Eric Ravilious 1903-1942 : an under-rated English landscape artist.

The finished Haywain , as seen on TV.

My contribution is somewhere to the top right in the darker blue area.
I impressed the  organisers enough to be allowed back at the day's end
so that my panel was not obliterated by someone coming after me.

Painting A Bigger Haywain.

Back in 2004, years before Hockney started banging on about A Bigger Picture,  Rolf Harris put out a Television show in which 150 painters contributed a canvas panel each to produce a huge version of the Constable painting. I turned up early at Trafalgar Square to find an area of interlocked square umbrellas, shading an expanse of brand new red carpet, on which were laid out new and expensive radial easels, each with a layout table. Each table had its own new tubes of paint and new brushes. There was not a speck of paint to be seen anywhere. These were the workstations for the celebrity artists, including Rolf Harris. Literally red carpet treatment.
Around the perimeter of the square were various covered stalls. At one of these the general public could paint a panel, using a black and white photograph of the relevant part of The Haywain as a guide. This is what I did: it was what I had come for. There was a catch, however. The public were only permitted to paint the sky. The tricky bits, i.e. everything else, were left to the celebrity painters. Rolf painted the central figure and the front wheel of the haywain, naturally.
I forget who the other celebrity painters were, apart from Bill Oddie.

Hockney at the Royal Academy, London

A shocker of a much-hyped show. Huge paintings made up of separate canvases. Vivid, clean colours  in oil, many straight from the tube, with a sparing amount of white. Expensive , full pigments, with a heavy gloss varnish. Some very harsh, garish colours: Emerald green, or Viridian green, screaming Chrome Yellow, and violet. Some wonderful small charcoal drawings of logs in a clearing, or trees. Why not more, bigger charcoal drawings?
 Hockney is thrilled by new technology, but I walked through the iPad gallery, and the multiple film gallery, with hardly a pause, or a backward glance. I also ignored the Claude gallery, with due deference to the original source painting.
 Above all, marvel at the brilliant, fluent drawing of  inter-lacing branches, the lines stroked with amazing fluidity and bravura.
 But by contrast an individual painting, seen as a whole, sometimes displays a jarring ugliness, which can be put down to too many strident colours, and too few softer tones, or a lack of aerial perspective.
 Of course, he is a draughtsman of genius, as good as anyone, ever. I long to see him produce large-scale work in black and white.
 Hockney makes much of looking and seeing, but how much is really plein-air painting from life, and how much is studio artifice? Plenty of repetitive pattern-making . Many of the paintings are really huge stage back-drops, or , as Brian Sewell put it on a daytme TV show, scenery for a production of  Bambi.

painting fau(x)ve Hockney red trees.

Going large, having fun, painting red trees, but not from life. I will get into Epping Forest, come the summer, I promise.
Next Monday is the last chance to get to The Academy to see DH. Will I make it ?

Waltham Forest Art Club

I am now exhibiting with the local art club in The Arcade Indoor Market off Wood Street in Walthamstow. The exhibition is inside a free-standing all-glazed kiosk. There are 11 exhibitions in all in 12 weeks.The series as a whole is entitled ' Turnaround.' The USP of the show is that you can see both the back and the front of the exhibits, either from the corridor of the arcade, or by venturing into the kiosk.  I am part of Exhibition 3/11, entitled ' Helen Porter and guests.' The guests include Anna Alcock.The colour brochure which is given out to visitors promises Printmaking and Installation, but Installation is nowhere to be seen.
I have 3 paintings for sale @ £40 each.

2011 small yellow landscape in acrylic