A Long Time Coming

This little diptych, though very small, has been an awfully long time in the making. It has been through many "I think it's finished" followed a couple of days/weeks/months by, "I'll just change a bit here" or more recently, "this is awful, drastic intervention needed". I'm a little nervous to even whisper the words "it's finally finished" but I think I just have to leave it alone and put it aside once and for all! (apologies for the image quality, it's an iPhone pic).

"Sandy Banks" oil on gesso board, each 8x8"

Hot Hot Summer

I have been so busy the last couple of weeks visitors and trips away I really haven't had much time to paint. New York is sizziling hot as well so its hard to stay inside when the sunshine is beckoning.  We recently had a weekend in Bermuda so I am full of inspiration so I really must pick the paint brushes up again now before we have more house guests arriving next week. This little painting I completed a few weeks ago:

6x6" oil on board

Also, thanks to magazines 64 West for featuring one of my pieces on their new facebook site. The magazine is all about connecting Bermuda to another 123 small islands in the Western Atlantic Ocean. Click HERE to see the post.

Thinking Pink

This is part of the new series of work that will be going to Jane Packer NY. As it's still snowing here and tropical fresh flowers are not exactly the easiest to come by, I worked on this painting from a photo I took in Bermuda early last summer. I love the hibiscus flower, it's such a happy flower and grows in such abundance, I'd love to have a big hedge row of them at the bottom of my garden like I did growing up.

"Bermuda Pink" oil on board, 8x8"

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!

Dockyard

Finally, a relatively sunny day! All be it with a shower or two this morning, the weather finally lifted enough for us to make the trip out to Dockyard. The ferry ride there was so beautiful as the views of the Island from the water are just incredible. I visited the Bermuda Arts Centre where my favourite Bermuda based artist, Jonah Jones, has a studio. Full of inspiration, I drove back on my moped and I stopped to photograph some of the small bays along the very northern tip of the Island. Unfortunately, my bike then broke down and I had to call out the bike shop to come and deliver me a new moped but that's another story! Here is the painting I did when I got home:

"Onshore Breeze" acrylic on board, 8x8

Rainy Days

It's been pretty cloudy and rainy here in Bermuda but it's meant that I've had more motivation to spend my time painting rather than on the beach! Here you can see the finished version of the painting I blogged about the other day:

"Jobson's Cove" acrylic on paper, 16x23

I visited the botanical gardens today and the Masterworks Museum of Bermuda art which is well worth a visit if you are on the Island. It stopped raining long enough to do a little sketching in the gardens, the flowers were absolutely amazing and make me think I should revisit my floral series sometime in the near future. Today I have also been working on a series of three paintings inspired by some photographs I took a couple of days ago along the very northern tip of coastline just as the light was changing. The colours of the ocean changed so dramatically as the clouds moved over to block out the sun. I'll post the some pictures of the paintings in the next few days once I've finished them but for now here are a couple of the photos I took. 

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.