out of the woods

gnarled oak tree trunkoak barkstripped barkyoung leaning treepollard treesupturned dead tree with roots exposedtree with split branches[sketchbook drawings... in the woods, september 2009]after a week of teaching, it was a relaxing break to find a couple of hours of solitude by more drawing in the woods... it is not all green leaves; there are knotty and gnarled tree trunks to touch, cracked and split bark surfaces, smaller pollards and spindly saplings, the felled and fallen branches left to season or decay into the leafy carpet. the greenest signs of growth are mostly in the woodland's high canopy...[the artist measuring an old oak tree...]i had previously learnt from the woodland trust that ancient trees can be age-estimated by the number of hugs around the tree trunk at 1.5m high. this oak tree measured about three and two thirds in hugs, making it about 350-400 years old, but dense woodland may make trees grow more slowly than those situated on more open land.later, on the way back, i went into the local charity shop, whereupon i saw on a crowded bookshelf a small moss green paperback book, with the one word clare on the spine. opening it at a random page, i came upon these words:mere withered stalks and fading treesand pastures filled with hills and rushesare all my fading vision sees...[decay, by john clare][out of the woods; out of focus...]

a theory of colour

more of my rustic experiments in colour and texture, signed, dated, numbered, scanned and digitised.. it's a curious thing; some are landscapes, as i begin to see the inevitable influence of fields, horizons, tracks, hedgerows and fences... others orientate themselves into a vertical format, reminding me more of barn structures, doors, gateposts, exposed beams, the rusty corrugated metal of makeshift sheds.. all colours synthesized... it's either arable landscape or rural architecture.it seemed, at first, quite simple to reduce everything to striations of colour, but i have found this process to be very meditative, a discipline of mind and hand, as a more precise controlled painted line moves over a textural surface, new relationships in colour and texture occur, which influences the next painting action... it's intuitive and yet not entirely random, since intuition relies on some cognitive insight or emotional connection, the sum of our experiences.how many hues of brown: dark chestnut, mahogany red, russets, autumn berries, the seed heads of dock, wood bark.. the subtlety of greys: in soil, dust, the sky, clouds, a found flint, a beach pebble... finding analogies for interpreting these colours take me back to 'nature'... and nature has the last word in colour-coordination, as the approach of autumn signals.these are not studies for larger paintings, but in a sense they should be.. in abstract painting, a system, structure and order, is needed to turn the painterly mess of making into a process of clarity, with a purpose, with some meaningfulness.. just ten more to do, and the series is complete.. but as i approach it, maybe 100 is not quite enough.see more of this series of 100 small abstracts on paper on my art for sale page..

ten

small abstracts on paper...an experiment, in colour...these abstracts, original paintings on deckled paper, are essences or distillations of landscape, colour and texture experiments.. i find colour inspiration in the rural environment, in the elemental signs of erosion or seasonal decay - crumbling plaster, old walls, salt encrusted patinas on boats, weathered coastal seaside facades, eroded worn surfaces, textural striations, manmade structures exposed to the natural elements... farm outbuildings, barns and ramshackle sheds, the intricate beauty of rust on corroded metal, lichen on wood, brick or stone - and the more geometric patterns of arable fields, tracks, walls or fences are all visual influences in creating this series of small colour works on paper.