#0999 Return
Larger Image.

A more satisfying version of the hills, of their power.

#0976 Mt Pete
Larger Image.

~

I am at Vic’s café in Christchurch. Pleased to be working on my blog at the end of my sabbatical. I have a few to post up! A few of the ones I am posting, perhaps all of them, are on the theme of Return. I am coming to the end of my project, hence returning to work, to normal, to the familiar. Mt Pete is familiar, we see it from the other side of our house, its moods never the same.

#0959 Gum Fern Bush
Larger Image.

One from the Australian trip in March earlier this year. Under the three Sisters in the Blue Mountains. All the Australian sketches are in a category.

#0952 Mt. Lyford
Larger Image.

#0944 Bush
Larger Image.

This was yesterday, “plein air” as I crawl into the bush next to the house, with the machine on an extension cord. Still mistly The Pen.

#0941 Lyttleton Harbour
Larger Image.

I have a few earlier sketches of the harbour. Kate & I have been walking in the Port Hills, familiarising ourselves with the terrain for the the “Over the top Ride” which is now in full-swing at Otahuna Riding.

Once I got into the swing of this pen I want ed to try it out in all sorts of ways. What is more subtle here is the gradation offered in ArtRage. I wanted the distance to recede more so added a gradient of haze. What I like about the “stencil” that does this is that the result is not purely mechanical & mathematical, the gradient is still produced by hand, but with a bit of help! A tool!

The edition of this image is available exclusively Felt, a rather wonderful New Zealand Art & craft site:

#0931 Trees
Larger Image.

They are not native pines, and they are some sort of imported willow, but in full bloom the colour on the drive along the Inland Road is wonderful.

#0924 Bush
Larger Image.

Had to return to the previous one. Seemed there was another step. This was on my mind:

It is not a matter of painting life. It’s a matter of giving life to painting.

Pierre Bonnard

#0905 Gully
Larger Image.

This is the Gully at Mt. Lyford Horse Riding. I have some of these trees in their more winterly form.

#0904 Gully
Larger Image.

#0902 Hills5
Larger Image.

It took a long time to do that first one. Then just as with the other hills recently, (in post 1000!) I look at the outcome & rework it a bit.

#0901 Hills
Larger Image.

Driving home from Mt. Lyford – miles of hills. Home.

#0900 Hagley Park Sunset
Larger Image.

I have had this one, or something from this evening walk on my mind for a while. Those trees have more leaves now. I find it hard to keep up, I have more I want to do from New York, even from Sydney in March! However I like to do ones from right now, and now it is blooming with green everywhere. It really is spring, and while I don’t know really what sort of work I do, I know that I want to catch this growth! This shift from the bald trees to the new sprouting fresh green. Maybe a few earth crosses :) And it is #0900, so that is fitting, the end is in sight, but I can’t see it at all.

0890 Hills6
Larger Image.

These images arose driving back to Christchurch from Mt. Lyford and being struck by the colour and flow of the hills. The first image took a while but then ad libbed more to do the next one and this one is an elaboration of a bit of the last one.

Landscape. Place. Wolf Kahn’s America : an artist’s travels has plenty of art talk to chew on as well as great pastels.

Here is one idea I like, gives a nice depth to landscapes & may lead to some integration.

These reproductions take me right to the times and places I want to remember. They serve also to document moments that the painter Robert Henri in his book The Art Spirit called “states of higher awareness.” Of these moments, Henri wrote, “The pictures are a witness.” It is dear to me that an artist’s pictures are thus the repositories of much more than what he saw before him. A picture represents more than what the conscious mind grasped – at the time – the so-called subject matter.

Wolf Kahn

#0889 Hills4
Larger Image.

#0888 Hills
Larger Image.

Have been working with this one for a while, resurrected it. Thinking about pastel. A while back someone said that my landscape pastels reminded them of Wolf Kahn. I managed to find a book by him the other day, and I love his work. One side in the war aspires to be a Wolf Kahn. I don’t think I’ll quit on that aspiration either.

Monday, 18 August, 2008

This image is availalable printed in a limited edition. It is available exclusively on Felt, a New Zealand Art & Craft website.

I have made the image square:

Some of his Kahn’s images (poor snaps) follow.

#0866 Evening Landscape
Larger Image.

More sketching using an earlier one.

There is a tension between my work with abstracts and the more sketchbook work. I am obsessed with my explorations of the simple lines of a cross. There is the desire to develop something from my earlier landscapes, desire but not the will. This one is here – because I am sketching… it is a step, who knows if there is another step.

#0845 Evening Landscape
Larger Image.

#0827 River
Larger Image.

I suppose this is not unlike the earlier one based on flying along the Alps the other day. Perhaps no worse for my not having a screen to put the pen onto. But I am still returning the pad to Dick Smith, it is not suitable for my task.

I have spent the day on building up this old Dell laptop, it does have a great screen! 15″ 1600 x 1200. I guess that is what has me looking at the Cintiq.

#0801 Canterbury Plains from the air
Larger Image.