The Eternal Now

January is the start of many things for my art at the moment. A lot of things happened last year good and bad, and from this it is almost a clean slate in terms of where I go next with my work. The continual on going daily sketch is going well and keeping me in trim for lots of work ahead. 

Me and Haidee Jo Summers Painting each others portraits

My first painting of the year was a very enjoyable one indeed. My old university friend and fellow artist Haidee Jo Summers, had her Art Exhibition in Nottingham. As well as showing her great works, she was also painting a portrait everyday as well as dealing with sales of her work and customers.

Haidee's portrait of me

I was one of the sitters for her portrait that day and what made it slightly different was that I was painting her too. We only had limited time, so all in all it took around 2hrs to complete the pictures. It was a great exercise to do because it enabled us to build confidence under pressure. Also the fact that sometimes there is the fear of not getting it right with all the stopping, starting and moving around. But what it proved was that painting in this way creates more energy and feeling.

My portrait of Haidee

Haidees Exhibition is online and you can view it here. Her work is mainly Plein Air paintings and she paints between her homes in England and France.

The Eternal Now - work in progress

I have been struggling for sometime on a theme for a series of paintings I wanted to get stuck into. The death of my Father last year had forced me into a process of 'unlearning' to 'relearning'. My blog would go on forever if I tried to explain why, but I suppose in a nutshell I am going through a phase of rediscovering what we are all about. I am fascinated by the way we see in a world of ideas and symbols that we use to live by or translate.

I was diverted by someone to check out a famous philosopher called Alan Watts. This has totally transformed my way of looking at life in general, by looking at how we live in a different way. One of the things Alan Watts, focused one was the element of time. That time is just a concept, for there is no such thing as the past or the future and that we only live in the 'now'.

Sketch of my friend David, towards my first painting

So this brings me onto my paintings. I have started work on some sketches towards some way of representing this notion of 'Now'. A few of my friends have kindly offered to pose for a series of portraits that I will be working on. Not only am I looking at how someone stares into nothingness, but the background in which the subject is placed transporting the notion of 'now'.

My aim is to complete them all for my exhibition in October. (details of this I will reveal nearer the time.)