On The Face Of It

On the face of it, everything was ticking along nicely for Mr Lovelace, that is to say, he was too busy with life to be troubled.

Until one afternoon, when all the family were out shopping, he slumped to the floor, exhausted, in front of the hallway mirror .

And suddenly Gordon realized that twenty years had passed since he had last taken stock of himself, and the years had not been kind.

“I haven’t even gone bald well” he said to Banjo the dog, whose own struggles with scabies had caused her to become sour and angry in recent months.

Taking some toiletries and as much underwear as he could fit into his satchel he left the house for the last time, leaving a poorly written apology for his wife and some ham and pickle sandwiches for the kids.

I never heard from him again, but to the great relief of the remaining Lovelace clan Banjo’s mange cleared up nicely.

Breathaliser

My grandfather developed a simple device for the local constabulary to employ in incidents of vehicular malfeasance. It was simple for two officers to operate once the calibration was completed and the mouthpiece wiped down with a hankie.

Things my mother warned me about

He wasn’t exactly a liar per se.…. But his pants were on fire

I pulled “that face” once too often and then it got stuck like that.

Somehow, against all odds, I never actually had someone’s eye out.

Winter Forgetfulness

Summer seemed so far away

It SEEMED that it happened once,

Maybe twice,

In a place I couldn’t hope to find

On any map.

Dirk Fosgaard. The Wheels (excerpt)

Dirk Fosgaard was the wheels for most of their activities. He'd learned most of his skills driving crates of fish in the family's old Saab truck, from their home near Lom back and forth across the icy Sognefjellet pass.

The family had a long history as fish merchants and, as a boy, Dirk had always dreamed that one day he would drive his father's truck full of shiny, bright eyed pike clear over the pass and not stop till he reached the great ocean at Bergen.

As it turned out, he did make such a journey one clear summer's night, but as a hitch-hiker, drunk, at the age of twenty four,  having driven the old Saab into a drainage ditch, leaving Pere Fosgaard without transportation and Lena Olmstead without a solid plan about who'd be helping her to raise the baby come December.

from the The Burnley Street Gang archives.

Photo credit to: 

Jarle Wæhler / Statens vegvesen

The Crossing

My grandparents were salt traders from the northern coast. They set out from Trondheim on the steamer “Is Dronningen” (The Ice Queen) in the summer of 1905 and never set foot in their homeland again. It was meant to be a short visit to attend a Fisheries Convention in Southampton but the crossing was so bad that they never sailed back. They raised my father to be mortally afraid of any body of water larger than a Sitz Bath.

Empires in The Sun

Fosgaard reached the end of the lobby and slumped to a halt. The entire operation had been built on the back of his sweat and his genius. Success heaped upon success until the weight of it all had become too much to bear. Standing alone in the silent lobby he saw with terrible clarity that it was all vanity, all a journey without a destination or an end, all a game without purpose.

I'm Back, And I'm Thinking of Leaving

I’m thinking of leaving

not her; that would be ridiculous

Unthinkable, indefensible, INCONCEIVABLE

I’d last a couple of days at most

I’m thinking of leaving

Not home; that’s impossible.

Wherever we go that will be our home.

I live inside myself with her as a roommate.

I’m thinking of leaving

But not my job.

That’s what I am uniquely built for, duty bound

If I don’t do it it shall never be done. I have to eat.

I’m thinking of leaving

But I’m not leaving my faith behind.

How arrogant to think that I might choose

To unfriend the creator of the universe.

I’m thinking of leaving

But not Facebook, not today

Although we all think of leaving now and then

And I certainly don’t want to spend a tenth of my life there.

And yet I am wrestling with a guilty mind

As I sit surrounded by smiling family and laughing friends

I am thinking of leaving 

my carrots

Even though people in Africa are starving,

As my mother often noted.

Mother

5 x 7 watercolour

A thermos of tea with dad.

 It was such an odd thing to find there in the shady corner of the garden. A yellow ribbon scarcely moving in the breeze. Actually to say that it was a yellow ribbon is to make assumptions based on other yellow things that I have experienced in the span of my life. If one were to honestly and accurately attempt to describe its color one would be looking more for descriptors in the light tan and russet brown region of the paint department. Anjou Pair (VERY ripe), Autumn Sage (late November), Sickly Child. And, in truth, the ribbon was no longer the color of itself but bore the dressings of years of accretions of who knows what born on the wind and delivered by the sticky proboscis of bee and fly and summer midge. Sickly Child with a glaze of Bacon Fat. Anjou Pear with accents of Dark Corn Syrup. Autumn Sage dipped in Oil-Change Residue. 

The colors weren’t colors that one encountered in successful interiors. There was a vaguely familiar hint of the 1970s about them. Knitwear specifically. They were the colors of a knitted sleeveless sweater that my father had worn at the weekends as he relaxed in a deckchair by the mud flats. That was why the ribbon had caught my eye and held me transfixed, though it took me several minutes to peel back the camouflage and finally discover dad there, with his angry squint turned into the wind. I had spilled his tea and spoiled what was left of the afternoon. Dad and I loved to be by the estuary at the weekends watching the gulls peck at the bubbles in the mud, listening to the sports scores and post game analysis on the wireless, hunching our shoulders as the damp breezes rose and fell, a thermos of tea and a packet of McVities. I stared at the ribbon and remembered the soft comfort of my father‘s sweater against my cheek as he hugged me on our way back to the car in the late afternoon chill.

A Farmer's Life

We grew up  working from dusk till dawn  helping father coax a meagre crop from the arid soil of the valley.

 Life was hard and it showed in the faces of young and old alike.

The G-8 was a particularly cumbersome tool. It was almost impossible to steer once the dust started to fly.

Doodle

Doodle pen and ink 5 x 7

This one began without much forethought, and spread across the page , the ideas forming in my head and spilling onto the page in real time, without ever being subject to or organized under anything in the way of an intention. So its really just a doodle. Its pretty. I like it. But it is what it is, which is is a doodle.

Painting the world piece by piece

I was given the opportunity to paint the world a couple of weeks ago. Working with director David Hicks, here's what we came up with.

Global Week Promo 2014 from Park Community Church on Vimeo.

My work in a New Book on Drawing

For several years I have followed the excellent blog "Making a Mark" published by UK writer and artist Katherine Tyrrell.

Katherine has been kind enough to mention my work on a number of occasions, and invited me to contribute to her new book about drawing, published in the UK and USA.
I'm thrilled to see that my work even appears in part on the front cover of the US edition.

Katherine Tyrrell's description of her new book

Making a Mark has held a place in the top 10 art blogs in the world for years and seems to be getting more and more inclusive and generous in its content. If you have any interest in the dos and donts, the trends and issues surrounding the activity and culture of being a practicing artist, its a must read resource. Head on over and subscribe!

Perpetual Energy in the Mountains

I remember stumbling out of the hut in the still of the night and being awestruck and terrified by the massive silhouette of the mountain towering over me. Ive had a lot of exhilarating experiences in my life so far, but never have I been so aware of my weakness as I was in that silent moment in the shadow of such a powerful mass.

Ferrous Generator Unit. Banthanti

When I was a boy the ferrous generators had had sufficient capacity to run the mines and provide heat to the town below. That was In the days before the skies had become choked with brown dust blowing from the heaps of slag.

By the time I finally reached the high passes the dust had quietly settled, the rot had set in and the vast mountain landscape had begun to exact its merciless revenge.

Developing Mindfulness

Practicing "Mindfulness" he became sensitive to the cool, moist breeze passing across his wrists and fingers as he worked the watercolour across the page. He was able to distinguish several distinct bird calls in the pines behind the boathouse, and he imagined how it would feel to reach out and touch the rough cedar shingles that he was painting.

He did not, however, notice the local teens trying to remove the wheels from his van in the parking lot until his mindfulness was disrupted by the shrill intrusion of a car alarm.

Obsession

The Turk leaned in a little more and gave the cloth another tug. His eyes sparkled in the morning light, and he bit his lip till he tasted the salty sweetness of his own blood. He twisted the taught fabric one final turn.
"Just a few drops more," he muttered "and these sheets ought to be dry on the line by lunchtime".
The Turk's attention to the laundry was laudable though perhaps pathological.

Soda bottles and knitwear

Fishers, Maine 14" x 20"

Back in the studio after a busy summer travelling. I had a great show in Bristol, England, and a successful, intense and enjoyable plein air event in Door County, Wisconcin. Then we packed the car and drove to Graceland, toured the Gibson guitar factory in Memphis, visited Birmingham, Alabama, The Florida coast, Atlanta, Georgia, Louisville, Kentucky and arrived home just in time for the start of school for the youngest two boys.
I love the summer but I'm really excited to wear some knitwear again soon.

St Mary's Conquest…the chain link fence

St Mary's Conquest at 4pm

So when the St Mary's Conquest sailed away 2 hours into my painting on Wednesday I had got most of the form laid in but little of the detail. I had taken a reference a photo but with only a standard lens so that  would only get me so far, besides being not in the spirit of the Plein Air discipline. So I decided to make the ship the background and to create a foreground screen with the chain link fence (which I had, till that point, decided to omit). The fence posts were painted on location….and the chain link took almost all night.
Here's the finished piece as exhibited in my first grouping of paintings at Friday night's opening. Click on the image to see it larger on your screen.

St Mary's Conquest at 4am

Day seven, Saturday

Window and Shingles

  Backing up a bit…. this is the painting I did yesterday afternoon before the gallery opened. It went into the exhibition which is open to the public now and has its evening reception in about two hours from now, so Im hoping it will sell. Im very pleased with it.

The first Four on the wall

Yesterday morning I selected these four to be the first to go on the wall for the private view last night at 5pm…. By 5.30 only the one bottom right was unsold.
This morning I was up at 5 to prep for the 2 hour "Quick Paint" event in Fish Creek. Spent two hours working on my composition, drawing and redrawing my thumbnails and vacillating between the safe route on 12" x 16" paper and the ambitious, 30" wide panel that I had prepared with coarse Gesso. The issue being that I wanted it to be all about the striking graphics and the horizontal clapboard, but a 30 inch by 10 inch painting in 2 hours would demand a different approach to detail and linework.
Its been such a great week here and I sold so well last night at the opening so on the one hand I feel like I've proved myself and have no need to be conservative, but on the other hand…..its a VERY public event and at the end of it all its going to be exhibited, talked about and auctioned live in front of a large crowd of collectors, so the excruciating embarrassment of doing something that no one likes is a very real fear for me.
So I went with the risky 30 x 10.
Bidding started at $400 and the hammer came down at $1750. I am thrilled with the week, I have three left in the gallery for tonight's opening to the public, I've posted everything that Ive painted, and I think its time to sign off and sleep for an hour before I dress for the show.

Fish Creek Market, watercolor, ink and collage on panel, 30 x 10