefer the larger more horizontal one.  I suppose they're just different.  I'm having a little pause now while I get things together for the exhibition.

I had this idea about doing some linocut trees in various forms.  Here's a linocut (well 4 linocuts, actually), printed over a gelli print.  I like the soft intrigue of the background that you can get with this.

I then had this idea of doing something different on the other side, so did a few drawings, like this one.

And then I concertina'd the cards, like this.

What do you think?  Not quite an artist's book, but a little fun.  I commissioned a friend to make a little plinth holder and I'm going to try and display a few at the exhibition...if they'll let me.  If you want to see the lovely plinth, you'll have to come along to the exhibition!  Well...I'm trying to keep them a surprise until then: I'll take a photo later.  I thought it would give visitors something a bit different to look at as well as the wall art.

Anyway - here's the official poster.  I'm in very good company for this exhibition, as you can see.  So perhaps you'll understand my agonies now. 

Exhibition runs from 4th May to 29th June.  It's a must see!

Trees, Trees, Trees

 Time has passed me by again - I see it's almost 2 months since I last blogged.  But that doesn't mean I've not been busy.  Just life getting in the way of art.

My main focus since January has been on trees. In the course of deciding what to paint for "Our Fragile Land" (forthcoming exhibition at Gairloch Museum) I became aware that the small pockets of woodlands in the Wester Ross Biosphere area are remnants of much larger native woodlands and oakwoods that once made up the temperate rainforest on the west coast of Scotland.  It's interesting because once you are aware of this, then you start to see remnant oaktrees and stands of Scots Pines all over the place!  

I was curious about the Balmacara Oakwoods and in 2023 I made a small expedition to track them down and go sketching there. They sit high above the main road (the A87) on a 45 degree slope, and on my first trip in late Spring I was quite blown away when I found them.  I returned a couple of times last year and spent a while painting this one in oils.

I continued painting the oaktrees, trying different motifs in different media. Here's one in acrylic - quite a  large painting on paper.  What I was trying to capture was the sturdiness of the limbs and the colours in the trunk and limbs - they are so dominant, they kind of engulf you.

Anyway...I have continued to paint the trees, mostly in acrylic, and this month I came up with this new painting.  Again it's acrylic on paper, with a little ink added. I did this one from sketches and photos as I had not been back there for a while.  Having done a few of these oak paintings (too many to show here!), I now find that I can be a little more playful, less realistic, in my approach.

I really wanted to get back to the oakwood over the winter, or at least before the leaves reappear.  And finally, in the last couple of days, I managed to get back to there to sketch - here's a wintery pastel sketch from the oakwood this week.

As I thought, the colours were quite different: the outside world intrudes much more into the woodland scene.  However, the limbs of the oak trees are just as dominant and impressive.  It's a great place!

So now maybe I'll have to select a different palette and try another painting.  In the meantime, I'll be getting a few of these framed and ready for the exhibition in Gairloch in May!

Getting Off To A Good Start

Happy New Year!

I started this blog in December, but didn't finish it.  Must do better in 2024!

My focus this year is to get a body of work finished and framed for the start of May.  I'm doing an exhibition - "Our Fragile Land" - in Gairloch Museum.  The exhibition will be with three other artists, showing landscapes of the Wester Ross Biosphere.  I've been working up ideas for this for most of last year, off and on, and I realise that I now need to get my pieces finished very soon!

My starting point was a number of pieces I did based on sketches done at the Black Water at Silverbridge, near Garve (See earlier Blog).  Since then I've been thinking about other fragile landscapes.  Possibly the most fragile place within the Biosphere is the Beinn Eighe summit and plateau.  It was designated a National Nature Reserve many years ago, and it is one of the core areas of the Biosphere.  I had a walk up there in the summer and did a couple of sketches.  From these, I developed this oil painting.

 

Not sure if it's finished yet, though!

The other particularly fragile landscape in the Biosphere is the area of native woodland - oakwood - within the Balmacara Estate near Kyle of Lochalsh.  I've done a lot of sketching over there this year and I've been working on several paintings - oil and acrylic - all different shapes and compositions.

I've been particularly struck by the strong shapes (positive and negative shapes) made by the mature oak trees, and the way the foliage filters the light.  I've noticed how the limbs of the trees follow the contours of the slope - it seems to be a particular characteristic of oak trees, because I observe it with oak trees in other locations.  Anyway, here's quite a large oil painting.

 Painting woodland in this way has been something new for me.  I find I keep coming back to the motif, and trying it in different media.  Here's another interpretation, this time a smaller painting in acrylic, although it's not quite finished - I'm not happy about the shape of the tree on the left and I think the background needs a bit of finessing.  These ones are more like dancing trees (perhaps that should be in the title).

I've also been looking for appropriate quotes and reading books about trees and woodland.  I hope to write a bit more on the subject....but we'll see how that goes.  In the meantime, here are a couple of quotes to think about.

“Most of us walk unseeing through the world, unaware alike of its beauties, its wonders, and the strange and sometimes terrible intensity of the lives that are being lived about us.”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“If you truly love Nature, you will find beauty everywhere.” —Vincent Van Gogh,

So here we are at the start of 2024.  Sending good wishes to you for the year ahead if you manage to read this blog.  Let's all keep creative and positive this year!

Watery Thinking

Last month I wrote that I thought I would start to explore a Biosphere-related theme. I'm happy to report that I've managed to develop this a little further.  I haven't been confining my work exclusively to biosphere-related ideas, but I'm trying to stick with it.  

I haven't been back to Garve, to my favourite black river, but I've looked back at my sketches and thought about progressing with the work.  And I've done further sketching in woodland.  However,  I first thought I'd try something out in oils....

Black River - Small Oil WIP

This is a very small oil pic, a study, really.  I'm not sure about this composition and if I was going to do a larger pic I think I'd need to go back and do a series of sketches.  There are some things I like about this, so I think I'll park it and resolve to return to Silverbridge.  

As a trip to Edinburgh is looming, I decided to focus on a different sketch of the river and redraw this on film in preparation for making a new photopolymer plate at Edinburgh Printmakers. The one I thought might make a good print is this one looking across the river.  Here's the final drawing I made on film. I think (hope!) it's got potential....

Black River With Trees

On Monday this week, I returned to my favourite woodland lochan at Achnashellach for more sketching. Of course, this year's mild weather means that there's no snow and ice, so no frozen lochan - I find the lochan's watery surface much more difficult to handle than an icy surface. The interplay between viewing the reflection on the top surface and seeing into the murky depths – it's hard to capture that.  I suppose that's what intrigued Monet about his waterlilies and ponds. Anyway, in this week's sketches I struggled to capture such visual effects, as you can see....

 

 

Sketch 1

Sketch 2

 Sketching was difficult enough, but what about turning these sketches into finished work? Well, all I can say is that I've made a start with this acrylic study - but there's a long way to go. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Because I'm heading into Printmakers next week, I was thinking about other Biosphere-related images that I could use as the basis for making a new plate. This took me back to earlier sketches I had done of the river at Achnashellach.

Sketch 3

 

Sketch 4

 

 

 

 

I did several re-drawings from these and other sketches.....here are a couple of them.

And here's the final drawing on film, ready for making the new plate.

Dark Tree By The River

So this month there's a lot of work in progress and a few unresolved questions.  Will I be able to turn these new finished drawings into new plates? Will they print out well? Can I master the challenge of painting the lochan to show the dreamy interaction between reflected and refracted light? I suppose that's my challenge for next month...

 

Starting A New Chapter

 

2021 has been a busy year and I've never found the time to do any blogging. I've missed it! I think blogging helps me to reflect and improve on the work I'm producing. I shall resolve to try and create more regular blog posts over the next year, using this as my springboard.

I'm developing ideas for a new body of work. I live in a beautiful part of Scotland which was recently designated a UNESCO Biosphere. I'm thinking about doing a series of paintings and prints that are focused on the Biosphere, maybe trying to explore a particular angle or angles. For instance, I was thinking about 'extremities' or 'extremes', or maybe something weather-related with a theme title like 'elemental'.

The Wester Ross Biosphere covers an enormous area with a great variety of landscapes and so another thought is to do several different groups of paintings in an attempt to describe the diversity of the landscapes here. With this in mind, as a start, I've embarked on a series of riverscapes.

Sketching By The River

Sketch 1 in pastel

I went for a walk and a sketch at Silverbridge, outside Garve. Garve happens to lie at the eastern extremity of the Biosphere (and so it also fits with the 'extremities' idea - another reason for sketching there). I had heard about this river – the Black Water - and I found it to be a beautiful, atmospheric place. I took lots of photos too.  It was cold and damp.  I haven't done much sketching by rivers, and so it was a bit of a challenge.

Sketch 2 - pencil drawing of the Wade Bridge

Sketch 3 in charcoal

As I sat sketching, I was reminded of the paintings of Tom Thomson (one of the Canadian Group of Seven). I felt that the combination of the fast-flowing river, the pines on the riverbanks, and the sculpted rocks was redolent of the Canadian landscape (or to be more precise, the Algonquin landscape, I think). This was in my head as I sketched, and it came back to me in the studio when I was developing the sketches.

Developing ideas 1

 

Developing ideas 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

The river was in such spate, fast-flowing with foaming waterfalls, yellowish peaty water, and rich dark depths. I had done several sketches on both banks of the river and I re-drew these, also referring to photographs. The mixed woodland (pines and birches) provided a dark backdrop, and as it was a gloomy day, I couldn't see the hills beyond the trees.  

 

 

Paintings so far.

Painting 1 (so far)

 

I decided to focus on three images.  I liked the contrast between the rich black pools and the foaming water, and I loved the amazing rocks. 

 

Painting 2 (so far)

These paintings are all acrylic on paper. I may go on and do an oil painting based on one or two of them, but for the moment I am resting them – setting them aside before deciding if they are finished or not. I've also been seeking out appropriate river poem quotes. I tried MacCaig first, and found this from his poem “Falls of Measach” - “Waterfalls marking the stages to some rich plunge into the dark”. This did seem to fit with the foaming rapids cascading into darkly rich pools. 

 

Painting 3 (so far)

 I also found these lines by Mary Oliver from her poem “At The River Clarion”-

“I listened to the voices of the river talking.
Whenever the water struck a stone it had something to say,
and the water itself, and even the mosses trailing under the water.
And slowly, very slowly, it became clear to me what they were saying.”

It strikes me that this might be a good way of describing the mystery of sketching.  What do you think?

More Printmaking Experiments

Happy New Year!
I'm having a happy time in the studio trying out various different things.  I've been having great fun making chine colle prints - adding bits of Japanese paper onto prints to give them extra colour or texture.

I started with this one. I felt a little tentative about adding the chine colle and I was teaching myself as I went along, so with this first one I used Japanese paper with wavy lines in order to give the sea a bit more interest. It's a bit tricky as you have to add glue to the paper and then place it on top of the printing plate glue side up so that the paper sticks to the printing paper.  As this result ended up not too messy, I was quite pleased with this as a start and thought I'd continue.

My next effort was to add some colour.  This time I was using an aquatinted copper plate which I had cut off a larger plate I hadn't been happy with.  I had burnished it then re-aquatinted - I was trying to salvage something from this!  'I must be subtle' I thought to myself, so selected some cream-coloured tissue which I hoped would improve the look of the sky, and offset this with a cream-coloured paper with coloured fibres in the foreground. 

Making these prints was stimulating me to think about blocks of colour in the landscape, and also accentuating how light might fall. At this stage I was still trying to be subtle. So here was the next effort with another new photopolymer plate.

But then I got bolder and I thought I might try more of a landscape colour, using the same plate. It's really interesting to compare and contrast the two results, isn't it?

I then thought I'd try colour on another small plate. I wanted to use an orange-coloured paper as the image on the plate was based on an autumnal view in the Gruinard area (near Poolewe).

The first colour shape looked a bit too contrived. So I had a second go with a simpler geometric shape, then with my third go, I finally settled on a simple triangle.

I think this simpler shape has the effect of making the image look more abstract. So now I'm thinking about how to create new images where I might add chine colle colour shapes like this.

The great thing about doing this is that there's always an element of surprise when you pull each new print!

Golden Days

It seems that we've just hit a spell of good weather up here.  Sunny crisp days.  The hills and summits are so clear.  Had a bit of a hillwalk in Strathcarron yesterday and today I had to run over to Torridon to deliver some calendars, so I took the opportunity to do a bit of sketching.

At this time of year, the grasses are wonderful shades of orange and ochre, and the deer grass has sent out its delicate long stems.  Here's the sketch I did yesterday on a walk in the Strathcarron hills above Achintee. I was trying to get the pattern of the shadows on the hillside, shadows cast by the rocky outcrops. And the lochan kept changing colour as the wind changed. I was able to take a bit of time as it was warm enough and I was quite pleased with this.

Today was similar.  The hills were clearer than ever but there was a cold wind blowing.The shore of Upper Loch Torridon looked cold, in shadow.

Then on through Glen Torridon, stopping for a sketch of Liathach. We stopped at the second car park where there is a stand of pine trees. By this time there was a small cloud sitting on top of Liathach which I was viewing from the east.

On our way back I had time for another sketch of Liathach, a view from the south this time. We walked a bit along the lochside path and I spied a good view with a host of Torridon pines in the shade in front of the hills.

And as a wee extra, Beinn Damh was catching some intense light with interesting shadows so I did a last quick sketch before I headed home.

Lots of material for a few paintings, but this lovely weather is very distracting!

Hand Made

Difficult times. I've had a thumb/wrist problem - De Quervain's tendonitis to be precise - and this has hampered my painting and printmaking. I so need my right hand! However, this week it's been a little better and I've been trying to get back into a bit of painting.
I started on Sunday with a couple of sketches. I drove up the Bealach road, not too far, just high enough to get a good view of the ridge. And then found a space where I could pull off the road safely.  I walked up the hill a bit and did these two sketches in pastel.  I particularly liked the bright yellow grasses bending in the fierce wind and looking bright in front of the hills behind.

Since then I've tried to develop these into paintings.  Making a start on the first sketch, I paused at this point

It's so interesting to look at this again. I now see things in this composition that I've lost going forward....look

The shape of the hill on the left - I've inadvertantly altered the angle and it's lost some tension. But maybe it's not too bad...

In this development, I've adjusted the height of the ridge and softened the dark patch on the right hand side - I didn't think it looked appropriate. But the shape of the hill on the left has got worse! I was also a bit unhappy with the colour - looked a bit washed out! More work needed.

Today I have done this - I think it's looking better. The darkness of the hill is much better, more drama. I've slightly amended the yellow grasses and added more foreground marks. I have actually spent a lot of time thinking about the marks to make to represent the grasses and other vegetation. And I dropped the height of the far-away ridge - I painted it out in a blue-white which I didn't really intend to be the finished colour, but actually I quite like it!  Interesting! It may remain...we'll see.

Painting the other view has been less successful. Here's the start - very loose and rather nice.

But then I did this.  Added lots more marks. Good and bad.

I had gone back to the sketch to check tonal values, and so made the ridge a bit darker, and tried to divide up the foreground to make it read well, all the time thinking about marks.  I took this approach a little further.

Does it feel like a hillside to you? I think it's getting there, but those rocks are bad! Maybe I just need to darken them down. Or maybe dispense with them!  I'm quite liking the sky, though, and the hilltops, so I think it's worth a bit more effort next week.

And maybe some more sketching tomorrow if we get a blink of sun...


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