A newly completed painting from my New Zealand ‘Estuary Series’. I seem to spend many hours sitting staring at the water’s edge, and absorbing the patterns left behind by the tides. Each day is different! I sketch and roughly paint what I see each visit, and these eventually inspire my acrylic and mixed media paintings.
Click HERE to view details of this painting.
Now that I’m living in New Zealand, I have a whole world of different inspiration to paint. My initial fascination has been the local estauries and their tidal patterns. Having spent 15 years in the Mediterranean, the tidal movement of the oceans in the Tasman region are a fascination and total mystery to me. Each moment I spend sitting at the edge of the bay opens up a whole new watery landscape to sketch, and paint and lose myself in. These two paintings are the first in a series based on these estauries.
SOLD – I loved working on this painting as we spend the first full winter in Greece for many years. Lockdown has kept us close to home, but how lucky are we to have a gorgeous long beach right on the doorstep. I’ve wandered along it in many weathers, and the ocean is often ominous and crashing. This painting though, portrays it somewhere in between that and the usual glorious calm blue it usually is during summer.
BOTH SOLD – Hot off the press! These two 40 x 40cm boards were a deliberate change in colour palette and can be purchased as a diptych, although they are perfect just on their own! In this series, I’m delving into marks and shapes of what I imagine are under these vast oceans around us. The Mediterranean, which is right at my door, is probably a little more deceptive than the surf beaches of New Zealand and Australia which continuously churn up various types and shades of seaweeds, but nevertheless, there must still be some interesting stuff in it’s Hidden Depths!
This painting has had many iterations, but my desire was to convey blue water and islands, perhaps resting points, somewhere in the world.
When travelling recently in New Zealand, we visited the Wai-o-tapu (Maori for sacred waters) Geothermal area, just outside Rotorua. Within this was a geothermal pool called Artists Palette – well, what a perfect subject matter for abstract painting ideas! The colours were out of this world, and all created by the various gases bubbling in these pools. I took just a small section of colour as my inspiration for this one, and it is just one of my paintings based on this wonderful area.
Its certainly been a long time since I’ve written a blog but now seems to be an ideal time to kick start that habit again.
A little bit of background …. Peter and I left Greece at the end of January for a trip to Los Angeles, and then for me, onto Sydney and then New Zealand. All went well until it was time for me return to LA to meet up with Peter, celebrate his Mum’s 91st birthday and then head for the desert for a bit of exploration and sketching (for me anyway) amongst the wonderful desert rocks in Arizona and Utah. Covid-19, which was something happening only in China when we left, had taken off on its devastating path, which led to my flight to LA being cancelled, although I had pretty much decided staying in NZ was a safer option. Peter tried to come and join me, and the day before his flight the NZ Govt restricted arrivals to only citizens and residents, so he was unable to get his flight. He did finally manage to get back to Greece, and is just ending his 14 day isolation and very much looking forward to being able to go for a walk along the beach.
New Zealand has gone into strict lockdown very quickly, and I’m very lucky to be holed up in Taupo with a lovely friend from way back, Christina who is sharing her house with me. So far we’re doing lots of lounging about, like everyone else worldwide I imagine. I don’t usually travel with much in the way of painting materials, particularly when visiting family and friends, but did thankfully throw in my trusty sketching pencil case and White Knight watercolour paints. I also managed to get 2 watercolour pads, 5 coloured inks and a tube of gesso in Auckland, when I had no idea of the severity of thing thing. So now its time to think creatively on how to use these and stay sane in Lockdown.
I’ve decided to do a daily Lockdown Drawing in conjunction with my Koroni On Location friends, some of which are elsewhere – Geneva, the UK etc. So far these have mostly been hydrangeas which I’ve rediscovered a love of. Growing up in the 50s and 60s in New Zealand the gardens were always overflowing with these, but I don’t think anyone really appreciated the beauty of them….. except perhaps the gardeners who planted them. They’re just so intricate and each tiny petal has so many gorgeous shades which make up the large flower.
So plenty of time to create, but with very little materials. Here’s a sample of what I came up with on the dining table in Taupo…..
June 2018
This painting is portraying, in simple form, the small Greek town in the Peloponnese, where I currently spend a good deal of each year. Koroni, like a lot of small coastal towns in Greece, has a lovely buzzing harbour, with whitewashed buildings spilling down from the surrounding hills.
The painting is in acrylic, and in a new technique for me, as I explore different ways of capturing more abstract landscapes.
Details of this painting can be found in Gallery – Greece.
