Going Horizontal

I think I am becoming addicted to the horizontal line. My work has been getting increasingly stylised and whilst this may not necessarily be a bad thing, I think I need to to set myself a challenge to get away from the colour-block horizontal lines that keep appearing. This last painting was the tipping point (please excuse the painters tape and poor image, I only had my iPhone in the studio today). 

"North Shore" acrylic on paper, 3x 16x20" 

You may well recognise this painting as I first posted about it here. I had been looking over it and felt it was really lacking life so I decided to develop further it and lo and behold, hello horizontal lines! I definitely feel it has something more interesting about it now that it was lacking before despite the colour-blocky (is that a word?!) nature.

Now I just have to decide how to frame or display this piece. It's on 3 separate pieces of acrylic paper so I could either mount them to boards or frame each one individually...thoughts?? 

Grey Days

Oh London, why do you rain so much? I returned from Bermuda to a VERY grey, wet and freezing London, more November than mid June. So to keep my post-paradise spirits up I have been drawing on all the inspiration I gathered over the last couple of weeks. Today I was experimenting with a slight departure from my usual style in something that I've been wanting to paint for ages - people in the water. So, still seascapes but with a human element introduced below, above or on the surface of the water. I took the opportunity to take lots of photos one day when we were on a boat and incredibly, the water is so clear and shallow reefs so abundant in Bermuda that even though we were over 4 miles off shore and it was still a light turquoise blue. I had a friend take some photos for me whilst I swam under water and here is my first experimental painting. Painting the waters rippling surface is so hard to capture but I'm really excited with the results!

"Boilers" on the North Shore

"North Shore #1"

"North Shore #2"

"North Shore #3" acrylic on canvas paper, 16x20"

Here is the finished triptych I have been working on this week. The term "boilers" refers to the circular reefs found here that when the waves break over them, give the appearance boiling water frothing out over the top. The paintings are each acrylic on paper that is textured with a canvas like finish and I plan on framing them under glass individually but to be hung as a trio. I have also just discovered the the Bermuda Arts Centre that I visited yesterday has an open call for their juried summer show so I have decided to enter some of my recent paintings, fingers crossed!

Bermuda Seascapes

Continuing on my travels, I am now in Bermuda, a place very close to my heart having lived here for 5 years as a child. It's been 4 years since my last visit so it's great to be back and I am always astounded by the vividness of the colours, particularly in the sea. I haven't seen water such a vivid shade of turquoise anywhere else, it almost doesn't look real - a perfect place for some seascape painting! Yesterday morning I took a long walk along some of the south shore beaches some of which had an abundance of the pink coral sand that Bermuda is so well known for. Later I tried to capture some of these pink tones and here is the resulting painting in progress.