Sunday, January 20, 2008

Two new landscape paintings.

"Corner on the Newcastle to Ballynahinch Road",
December 2007.
Oils on canvas, 25 cm x 30 cm. (11 hours working time)

There is a small, local exhibition coming up and I agreed to submit five paintings. Just got the last two finished, to my relief! There are, I think, quite nice, although not what I would consider major paintings. The weather has been poor recently and does not encourage much work outdoors. I am very much looking forward to warmer weather, when I can start spending much longer outside working on paintings.

I have quite a few paintings I want to get finished. At the beginning of January we had - for us - heavy snow (i.e., about 16 cm, which fell in the one night and lasted about a day). As always, it caught us unprepared. My wife and I were travelling to Ballynahinch and were about 15 miles away from there when it started. So, naturally, when we were just a few miles from Ballynahinch we got stuck (with a lot of others) at the first serious hill. It was only when some of us drivers got together to give cars a push that we were able to get moving again. No chance of help from the police or the road service as they were all snarled up around the town itself, nobody able to move on any of the roads leading in or out of Ballynahinch. The one good thing about being stuck where we were was that when, after several hours, we got moving again, at least the traffic chaos in Ballynahinch itself was beginning to clear and we were able to get to our destination! The other good thing was that the snow was still there in the morning, so I took several canvases up into the town and was able to sketch layouts on to them. I think that I should, potentially, have a couple of good paintings, although they will have to be completed from the photographs that I took at the time.

"Horses in a Field", December 2007.
Oils on canvas, 30 cm x 25 cm. (14.5 hours working time)

1 comment:

Lena said...

Greetings! You very clever and talented person.
Good bye! Lena.Moscow.