Midwinter Birch painting

The snowy light is fascinating me,. daylight is so brief, but this last week has had a bright moon at night which helps combat the darkness, and in the snow makes everything amazing eerie colours, shapes distort, shadows shift. I like just going out in the freezing temperatures & looking at the sky trying to breathe in any light available. I hate Midwinter.

I've also been getting sick of 'painting by numbers' representational landscapes, which people like, and buy. But am currently allowing myself just to go mad with the paint, paint from memory and just splodge around to see what happens. Its pretty mentally exhausting but feels good. I also haven't had space/ house to myself in a couple of months, so am having to shift my working methods to try & work around this. Luckily the snow colours are inspiring enough to help combat the midwinter blues.

Stags & Snow

After a very long, very slippy, very snowy, very beautiful drive to Inverness today, I painted 8 of these staggy pictures.

Hi Ex, e-card

Our e-card for Hi Ex. www.hi-ex.co.uk

December

I haven't been blogging much, but thats not to say I haven't been busy!  There has been a couple of craft fairs, This is Lochcarron Hall at the producers day, where I sell my prints and crafty bits - Or  'little drawings ' as someone described my work this week.

I''ve done a recycled crafts demonstration, hopefully there will be some funding for some recycled craft workshops in the new year.  The community art class I run continues to be well attended.
Here is a picture of young people painting the pool table cover at a Youth Cafe workshop I ran on the east coat recently- The theme was about leaving home & homelessness in young people. Great fun & hopefully some important messages sank in.

Apart from that I've been pitching for some comic colouring work, can't show you samples yet I'm afraid!
I've also been press ganged into joining the Highlands Open Studios Committee, to help specifically with PR & marketing, should be fun!  In my case it should of course be called Highlands Open Spare room of chaos.

Lochcarron Commission

Heres a Christmas commission painting of Lochcarron including village hall.

quick sunset

Heres a quicky, commissioned by some kids at the door... I am a big softie & shall charge them some crisps or something.

mail me art submission

Finally finished this doodle, had meant to submit one a month to this but lost 3 months somewhere. I feel the need to delve back into squiggly lines and weird beasties, getting bogged down with 'representational' work .

The logic goes like this, I want art to be inclusive not elitist, that is so that anyone can appreciate it. So I'm trying to court the average person on the street as well as the arts establishment - to feed both my ideals and the chip on shoulder that art college left. So I make paintings that look like real things that people recognise "ooo its just like a photograph", but these aren't abstract or expressive enough for galleries, which also always used to sneer at my  squiggly stuff. However they do establish a degree of technical skill, which seems to annoy other local artists. But the average person ? is that the fake tan wanna be Katie Prices'? the x-factor watching masses? or the tweedy old ladies that pick up my art at craft fairs and say " ooo I don't like this modern art, but I like your landscapes "- modern art? why o why o why do I care what any of them think? why? well because art is a dialogue, communication, pointless in a vacuum. I just wish I could slough off this trying to be everything to all. stuff them, I want to squiggle- just forgotten how.