The 'Big Picture'

What a busy month this has been! Sometimes you just don't realise how much you've been doing until you sit back and take stock for a moment.  I've kind of resolved my winter season paintings (for now) and started looking towards upcoming events and preparations that I need to make.  I need to order some hardware and do some finishing touches tidying up edges but my biggest task will be curating what work goes where. I have quite a lot of paintings that I am interested to see out of the studio but also quite a variety of themes... one theme per show so there is a definitive identity to the work or mix it up so I show the different areas I work in...? We shall see!

Just to point out, there are actual shadows on this painting, it isn't a clever effect, I just loved how the morning sun was making the colours sing.

So almost to illustrate this point(!) the piece of work I want to show in today's post and the main painting I have been working on lately is this... it's a little bit different to my seasonal work of the last few months!  It's been a lovely personal meandering born from this sketch.  I just wanted to be purely selfish,  I wasn't necessarily setting out to convey a message or a discovery but I was exploring being in the moment. My moment. Just spending time on ideas that popped into my mind and enjoying the paint.  While it has evolved I have thought about storytelling and dreams and the parts of my world that are important, and opinions and people and the environment.  The painting has made me retrospective about my mental health, about the interconnectedness of things and the importance of colour.  Well, frankly on the one hand that seems like a bit of an odyssey but on the other I think that could be what any artist's mind is perusing at any time!   At the moment this is still a work in progress, there is fine tuning to do and there is more enjoyment to be had and I plan to write here again about some of the details in the painting but I feel it is winding down to a close.   I'm hoping it will come to a lovely finish in time to be released from my little studio space for some of the upcoming events this year... As I said, we shall see!