Pick Your Own Cotton

'Summer Remembered,' oil and acrylic on canvas, 70 x 50cm

My title is a phrase I saw online in an article about making your own opportunities. It is one I follow every day, as I know that no one will 'find' me, I have to keep sending out applications, keep networking, and gradually make my presence known. It's a powerful reminder that we can take our future and shape it how we want to.

I'm about to send off my application to a gallery in the US, and I'm caught up in a wonderful current of evolving ideas, which are spinning off painting after painting.  I need more canvases to let the ideas run across and blossom further. Two recent paintings should now be on display at the 'Not the Royal Academy' exhibition at the Llewellyn Alexander gallery in London.

Part Three of 'The Mark Rothko Centre, Daugavpils,' will follow soon.

Disruptions

This past week has been so fragmented, with the builders requiring that we move all the potted plants into the centre of our patio area, so they could re-paint window frames and whitewash the walls, and I have not been able to continue my large canvas or finish several that need more work. Added to that was a diagnosis of Tennis Elbow, which has slowed me further! But on Saturday I went out into the land and painted. My husband kept saying, 'Go carefully, you are only making two paintings,' as he was worried I'd over-exert my arm, but it was a delight to work in situ and on such a glorious sunny day. My watercolours are always a bit different in character to my studio work, but I see them as a gathering of visual elements, which then get digested and absorbed into my inner world. Then when I start one of my 'Paintscapes,' these elements re-emerge, though not always with a direct connection.  At that point of departure, the colours and forms become a re-invention, and I find myself surfing on meanings.

(Top: 'Summer Colour,' watercolour and gouache, 16ins by 12ins. Bottom, 'Shadows,' watercolour and gouache, 16ins by 12ins)