I am in to my 4th day here and while still coping with jet lag I have managed to make around 16 paintings on paper. Mostly I work in the hot afternoons or at night. The thing about a new place is finding a painting form and structure for your responses, and of course first you have to sift through a lot of material. So many sights interest me here, from the golden ceramic slabs ( animals or dragons) that sit on paving or in greenery, to the tiled roves and abundance of greenery, and the calligraphic lettering that jumps out from buildings. I am not a painter to 'copy' a scene - nothing wrong with this but it doesn't satisfy me. I need to find brush strokes and colours to catch the spirit of China as I feel it. So a journey into the unknown! They are my visual poems.
This is one of my first paintings. I am alternating between abstraction and some figurative reference. I am planning to get the bus to Beijing for art materials soon so will absorb some of the local atmosphere. I am not expecting to resolve my ideas here - they will probably evolve once I am home - so I am just gathering material.
(My room with its own garden and my paints)
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