As I sweep the floor, mend the walls, clean, put filler in the pin holes, paint, repaint, reduce, edit, assess: I think about years past. The years with Gabi and Phil and the many others who have shared the spaces. The first year was bathed in sunshine while we twiddled thumbs. There was a year of ripe plumbs and red admiral buttereflies, more years of plumbs and apples falling. The year of 2000 visitors (my dad keeping record), and a better year with an audience totaling 79. (It’s not about the numbers.)

And this year. Already exceptional – face masks, disinfectant spray and hand gell.

I have work planned. Visitors can join in. Monoprint, draw or paint, The time is valuable to share or to get on and work alone. It’s time allocated for Open Studios.

I have chased the mess from the back door to the front, in the same direction as the one way route I have devised for any visitor. The flow is heralded by broom, mop and hoover.

I like this time. For what ever follows, the studio is primed and ready.

Today, I drove the picturesque roads from Kemnay to Ballater. Delivering paintings to Larks Gallery. In these unprecedented times, to have a deadline for delivery of work is a much needed focus. This year seems to be passing in a blur of destructure, the parameters that help stabilise my (our) days have been severed. So I am grateful for those people who have tried to keep doors open and have worked to continue to present creative work to a smaller audience.

Framed at short notice by the ever patient Leslie Mckensie. (Frameworks, Clinterty).

The works looked more splended than I had hoped.

It’s such mixture of emotions for me delivering work. I want people to see them and maybe appreciate them enough to purchase. But there is also the fear they will be passed by or

rejected.

It’s done. They are there now. No more for me to do but pick them up again in months time .

I grow them. Admire them. Paint them. As a motif they offer seductive lines. Classic refined beauty. Sensual simplicity that feels challenging to emulate.

I am working in a lovely tunnel of my our devising. Sort of experimenting. Which is, sort of an excuse for open ended painting. I know that means, there is no deadline, or pressure to resolve.

Who knows, where it will take me – I’ll know if I get there.

Still working on this. Like an unfinished coversation, I woke up thinking about something to add.

And finally. After a few days, (but it could be longer), of revisiting, waking up with an idea or resolution, sometimes a solution to a visual problem – the clunky dark bottom right corner…

Obsession is also a form of commitment. To not give up too quickly. Or to call it finished too soon. To be more rigorous about observing the work and resolving those niggly shapes and to adjust tones that are too dark, or too light. To deal with areas that are weak – not to be complacent or satisfied too easily. Ask more of yourself. To always want it to be better.

It’s not all plain sailing – having all this time to paint is good – if one has a plan or project. Sketching is my default – when I am without a scheme of works to drive my motivation.

We have the opportunity to experiment – with no looming deadline.

Looking for different effects and less familiar marks.

Being a bit playful.

Time to practice and not to produce.

Just paint. Get paper and watercolours and shut the noise of the real world out.  Clean water regularly. Use Pure colour as much as possible with lots of water to create lighter tones. Glazing for depth and making complex colours – transparent layers capturing  that ‘something’ that mixing cannot offer. For the love of it.

The first pass is often more cathartic than effective. Solving painting riddles and exorsizing imps. (The painting imps that want so much with so little effort.)

I feel often that the beginner painter believes  ‘I’ve started so I must finish’ instead of, ‘I’ll give this a go, and if it doesn’t work out or please me I’ll try again’

A freer composition. I felt much more pleasure at its open possibility and allowing the eye to roam around the surface. I had not boxed myself into a corner..

It’s a truth that when I have more time, like now, to do as I please, I become more wasteful of it. My weekly structure has disintrigated. My self diciplin has become flabby and I my activities are more dictated by the whims of weather than an efficient creative being.

Though a lot of what I am doing just now is not visible. Painting or tending the garden both have a step back and admire moment, which may be transitory, still however fleeting – a mown lawn lasts about a week.

This precious time is being largely taken up by helping administrate an art exhibition. Which in the three months of lock down has gone from a physical show with delivered works, to an online presentation. 

Not long after arriving in Scotland I met three very different creative people. One day we got together to go to Sunny Side Bay. One baught with her the picnic items which were foods to taste for a wedding menu. One was going to show us a rare plant she knew was down on the rocky shoreline. One was usually provider of the venue for a life drawing group that three of us attended. Living closer by the bay she provided the information of where to meet for our adventure. And I took my watercolour sketching kit.

We talked and walked. We ate the delicious food and made helpful comment, (yummy) and i sketched. We saw the rare flower and dolphins dancing round a fishing boat out at sea. We found treasure . A boat brush, a long thick rope.

And like with this art show, we hoped for some of these things without knowing they were there or what they were, or what they would taste or look like. We got so much more from the company and scenery than we ever imagined. I remember it rained on our way back up the path, but that did not damp the day, so memorable and bonding.

It was many years ago.

The group who are pulling together to turn closure and cancellation into a positive open door, have encountered so many unexpected hurdles, not least from within. We have been challenged and out of nessesity, required to embrace new methods and initiatives. At the same time as even more issues have manifested themselves, Unseen, unencountered before and all needing solutions. New ground, new rules, rewriting the script.

We are not finished yet. Today I expect more letters… Some of praise and thanks, or outraged at our shambolic procedures. Others recognising the efforts involved and the time it all takes. Admiring what we are aiming to achieve and some lost passwords. The enormous fees, the misread, the misinterpreted, our total incompetence and the creation of an amazing virtual gallery.

I personally will not have much to show for this time.

But there are some amazing people rising up and doing what is needed – a collaboration of energy attitude and skills – supporting and encouraging and creating an online gallery that will serve the societys members and more, well into the future.

The warmer weather returns to co-inside with completing (still ongoing actually – but completed in the sence that it is resolved), a work trail in the studio. So I have time to go out and play.

On Sunday it was warm enough to sit out painting for over an hour. Until the rain I had indicated in the threatening sky came down on me

Drawing, sketching, painting outside is like I imagine the best form of meditation to be. All other thoughts are vanquished. I am at one with view in front of me and everything else in my head gets put into perspective .

The process I am describing is of Making a mess and then tidying up. Different ways of working are interesting to observe, thats why we like seeing artists studios in the raw – not all tidied up as they are during open weeks. (I might not bother to tidy this year if it happens! ) – what I do and how I do it may not be appropriate for other people. But maybe affirming for some.

I try to start with a clear space and the things I think might be useful close at hand. But once I get going it becomes a mess that I try to navigate through without loosing the thread.

I remember seeing Frances Bacons studio and was horrified. (it was a long time ago). That he could paint such fine orderly paintings (because they are not in any way haphazard), in such a confined mess. But he had a straight pathway through the piles of rubbish on either side, (mostly empty paint tubes), to the canvas. A clear view through the chaos.

That is the relevance for me, that I can keep sight of the possibility of the image. Or images. Confidence while creating and to retain that confidence still, even when looking at it in a tidy world.

The images are being stretched face down to flatten out bulges and crinkles.

I Do, I Undo, I Redo. Louise Bourgeois made three monumental towers that represented the title. They were the first exhibit in the Tate Modern turbine hall when it opened. What I understand of that title has become my mantra. And I will be undoing and redoing this work again. And maybe again still.

A rare opportunity to learn something new presented itself to me today.

This barn is being reconstructed by my future son in law. As part of the reconstruction process he needs in the region 800 hand made wooden pegs.

Richard showed me the process.

He has made a stool with specialised foot clamp – which holds the wooden pegs firmly in place as they are stripped to shape with a draw knife. I learnt how to split strips of wood off a log and then trim them into one inch square sticks about 12 inches long. Like making kindling.

I took about two hours to make 15 pegs. I was improving but was completely worn out. It was a most satisfying achievement, to make useful pegs that will be part of the barn structure for years to come …

The barn structure – so far.

It’s all about the shape just now – for me – outline wins over detail. The obsessive observation of detail (and in this regard I am maybe thinking of hyper, photographic realism sort of detail) doesn’t see the wood for the trees. So drawn into the fine details that the bigger shapes are either lost or too dominant in the composition.

The shape is defining. The detail, though delightful, I believe to be secondary.

So a siluette can and often does encapsulate the object or idea. The loss of detail as happens with strong back light, is no hindrance to knowing what the subject is. It also allows room for the viewers imagination to play, wheras the super real is defining. A statement with less room for discussion.

This plover image is a balance between outline shape and detail. The primary work, the siluette was complimented with most nessesary detail. White underside s and paddle shaped wings.