Thursday 23 January 2014

The Best Laid Plans.......

'Broken Chain,' watercolour and gouache, 11 x 8.3ins
I have been back from Cyprus for a week. How much I love the quality of light down there - it is a rich, bright golden light that suffuses everything! Coming back here, it is as if someone turned a light off. But my experience of that light flowed into several watercolours I made in one of the parks, a park I call the Van Gogh park, because of its twisted trees. I sat at a round, green table in the park, and made paintings that explored colour and my visual excitement from walks around the city. They were not illustrations, rather they were composites of an environment.
 
'Pieces of my Soul,' watercolour and gouache, 11 x 8.3ins
While I was in Nicosia, I met a dear friend who is also an artist. Her name is Valerie Brennan and we came to know each other through Facebook. We are planning to make an exhibition of our paintings in Nicosia in the summer. We both love colour and our work will look good together. Right now, we are searching for a venue, possibly one of the popular new cafes. Cafes in Nicosia are always full, even very late at night, and we feel that it would be good exposure for our work.
 
'Orange Rain over Nicosia,' watercolour and gouache, 11 x 8.3ins
The new paintings and drawings I made while in Nicosia will be developed into paintings, though at this point I have no idea what direction they will go in! Meanwhile my plans to get my book finished before the end of the year met a hurdle, namely a lack of time, and then Christmas intervened. It is almost finished, just a few more pages, and I am determined to get it done before the end of this month.

'Fragmentation,' watercolour and gouache, 11 x 8.3ins