At last...

Now this isn't my most productive post ever, but I don't care! Finally, after 2 months of slog, some of it full time, some of it part time, some of it when I've walked away in disgust or tried to go away and come back with fresh eyes, I have finished my first painting of Ankerwycke. Its been in prep since February or March, cost me sleep and sweat and destroyed and rebuilt my confidence a dozen times but, as of a few minutes ago, it's finished.

The painters among you will know that sometimes a painting paints itself, you just have to hang on to one end of the brush, and they're the best. Other paintings fight back, challenging every stroke and every preconception and they can be the best too. This painting did both in different passages and in the process it has pushed me to new heights from a technical point of view. It takes an impossibly complex avenue of trees and makes it simple, a few painterly tree trunks set against a glittering, glowing infinity of summer green, a perfect moment in time made permanent. I can almost hear the leaves rustling. There's no photo yet, that will have to wait for an overcast day with no wind as it's too big to photograph indoors, but right now I don't care, it's over and it was worth every second.

Now, with the aesthetic and the language defined and developed, I can make it some friends. I think they'll be a lot simpler in conception though ;-)

That went quite well...

Officially my exhibition is now over and overall I'm quite pleased, especially with some of the contacts I've made. If you wanted to visit don't fret though - the unsold work will be remaining with the gallery for the foreseeable future and will be available from both the Chertsey and the Bramley branches. The prices are very reasonable! The gallery also sells online if you can't get there. I'd never recommend buying a painting without seeing it in the flesh because monitors will never be accurate enough with the colours but there is no issue with the monochrome linocuts they have so check out the No Naked Walls website - the link at the top of the page here will be staying there for as long as they have my work.

www.nonakedwalls.co.uk

John Nash - The Cornfield

First of all, ten thousand apologies for the recent lack of updates here as I have been tied up with things as far from art, the blog and the mead as it's possible to be over the last couple of weeks but normal service should be resumed at the weekend.

Secondly, as promised and because fields are being harvested now, here is John Nash's more famous cornfield.

It's the not the best quality image, but they enforce copyright quite strictly on this one and its hard to find any reproductions at all - so enjoy it while it lasts as it may have to come down again! Nash is firmly of the generation of painters that was trying to finding England again in the aftermath of the Great War, and he found it in the downland and arable farmland of Southern England. He lacked his brother's intensity but there is a simple charm in all his work - its the sort of art you could live with on a day to day basis very easily and the older I get the more I appreciate that as a quality in art.

The original, as with so many of this country's finest, can be found at the Tate.

The Burrell Collection

Degas - Jockeys in the Rain

Honoré Daumier - The Print Collector

The BBC has done well this year.

Over the last month or two it has focussed more on collectors and their influence than it has on individual artists or movements and this week it introduced me to Willie Burrell, a Glaswegian shipping magnate. The show, called "The Man who Collected the World," is without doubt a reason to hit the i-player if you're in the UK and I'm sure if you look hard enough you'll find it elsewhere too.

Perhaps the most notable aspects of his collecting were his eye, his wandering passions and the sheer personal-ness of the collections. Burrell had different passions at different times and he followed them around the world. He could spot quality both in artistic interest and craftsmanship but above all he bought things himself, he didn't depend on agents. Everything he bought, he bought because he liked, and that is truly unusual in a collection of this size.

Edouard Manet

The Beer-Drinking Manet about 14 minutes in is exquisite, the stained glass breath-taking, the Degas collection beautiful (although the National Gallery still trumps it with what Matisse and I believe to be the best Degas of all). The alabaster St John at 26 minutes couldn't be finer and as for the paradise carpet at 45 minutes... You have never seen the like of some of the things here.

The collection is in the Pollok Country Park in the south of Glasgow. I think I need to head to Scotland as soon as I have some pocket money!

Marriage at Cana

Summer by the river and the living is easy...

Well, it's properly here. My harsh little water-meadow has emerged from the floods and the frosts, blossomed, bloomed and grown, dried, and now, finally, begun to ripen. We are into 6 - 8 weeks of abundance. In fact, my favourite type of blackberries hit their peak last week and are fading already but there are plenty of others still growing. The elderberries are turning dark, the sunniest sloes need just a night in the freezer to make them right and the plums are perhaps a week or two away. The second-best apple tree is more than ripe enough now, the apples sweet enough to be nice but still sharp enough to fizz on your tongue. The best one isn't far behind.

I've done a grand tour of the nut trees. The squirrels, greedy little short-sighted thingummies that they are, are attacking the hazelnuts before they're ripe so I don't know whether I'll get many or not. I don't know about chestnuts yet as the trees are too tall, but it looks like it'll be an outrageous year for walnuts. Not only is every tree full, but I'm finding more trees all the time.

This time of year sees me on more of a caveman diet, with berries now and nuts later forming a large part of my meals. I lose weight but gain health. I would have to say that harvest time is one of my favourite times of year, right up there with winter, spring, autumn and early summer.