14th August 2003

I’ve been working on this a bit. The red boat shape was a bit intrusive although I wanted to keep the more orangey red, so I’ve moved it to the right whilst darkening the original shape. It was meant to be in Greece but seems to have moved to the Bosporus – looking across to ‘the city.’ But it must be 30 years since I’ve been there. I remember eating fish wrapped in newspaper, bought hot from a boat and the beautiful wooden houses on the Asian side.
12th August 2003

These are some photos I took near my house the other day. I really like the slashes of colour the rose-bay willow herb makes at this time of year. A much maligned flower in my view. I particularly like it with the red of the rowan berries.

Despite having a million urgent things to do I’ve ended up painting today. I’m resting the Hareshaw Linn paintings and have gone back to Hydra. The sunset on the Peloponnese and night fishing. But the rosebay willow and rowan colours have crept in. This is the story so far.

8th August 2003
As usual my paintings show more about my state of mind than I realise. I work it out later. I've now started on individual paintings, ignoring the others then I'll decide what to do with them. At the moment they detract from each other rather than working together.

 
7th August 2003
   
 

6th August 2003

   

I went to Bellingham in Northumberland on Sunday. There is a beautiful walk up to Hareshaw Linn, a waterfall. Strangely enough it reminded me of Greece, a land full of wonderful gorges. Even though it's mid August there were very few people around which is one of the (many) great things about Northumberland. I took some photos. I don't take them for their own sake (and don't aspire to be a photographer) but they're really like quick sketches or notes to myself. I also sometimes make very rough drawings and written notes when I'm out and about. All of these may find there way into paintings but not directly.

The things that really struck me about this place were the sense of upward elongation - it felt right being a tall person there. And, because the gorge faces south and I was there in the middle of the day, the light was channelled into it. Looking back there were glowing vibrant greens through the leaves.

So, although I should be doing all the millions of things needed when you're having an exhibition, I now feel inspired to paint and I'm going to start with a series of small canvases one on top of the other. I usually work on more than one piece at a time - sometimes they all survive - sometimes just one, and sometimes all of them end in the bin or being repainted. But this time I'm going to work on them as a group. This is something about all the steps in the Linn and creating the elongated feeling. I'll post some more images as I work on them.

That's all for now.