olive trees

I've just finished my latest painting - inspired by olive trees in the garden with sunlight dappled through their branches.

Dizzy

I've always admired the artist Bridget Riley and been fascinated by her work but have only seen the odd painting in the Tate, so when I heard she had an exhibition at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill I had to go. We've been to the Pavilion before and it is a beautiful building which has some great exhibitions and events. Obviously I knew the paintings were optical art but I was totally unprepared for their effect on me - amazing, the colours are vibrant, painted to perfection (which is important as I love a perfectly flat colour!) but I couldn't look at them - the whole wall of painting moved - swam - jiggled - flowed and made me feel completely dizzy. It was as if I'd taken a hallucinogenic drug and things were moving that shouldn't be - I eventually found looking through one eye helped but I was disappointed and quite shocked that a flat painting could have such an effect - but then that is the point!
The other photos above show a few shots of Bexhill, a garden dedicated to beach clean finds and Normans Bay - one of the 1066 beaches.

Painting update

As I wrote earlier I've been planning a new painting and came up with several ideas but none of them seemed to be quite right. Then it occurred to me - there was too much going on (well I had a little input from Gra too!). So I simplified it a lot and this is the end result - I finished the painting last week. What do you think? 

Painting

I've been putting together drawings from my garden last year - trying to plan out a new painting. My last two attempts have been abandoned half way through as I've realised they are not working, which is disheartening - I find it difficult to judge what will work or not until I've spent days on the painting and another canvas is ruined!

Finished ...

I have finished my first painting in ages. It's quite large - acrylic on canvas and I have really enjoyed doing it. Also it's been good therapy during a sad and difficult time. Now onto the next one....

Challenges

For a long time Gra and I have talked about having a joint exhibition and now he has started painting again we are working towards this. We have very different styles and thought it would be interesting for some of our work to be of the same subject matter. So this is our first effort - Chichester Market Cross, what do you think?
He is trying to paint more freely from sketches done on the ipad (at least someone is making use of it!) and I'm tackling subjects that I would not normally draw, which is a new challenge for me. We are hoping the exhibition will be next summer.

YES

This painting has been underway for a year but yesterday he finally finished it - YES!