Erik

I'm just putting the finishing touches to my book, Erik. The lost god of Crete.
It will be published as a 10x8 inch hard back and you can find it at Blurb.com from the 6th July.
Also as a portfolio edition, half imperial size. There will only five copies made but they will be magnificent.
Have a flick through the slide show of the first dozen pages and let me know what you think.

East Mersea

The weather has been very varied from monsoon rain to total sun block. Making painting outside challenging.
I'm switching from Hodgkin like marks to Turner backgrounds, all in the name of experimentation but really just to get a feel for this much paint on a painting; something I'm not known for.
The experience of just having the painting to think about, and where to have my next fish meal is very liberating and for once doesn't make me feel selfish.
Translating this work and discoveries in the studio could be a difficult process. As I have found in the past that the memory of 'where' lingers for too long to release me to real abstraction.
Gulls and their antics are a great distraction and I have taken to charactertures of one that was mobbing the guests at a restaurant on the shore. I've felt like mobbing the crows and magpies in the morning myself as they start establishing their clan and territory at 3.30. This all takes place about 20ft from my tent.
Still I get up early and pack two days into one.

West Mersea

Well the paints have arrived , the bikes ready, the ipod is loaded and the weather looks as if it going to be fine. You never know I might just get some painting in between fish lunches and fish suppers at the Company Shack.

Black water

I take these Mole skin sketch books with me every where I go and paint. They have become a signature of my work, working as they do to provide background information of the stuff I get excited about and items in their own right.
They are folded in the Japanese manner giving both single spreads and the full concertina when opened out. This one provided the perfect format to capture the continuous horizon as I walked round the island.
Now as I sit in the studio planing a return visit to paint in the air I try to reinterpret the drawings into larger works. More of those later.