Day 12 A walk on the not so wild side...

Yesterdays planned walk was abandoned even before it began. A  large  sign was attached to the entrance of Cocklawfoot farm alerting walkers to the fact that lambing was in full progress and that they should avoid the area until May 10th.  Understandable (it is the farmers livelihood after all ) but  momentarily frustrating! Anyway we drove back and headed up by way of Hownam Grange farm where roaming permission was granted by the  farmer there and headed up Hownam Law for a circular walk taking in Wideopen Hill and Gubbitlaw.

These opportunities to get out and walk whether it's here in the Borders, or further a field are really important. The benefits for the body and mind are many of course but the additional element I take away is (hopefully)subject matter for future ideas for painting.

Clouds everywhere you look

Showers blowing through

 The forecast yesterday was fairly accurate although the passing showers were alarmingly more wintery than you'd expect! Baltic is the only word to describe the temperature up there  and it makes me wonder how those little lambs manage to survive at all.

Trial screen printing from last year working on the Sheep circle theme

Sheep circle screen print  (map reference,sheep skeleton and sheepfold)

Screen printing opportunity at Edinburgh Print makers was kindly awarded through the Visual Arts Awards & funded by SBC and Creative Scotland. Liaison was through CABN.

Local environmental artist Kate Foster has been doing really interesting work about this landscape and her observations and thoughts have made me think more about my approach to my own work.
This along with the  the  limited access to the Cheviots yesterday and just thinking about the landscape in general  made me think about  just how managed the landscape round this area is, walls, fences,new farm buildings and sign posts abound. Although you are in a rural, fairly wild and potentially inhospitable place the mark of human habitation runs deep.

Nice bit of hail thrown in for good measure!

 The notion of a sense of place with regard to my work is something I feel will have to have more significance in future. After all our experience of the landscape is a here and now phenomenon.
 As an artist you can choose to represent what you wish, editing as you go. The weather is a constant and in some respects the more changeable it is, the better, for painting at least! So along with the weather I'll be continuing to seek out some temporary constants to represent the here and now.

Light and shadow on the hills

Snaking stone dike with sheep fold.

More incoming showers

Brighter skys...Eildon hills in the distance.

Day 11 No getting away from the weather

There's just no getting away from it, but the fact of the matter is that the weather is really getting me down! The lack of any prolonged sunshine, assured dry spells or even slightly warmer temperatures is keeping me indoors too much and close to home, not enough ramblings going on around here!

Sheep Circle

Sheep Circle 2

Sheep Circle (this time with no horizon line)

In the meantime there are plenty of non weather dependent things to do...I've  been turning my thoughts back to work I started last March. These pieces were made in response to the landscape close to the Cheviot hills on the Border between Scotland and England.
I was looking for a way to reference this particular landscape without recourse to a purely representational image.
This quote by Mondrian which I read on the really informative abstraktion.org/blog  sums up a tiny part of what I was thinking about   "The emotion of beauty is always obscured by the appearance of the object"....."Therefore the object must be eliminated from the picture"
Contour lines taken from relevant maps, references to sheep folds and experimentation with texture to conjure up the worn and weathered aspects of the ground are first steps in exploring non figurative forms of representation.
I doubt I'll ever make an emotionally beautiful painting in the sense of what Mondrian meant, being constantly  drawn back to the horizon line where below is the earth and  above is the sky.
It's a pictorial device of course but even when I have tried to eliminate it, it returns!!

30x30cm Oil collage and wax

  100x100cm  From Hindhope Hill 1

From Hindhope Hill 2

 Within this, is the atmosphere and the weather. Mists, rain and clouds abound always. Rare is a painting with no weather.....
I suppose I should be grateful for our inclement weather. In the ever changing conditions,shifting sun light,rain,clouds and mist  all help to obfuscate,delineate and constantly alter the solid hills and valleys.

Onward!!

Day 10 Cold and Bright !

Cold and bright weather has been the norm for the past few days. Waking up and looking out the window, the brightness and intense blue of the sky has been teasingly deceptive. Winds  sweeping in from the arctic have been keeping much of this April really cool.

A walk up Ruberslaw on Sunday helped to shake out the cobwebs and acted as a make shift tonic for the back to school blues...me too!
All's well now writing this on Monday evening.

Looking West form Ruberslaw

A Storm  Howard Hodgkin 1977

A few days ago I came across this painting by Howard Hodgkins on the Tates blog.
Looking at his work again I was reminded of how important the titles of his paintings are (at least to me). In their directness they help to open up his world and make it more visible.
His landscape/weather related paintings are pure poetry. Seemingly simple strokes and colour ways speak volumes in terms of  precipitation, isobars and temperature gauges.
On a more practical level they are, as if by the process of osmosis  guiding me to taking a looser approach to the second Ruberslaw painting I'm working on at the moment.

Quick study for Ruberslaw 2

Ruberslaw 2 detail work in progress

detail

detail

Trigpoint seat

Looking towards the Cheviots

See these paintings below and much more online here

Dirty Weather

Fog

Thunder

Rain

Day 9 In between the showers....

On Wednesday we spent a couple of sunshine filled hours in the beautiful Botanical gardens in Edinburgh. In between chatting, catching up and supervising hide and seek  I managed to take a few photos. 
Again for me the striking thing was the light. I am certainly drawn to the way in which it illuminates the shape and form of the trees. The foliage too takes on something more visibly manageable, simply through the way light falls...

Beautiful tree from Argentina,(I can't remember its proper name!) already its leaves are out..

Couldn't help noticing this ! Wrapped like a Christo for the moonwalk

Blossom in abundance

Blue blissful sky

Didn't manage to get the whole tree in the frame, but you get the idea

 I think I'm getting over my green phobia. Colour mixing is really important here. I 'm experimenting with a fairly limited palette...cadmium yellow and three or maybe four  blues. Complementary colour mixing also comes into its own when dealing with the difficulties inherent in green, especially with bright light experienced on a relatively sunny day. 

Light breezes move the foliage and this combined with sunlight seems to alter the green and I imagine I see a myriad of different green hues. 

A huge challenge and something I 'll be working on for a long time to come.

Details (here and below) of large tree painting, work in progress

Along the Amstel    Piet Mondrian 1903

 Like many people I am familiar with Mondrian's later abstract works, but looking back his more traditional representational landscape paintings are a revelation, utterly stunning.

 Pollard Willows on the Gein Piet Mondrian 1902-04

The Cabbage Field  Pissarro 1873  60x80cm Oil

Apple Trees  Claude Monet  1878

Paul Cezanne The Great Pine 1892-96

Cezanne manages to capture perfectly the wind in the branches of the great pine.