That Was a Week, That Was.

Florence, Spring Evening.


Cley-next-the-Sea

As of Friday last, we were having a celebratory Chinese takeaway, just waiting for the date for exchange of contracts and it was Scottish Borders, here we come - moving in for Spring. Come Monday and our buyer pulled out - whoops! no mortage! - and we're back to square one, financially in peril and mightily enraged. Still, I'm back on an even keel now, thanks to positive thinking, taking it philosophically and prescription drugs.

I put up a couple of new paintings on my website, another pair of oils. The Florence one (oil on canvas) was another in my long list of Reasons To Hate Windows. I mean see-through-walls windows - not the creation of notoriously litigious software gnome Bill Gates, which is a fine piece of work - and Florence is full of the buggers. While Pisarro is able to suggest whole sweeping boulevards of windows with nonchalant black smudges, I can't.

I increased the amount of sunlight falling at the far right, to change the relationship of the dark and light areas and bring some light and warmth down into the darker, colder tones. It's technically an impossible angle for the light to be shining on the buildings and especially the arches, but I don't think it's immediately noticeable and it makes for a more balanced painting. It's the best of my Florence paintings so far, but I'm still such a terribly literal painter, somewhat stuck between realist accuracy and impressionist suggestion, which is what I want to work towards. Paint more. It's the only way. Still, I like how the backlit skyline turned out. Really, that's the bit I wanted to paint.

Cley-next-the-Sea is near the knee of Norfolk, stuck out into the North Sea, and when we were there it was bitterly cold, grey and blowing a gale. Proper out of season beach weather. Champion.