Inspiration

It's not always about what you intend, it's about what you let happen...

This is an ‘old’ shot taken on my last holiday to the Isle of Arran. My mum and me (I know, grammatically, I should write ‘I but it sounds too posh) had been in conversation as we walked around the grounds of Brodick Castle. We came around the corner of a low terrace of bungalows and chanced upon a flight (if that's the right word) of butterflies settled upon these unknown flowers. In the time it took me to set up my camera, most of the butterflies caught the August breeze and flitted away. Only one remained behind to give me what remains one of my favourite photographs ever.

I get asked where I find inspiration for the things I paint. Find is exactly the right word as I don’t ever go looking for ideas. On those occasions I have actively sought out the ‘right’ picture, the painting has never worked. I try to find that one single moment when a special some-thing shows itself for the briefest instant. The trick, if there is one, is to turn this into a habit: give space to everything and everyone and you will find those special moments.

It was on this holiday that I also found someone special. Her name is Kristine.

Nick Cave (alla prima)

Nick Cave (alla prima), 40“ x 50”, sometime 2003, Acrylic on canvas

This is an ‘old’ painting that seems to have been kicking around forever.

If memory serves, this picture was painted sometime in summer of 2003 and was based on a composite of 3 or 4 photographs. At the time, I was not yet painting in the chiaroscuro style, hence the lighter background. The apparent ‘lightness’ of the painting exists for another reason: there’s only one coat of paint over most of the canvas and so the white ground or ‘primer’ shows through really clear.

The painting is quite large but believe it or not, was relatively quick to paint... all of 6 hours. Most of my attention was focused on getting the face - and the lighting of the face - exactly as I wanted it. I was inspired, I guess. It was a monster session of coffee, cigarettes (I was smoking then but no longer) and repeated listenings of the album, Nocturama. Only later did I learn that creating a picture all-in-one-go like that is called alla prima. I haven’t done anything like it since and this picture stills hangs pride-of-place at work. It’s a sort of cultural-intelligence test: some visitors, perhaps because I work in a ‘bookish’ environment, think that the portrait depicts Martin Amis. Most visitors, however, do guess correctly and so this picture passes what I think is the true test of a portrait (at least for beginners) .ie. does it look like the person you were trying to paint?

PicturesandStories.co.uk ver2.0 is now live!

There have been a few ‘tweaks’ made to the original version of the site: gone are the photographs; gone are the massive picture files; gone too are the fictional characters who populated the site.

When designing the site and writing the code, I hadn’'t realized that so many people still used so-called ‘dial-up’ connections and neither had I appreciated just how often BT phonelines (in the UK) inexplicably slow d o w n... so that even a ‘dial-up’ connection can seem whizzy compared to broadband. Anyway, if you want a larger version of a picture file, you can ask me directly: the e-mail is listed on the homepage where - I hope - it’s easiest to find. However, what you won’t find is some nifty CGI-program that allows you to click on a link and e-mail me that way: until Spam is canned, SpamBots will have to look elsewhere for addresses to harvest.

Hopefully, even folks using the most primitive Microsoft browsers (what am I saying? All Microsoft product is primitive) should be able to view the site in crystal clarity. Of course, Firefox is best of all but y’all knew that already being Bloggeratti, right?

Pictures and Stories was coded in simple HTML and CSS2. The graphics were processed using ULead PhotoImpact 6.0. For those of you thinking of creating your own page, might I recommend using Terrapin software to upload your site? No, I haven’t been paid to give a recommendation (the full version cost me £19.95) but it made the whole process of getting a website up on the internet so painless (after I'd learned how to code HTML), I thought it deserved a free “plug” (Terrapin FTP actually checks your site for “bugs”. I’m down to 4 for the whole site, so I must be doing something right).

Souvenirs of Spring

Sometimes nothing can compare to a very simple pencil-and-paper sketch. This is the wasabi, the pickled ginger between courses of the painter's world. It is always good, no matter what you do in life, to go back to where you began. It is a 'cleansing of the palette' for whatever comes next.

I've been listening to - and enjoying - Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's Howl.

Poppy Bight, 36" x 36", October 2005, Acrylic on canvas, £600

A return to landscape painting but using a square canvas. The difficulty here is not in the process of painting or the perspective but composition. A single subject or abstract image can fill a square canvas without too much thought and yet remain quite dynamic. A landscape has many elements competing for the viewer's gaze.

I interrupted the cool tones of the background with some windblown poppy petals in 'cooled' red tones. I was mindful of the angle of the brushstrokes and their relative length, ignoring the urge to blend the colours more carefully or introduce more detail. This is me painting 'happy' with big blobs of colour and lots of abandon.

Papa Won't Leave You, Henry, November 2005, 16" x 20", Oil pastel on paper, £100

Sometimes it's just plain fun to grab some crayons and really go for it. This is a horse but not as you might have seen them before (see below). Energy and the depiction of life were key to the exercise here as I try to 'push the envelope' on my skills. I have found that trying to approach a familiar subject in a new way can dramatically improve my understanding of techniques I already use and in a painterly sense, how the colours work together.

Vigil, 24" x 24", June 2005, Not for sale

A period of waiting, watching. Anticipation and hope are signal feelings here but also melancholy and despair. The horse is depicted without even the cast of a highlight in it's gaze to represent an inward gaze: meditation and prayer. Faith.

The horse is depicted with a 'dressed' mane: it is dressed in its finest as it waits. The horse could be a descendent of of those depicted in Greco-Roman sculpture. It could also be in a certain stable on a certain evening. Standing in darkness, the mute animal knows there is always hope.

The Silence of death, 40" x 50", October 2004, Acrylic on canvas, Not for sale

The moment when you cross the last threshold: the ticking of the clock sounding like the stamping of heavy hooves, the distant snorting of a mighty beast, running toward you, now rearing before the hooves stamp down one last time. In painting this picture, I wished to summon in the viewer's mind the portrait, Napolean Bonaparte Crossing the Alps by the Great Saint Bernard Pass - 1800 by Jacques-Louis David (click here to see it) and idealized proportions of the unreal horse.

In David's painting, Bonaparte is off to conquer another country. More death. It's a war and in the words of a famous person, 'stuff happens'. It does.

As with all the other paintings that (will) form part of the planned series, there is no detail in this picture apart from the subject. Death induces feelings of claustrophobia: there is no room at the moment for anything else.

Communion, 36" x 36", December 2004, Acrylic on canvas, Not for sale

Of all the paintings I've created, this is the one about which I am most proud and the one which I'm sure will attract the most opprobrium.

Christians are used to thinking of bread and wine as Flesh and Blood and between the many branches of the Christian tradition there are many ways of understanding the receiving of - or participation in - the Act of Communion. Some believe that wine and bread are only symbols; others believe that the wine and bread are translated into blood and flesh; while yet others believe that the wine and bread physically become that part of God which was given at The Last Supper.

In this painting, I am attempting to depict the feeling of what it is like to partake in the Act of Communion. Communion is first and foremast a spiritual act in which we are called upon to acknowledge our part in our wider humanity, our relationship to God and to our community and in which we examine our purpose for being as we remember. It is a moment for awakening to a dream of something greater than ourselves. There is the moment of hesitation when we surrender notions of self.

Blood is also symbolic of love and of sacrifice. The skin of the depicted woman is deliberately shifted toward a death-like tone (as in Lazarene below which has tones suggesting the return to life) to suggest complete acceptance, the abandoning of everything known. Key to the Act of Communion is the sense in which we give to others, to God and to life itself. Even if we are repulsed by the sight of blood - especially our own - our fascination of blood and the life it perpetuates continues through many aspects of our lives. Many religions have regulations on how we must treat blood. Where there are regulations, we observe that the restrictions most severely affect women and their bodies attempting an impossible divide between those who nature has given the power to produce life and the signs of vitality. Beyond any religious reference in this painting, a woman is at the moment of reconcilition between herself and her own body.

This painting (and Lazarene) are the paintings which depict the interior life of the spiritual person: dreams, meditation, contemplation and the sensuality of actually living.

Lazarene, 36" x 36", June 2005, Acrylic on Canvas, Not for sale

The greatest miracle Jesus performed was the raising of Lazarus. It is a story which has always fascinated me, being so full of potency and the power that exists in the giving of life itself. To raise someone from the dead is an extraordinary revelation of divine attributes and which would likely have sealed Jesus' fate in the eyes of the priests. There is nothing we fear more than death not even pain as it is a threshold we must cross absolutely alone.

I am fascinated by the talents of Renaissance painters of whom there is no one comparable today. One painter stands out in front of all others, even over da Vinci, in the depiction of the Christian story and that must be Caravaggio. Click here to see how Caravaggio depicts the raising of Lazarus.

Centuries before the invention of the box camera, there were human beings able to depict the range of Human experience from the most base and vulgar to the most glorious depiction of The Divine. It takes more than an unmade bed or a pickled cow and calf to be an 'artist'. Being able to hold a paintbrush and a pencil are a good start. We are nothing if we do not lift our heads to look at the stars and the profane Caravaggio, an artist who drank prodigiously, fought and brawled - even murdered - knew more of the Sacred than a clutch of of conmen who stand as pygmies among the giants of the Renaissance.

In painting Lazarene, I was not looking for the public miracle but that quiet moment when the born again ask themselves if it can be true, if it truly can be more than a dream. The 'Lazarene' is naked because we are naked before God and before the person we truly are. Nothing is hidden.

God Moving Over The Face of the Water - Holy Island, 36" x 36", January 2005, Acrylic on canvas, £3,500

Sometimes, inspiration comes unexpectedly. A sudden shift of the tide reflecting light in a different way that reveals something of the world around us, an unplanned journey that leads to new friends, a revelation of one's place in life and the world and the immensity of that which we know and love as our home.

There are some experiences that defy explanation and sometimes we have to go beyond mere words.

Bernhard's World No.1, 36" x 36", February 2005, Acrylic on canvas, £1,000

I love looking at images of our Earth taken from satellites. So, ice breaking up on a warming sea or dust patterns on a window. The beauty of painting something like this is the way my own perceptions of what is being seen are changed each time a small change is made while at the same time, trying to imagine how other people will perceive the final painting.

Abstract images only look easy to create... hence, the price tag.

Old gods, new storm, 40" x 32", January 2005, Acrylic on Canvas, £1,200

There are many stone circles remaining in Scotland and this is just as true on the Isle of Arran. Whether these circles ever formed a function beyond places of worship or functioned as primitive astral calendars is beside the point, I think, for what is unmistakable is that people used the power of abstract thinking to leave a long-standing mark upon the landscape that is unobtrusive and yet mighty impressive. The truly remarkable feature of these monuments is that more advanced cultures can't truly decipher the purpose that was intended by their forebears.

Autumn Beech Grove, 50" x 40", January 2005, Acrylic on canvas, £1,600

I used to live in Berkshire and my favourite place for 'walking in the green' was near (the right royal rubbish tip known as) Windsor. Burnham Beeches is an ancient woodland owned solely by the City of London Corporation. Long may these nice capitalist gentleman types continue to tell developers where they may sweetly kiss to no avail. Nature on a vast estate and virtually untouched just outside of the concrete-and-traffic-fume quagmire that is London... incredible. in the south-east of England, only Arundel comes even close to this.

I feel that the best time to see the splendour of Burnham is on a sunny day in autumn when the leaves have begun to fall and have furnished a rich carpet across the ground. Any time is good though.

Cir Mhor, 40" x 30", February 2005, Acrylic on canvas, £400

It took seven photographs to create this panaromic scene of the mountains surrounding Glen Rosa on the Isle of Arran in Scotland. It was a hot summer day. The midges were biting. The streams were in full spate and more like rivers because of the previous day's bad weather but it is still one of my favourite walks. As we approached the foot of these mountains, so great ranks of clouds like stampeding horses assaulted the mountain tops and from where we were standing, they appeared to climb even higher riding on invisible thermals.

This view can be seen on the approach to Goatfell, the largest mountain on the island. The views from the top are spectacular and well-worth scrambling over the eroded footpaths.

T'Ang Dynasty Poem, 40" x 32", January 2005, Acrylic on canvas, £800

Painted immediately before A bend in the winter river, this painting is based on a photograph I took on a long walk but this time on the Isle of Arran. Inspired by my mum's dog, Holly, who can't keep her nose out of anything but will run on ahead to make safe the way while zipping back to herd us all together, I got to thinking about those dark paths down which we walk as we live our lives. Sometimes, there are parts of our journey that we choose to take, other times, we feel we have no choice. What matters is the courage we show in the face of adversity and what we are prepared to do or even to see in others. Years ago, I found a poem by an anonymous T'Ang Dynasty courtier that sums up those feelings of isolation and yearning perfectly:

The autumn leaves are falling like rain.
My neighbours they are all barabarians
And you, you are a thousand miles away
but there are always two cups at my table.

A bend in the winter river, 50" x 40", January 2005, Acrylic on canvas, £1,000

On a winter hillwalk with some university friends, I took the photograph on which this image is based. Frigid wind, rain, slush that froze through to our boots but I got something to remember the companionship and the reminder that at the end of every long walk is a welcoming, warm pub and some really good whisky. I utilized the cheap colour quality of the photograph which came out of the disposable camera (and the fact that I 'lost' the camera and didn't get the pictures developed for three years) to summon the conflict of feelings: the warm evening sun setting on a bitter cold day.

In a summer field, 30" x 62", October 2004, Acrylic on canvas, £2,500

This one's a biggie at five foot tall but it's a picture I keep coming back to both to look at and as a reference for my other landscape paintings. The detail of the brushstrokes adds something to the image overall as the eye looks for the green it expects to see.

All my paintings are created using no more than 7 colours and white (a tone). In a summer field was created with just five colours: Pyrrole Red, Pthalo Blue, Burnt Sienna, Raw Umber and Copper (which is not really a colour but being a metal, acts more like a tone).

There is a line of trees near the beach at Aberdeen, Scotland that seem immensely large when you walk under them and in the impossibly intense summer light, rich green. It was a challenge therefore to describe the scene without a single drop of green while keeping the dramatic feeling that is produced in the presence of these trees.

Physically, this picture is almost door-sized and refuses to be ignored.

A walk in the woods, 30" x 40", March 2005, Acrylic on canvas, £400

Why are landscape paintings usually longer rather than taller? Why the obsessive need for detail that produces feelings of awe and stadning back from the image rather than the feel of 'being there' and walking into the frame?

Two questions: one answer. Some people love this picture, feeling that it works like an abstract picture or enjoying the feeling produced by the 'rhythm' of the tree trunks. Other people don't like the picture at all. Result!

Roses IV, 24" x 30", September 2004, Oil pastel on canvas, £300

This painting began as an experiment (as the more successful paintings usually do, no sketches, just me 'winging it' as I make everything up). Having painted roses before with my usual palette of acrylic paints, I sought to bring a very different quality to the next attempt. I wanted to summon notions of an 'old world' of antiques and family heirlooms, home-made perfumes, velvet nicotine-stained wallpaper, an old clockwork tin train set spread out upon the knitted rug, the clink of the best china cups reserved for guests against silver spoons, subdued sitting rooms and polite conversation on a wet autumn Sunday afternoon with the ladies from church.

we had hoped for more in our dreams of flight, 24" x 30", August 2004, Oil pastel and acrylic on canvas, £400

The moment in our dreams when we know we are dreaming and as though poised upon a fulcrum, we can change everything. Is it the feather of a really large bird or the extremes of perspective? The woman holds the answer. She is dressed in the sort of androgynous trouser suit that became fashionable in the 1920s when the dream of flying with birds awoke from the minds of ambitious inventors. She does not speak but perhaps recognizes an omen.

First Light, 40" x 32", April 2004

This is another moment of quiet reflection captured in paint. An acolyte on her way to more duties? A nun about to take full vows? The image is about those moments when the wind that's been blowing for weeks past finally stops and the clouds part to reveal that the sun was always shining we just couldn't see it. It's also about those moments when we anticipate the coming excitement and joy of the day. And last but not least, those moments when we know, when there are no doubts and we embrace the feeling of being alive, thanking the universe before we hurry along on our way.

when she sleeps, she is the most beautiful woman in the world, 15" x 9", August 2004, Oil pastel on paper, £250

This is one of my all-time favourite pictures. On completing this picture, I just sat and looked and wondered how... and then I sort of punched the air because I could create this sort of thing. Painting is like that: weeks of getting nowhere and then just past the moment where you wonder you didn't give up days ago, everything just comes together.

The Negotiation, 12" x 14", August 2004, Oil pastel on paper, £250

Based on another Howard Schatz image, I thought that with tongue-in-cheek, I might try to create an image that did more than represent some-thing but instead captured an aspect of human life. Every guy has been there: the unobtainable woman; the got-have-it urge; the post-argument make-up session. Look closely at the image: is she smiling? Or is she wondering why he bought a pink rose instead of the big red ones she likes? Though the rose is held close in her hand, it's also pointing away from her.

The Pillow, 40" x 32", May 2004

This was another important painting for me: it was presented as a wedding gift to a very dear friend I met at university and his intended bride. The image is based on a black-and-white photograph by Howard Schatz.

Hiring models is expensive and lacking an art school education, I also lack the confidence to claim, 'I am an artist'. I simply don't have the cahones to advertize and I think Darling Beloved might have something to say about naked ladies posing for me anyhow. Using photographs as the basis for my learning has been the only way for me to develop my skills.

There are lots of great photographers but to advance my understanding of the process of painting the human body would have taken much longer than the four years I have been l;earning if not impossible without the images Howard Schatz has created. Alive, the human body is constantly in motion and even dead, the processes of life continue down other murkier, more turgid avenues. The skill of capturing a moving body as Howard Schatz can with dancers (see his Waterdance images) and acrobats (his work with Cirque du Soliel) is unmatched for detail So ,Mr Schatz, if you're reading this: Thank you.

Beach scene, Holland, 40" x 30", October 2005

Holland must surely be a paradise for painters. The light is constantly changing. The sky is simply big for there are no dramatic hills, mountains or escarpments to block the view (though architects appear to have taken up the challenge in towns and cities). There is nothing for the eye to lock onto and by which a sense of scale can be appreciated. Pure magic.

However, in wishing to capture the drama that still exists in my memory, I made a mistake. I have been asked to not destroy or otherwise recycle this painting. I haven't and simply because it is on object lesson in why I do not paint on a white background using accepted techniques...

Viva chiaroscuro!

Copper, July 2004, 40" x 32"

This is the painting that, more than any other, I felt marked the point where I became 'an artist'.

I had for some time been trying to discover why Renaissance painters could achieve such luminosity in their paintings when even their modern imitators could not. Imagine that you have to grind up all your pigments yourself and then blend these with controlled amounts of oil. All organic materials vary in the qualities they posess. Think of when you last bought oil from the supermarket: was it cloudy from cold? Thin and sloshy compared to when you bought the 'same' product before? Now try and imagine an artist having to cope with the variance in the raw tools of his trade.

It seemed to me that the reason artists used so many inorganic materials was simply to gain some sort of order and consistency in their work. Some of these pigments were mineral salts, that is, a metal and a halide (like sodium chloride), so why not just use the metals? Mix the metals with mineral based pigments... use an organic material to create variety and shade. It was my Eureka moment.

I have always used acrylics to paint with despite the opinion of certain writers I have read in various 'how to' manuals that the medium simply cannot achieve the same results as oil. True: if you don't know how to use acrylic paint.

Acrylic paint is a truly dynamic medium. It imposes dynamic energy on paintings and there is one very simple reason: it dries fast. On making an error of judgement, the painter will find that acrylic cannot be wiped off a canvas as you can when painting with oil. I never use retarding material to slow the rate of drying. It diminishes the vibrancy of the colour. Another criticism of acrylic is that it behaves like an amateur's painting medium inasmuch as you can always paint over your mistakes. Well, no, you can't because even the thinnest application of acrylic obscures the grain of the canvas making an error-corrected area stand out. This is much like a rock climber using plaster-and-trowel to smooth over the parts of the mountain he finds are beyond his abilities. It's wrong and doesn't make sense. As anyone who has ever attempted to paint in the chiaroscuro method will be aware: what lies beneath the paint will show through to the surface. Don't think so? Then compare the power of light and contrast in Copper to the painting of the beach scene above. Copper was painted on a black canvas, slowing working up from darker shades to white. The landscape scene above was painted on the more usual white-primed canvas.