Staveley Carr…beautiful early winter light.

Well, we’ve been back in lockdown again , and that has meant we’ve been focusing on getting out in the local landscape. Staveley is always a special place, but I think it might possibly be at it’s most beautiful in this early winter light? I’ve been planning to do some more Staveley paintings, and have some ideas for using this beautiful colour palette, over the next few months…keep an eye out!

In the meantime, I think I had a bit of an artist block at the beginning of the month. I suspect it was the result of this strange year, and the stresses we are all feeling with missing family. Normally my practice is a great escape; an all absorbing activity that gets me away from worrying too much about these things, but this month it didn’t quite work to be honest, and I did get a bit blocked. I had loads of ideas and things I wanted to work on, but somehow I just couldn’t get started on them.

Most artists have tricks up their sleeve that work for getting over this dreaded creative slump. One of my best is diversionary tactics, including relatively mindless tests like varnishing, mounting, painting edges and having a studio tidy up….if you start off doing any of these, eventually you find yourself mooching around with some materials or a sketchbook, and if you take the pressure off, things begin to flow.

Selection of Paynes Grey Studies in Archival Mounts

One of the things I did manage to do; along the diversionary tactics line, was to mount up a small selection of landscape studies, which I’m adding to my online shop as I write this. They are small expressive landscape studies; very loose and free in their approach, but they contain the germs of future paintings….this little group have fulfilled their destiny, so I’m happy to sell them on as a nice affordable way to get started on a collection, and it has to be said they make great presents! I get archival quality mounts made by the lovely people at the Cotswold Mount Company, they have solid backboards and come in cellophane sleeves-hence the glare. Each one is original and genuinely one-off, and they are hand signed on the front and rear.

Reverse of a typical mount with title, artist label and signature.

It’s quite a fiddly job, but very relaxing to do while listening to a great art podcast-my favourites currently are, the very wonderful, Art Juice with Louise Fletcher and Alice Sheridan, which is just brilliant, and Authentic Obsessions with Margret Petrie, which features in depth one to ones with a wide variety of artists, and is also fascinating…

The other thing I come back to again and again when I need to reboot my practice, is mark making: just experimenting with simple materials, without any pressure or pre-conceived outcome. *In fact if you fancy seeing what I mean, there are a couple of short videos on my Artists’ Resources Page.

The very short video above shows some of the landscape studies I’ve been working on…they are instinctive and loose, and these are made with just a very small selection of black and white supplies; black ink, black acrylic paint, white ink and white acrylic, nib pen, sketching pencil and a few pastels also in B and W.

I usually work on loose paper; very good quality Somerset watercolour paper in this case…oh and that’s a lesson learned. Sometimes when you work in this way, something really lovely happens and a study really ‘sings’, or somebody gets in touch and wants to buy one of the studies. I hate selling stuff on thin cheap paper so now, I always work on good paper, then I know that I can mount it, frame it, whatever without any issues, and it will last!

If I intend to keep them, at least for a while, I will mount them up in a sketchbook, but making sure not to use anything too permanent, so I can remove them if needs be.

So why don’t I work directly in the sketchbook? Two reasons; firstly it can be intimidating, and secondly it’s difficult to find sketchbooks with exactly the paper you want for a particular group of drawings/ paintings, so much easier to mount them instead.

Eventually I did manage to get down to some actual painting…the image below started about two years ago, with a particular walk along the coast path near Zennor in Cornwall. It’s an area I know well, and a favourite walk, and on this occasion there was a sea fret (mist), which produced a very particular soft light. I also saw this one specific view, and the repetition of the three semi circular shapes fascinated me…

The painting developed quite quickly from that idea, and with a limited colour palette…it’s painted in many layers of acrylics, with opaque areas and translucent glazes, drawn and incised detail and some collaged areas for texture, all on a 61cm square canvas.

I’ve also been working on something, that has been brewing for a while…it’s loosely inspired by places like Malham Cove in the Yorkshire Dales, but refers to other more imaginary places…I’m calling it Edge of Darkness, because the title has a particular resonance following a brilliant thriller of the same name… For me it has to be the original TV version, with Bob Peck and Joanne Whalley, by writer Troy Kennedy Martin, not the Mel Gibson remake. I reckon you can probably still find it on Youtube? Oh and it had a rather good sound track composed and played by Eric Clapton…the series drew ideas from James Lovelock’s Gaia and was much admired, and incredibly atmospheric.

The image above shows base layers, applied to give opaque underpaint and also texture, using silicone wedges, palette knives and a firm print roller.

The processes up to this point also help to establish how the composition looks although it always changes a bit as you go along.

Tools and Materials used on Edge of Darkness

I built further layers on top of this to add richness of colour and depth, particularly with translucent glazes….

Close up of a small section from Edge of Darkness, showing how the textures and rich colour develop layer by layer and with additions of scraped, incised and drawn detail.

Edge of Darkness-apologies for the unfortunate shadow at the top, but I was eager to post!!

The final painting is 122cm x 92 cm and just about finished…I wanted to post it this month so as above, apologies for the dodgy shadow in the picture. I will replace when I’ve had the chance to set up a proper shoot and get a decent one!

Hope you like it!

Well I think that’s all for this month…if you haven’t already, do have a good look around my new website, where there are small pieces to buy direct, and larger works you can find out more about, simply by emailing. Oh and have a look at the Bils and Rye website, where you will also find a selection of my recent work.

Keep in touch and carry on reading next month…

Take care, Jo x

Newsletter: November 2020

Newsletter: December 2020

Newsletter: October 2020