Bank Holiday Weekend

It has been the August Bank Holiday Weekend and it has been very hot, hot, hot. Both combined to throw the whole weekend out of kilter and it only now that the routine is beginning to get back to normal. The weather has changed too becoming cooler and wet.

I made myself go into the art studio today, not that I have been neglecting arty things but I did switch to more art journalling types of activities and creating colour swatches and such. I have been reluctant to go into the studio knowing what faced me i.e. several boards of multicoloured marks; boards which needed some decisions made about them. I sat and looked at them and applied some more colour - add and take away; positive then negative, creating and destroying but I still felt ill at ease. Then I realised that these boards represented chaos to me and I needed calm. So I created calm, perhaps not in the way I should but I just mixed ochre, crimson and lots of white and created a pale neutral and painted the chaos out. Some of the under tones showed through but suddenly I felt calm and ideas of where to go next began to emerge. I felt so much better and I am ready to return to the studio again.

The Weekend

On Friday we made a journey to Kirkcudbright, on the Dumfries and Galloway coast. We had been, for the first time, in June and stayed overnight so we could have a good explore of the town. I had long heard of Kirkcudbright as being a painters' town with good light and scenery but it was first recommended to me by a curator at the Gracefield Art Gallery in Dumfries. We had called in to look at the art on show and it just happened to include a number of the works of the Glasgow Boys, which we admired. The curator explained that may of the artists would go to Kirkcudbright and surrounding area on the summer and suggested the pretty town was worth a visit. That was a few years ago and it took til this year for us to go.

The Kirkcudbright Galleries has only been open a year and is housed in the original town hall and gathers together the work of many of the artists who lived and worked in the town. It is a good space on three levels and when we were there we were told of an exhibition of the work of one of the former residents which was about to open. Sadly, we missed the opening day but we did vow to return to view it. So on Friday we drove through horrendous rainy weather along the A75 but as we pulled into the town at about 11.30 am the rain stopped and it remained fine for the rest of the visit.

The exhibition was of the work of Charles Oppenheimer (1875-1961) an extremely talented artist and draughtsman from Manchester whose family owned a mosaic manufacturing business. He worked as an artist and mosaic designer and even when enlisted in the forces in WWI used his artistic skills. The gallery had a good range of paintings from private collectors as well as loans from various institutions and covered a range of paintings about Kirkcudbright and its surroundings and the many continental holidays he and his wife took.  Most were landscapes of various sizes in watercolour and oils. The most interesting thing, I found, was that when he returned to painting after the War his paintings seemed to get tighter and taken on a more formal, smoother style, abandoning his earlier looser, more painterly style. Often, it seems, it is the other way round in that as an artist gets older the style gets freer.

It was well worth a visit, as was the cafe within the gallery where the cheese scones (made inhous by a member of the cafe team) were excellent. Worth a return visit for that alone!

Back Home

Well and truly back home now and into the post vacation routine of washing, cooking, cleaning and shopping. I have not yet un-packed all my Burton Agnes art gear, a slow trickle is happening but it is slow work. I did manage to get into the studio on Saturday afternoon and found I could not paint. I had no idea what to do but when I left The Artist in Residence situation I had plans of where to go on several paintings. I found myself painting with totally alien, pastel colours. I had a little more positivity yesterday but I was just using white/light colours and going over those areas to strengthen that colour.

Today I just called in the studio and spent some time studying some of the paintings and trying to think where to go next. I then worked on the computer on art related issues and listened to the Art Juice podcast.  Later I took a walk down to a our local castle.  An idea has been floated by someone at the local Art Club about members submitting a painting related to the castle at our next exhibition. I went to take some photographs and sketch (not much of the latter) with an idea of photo transfer onto the paint panel but it needs a lot of thinking about as I quite fancy the idea of a multilayer approach.

Wednesday - Last Day

Well we have finally made it to the end of a a 'two week' Artist in Residency stint. I never felt like quitting at any stage and the only dips came after about 10 days when a feeling of weariness came over me in the afternoon.  This in part was because of tiredness caused by poor sleep patterns - my mind buzzing with the events of the day stopped me from getting off to sleep and there were a few 3am toilet calls which coincided with the local cockerel waking up.  There were the hourly church clock chimes and my natural summer waking time of about 6am which also made its contribution?  Of course,  there was also the greenhouse effect of working in a westerly facing summerhouse in a sunny August so that from about 2:30 onwards it could get stifling hot.

It has been a positive experience meeting and talking with so many interesting people - we all have our own tale to tell and even though it may seem boring and common place to you it can be fascinating to an outsider. It also gave me opportunity to have a two week concentration on making art, which is primarily what I wanted.  I am pleased I went with a plan of what I wanted to do and had everything prepared for that, yet it also allowed for flexibility. It was not related to Burton Agnes Hall nor was not about producing finished pieces but it was something and nothing that I could get on with, it provided learning opportunities but nothing of such importance that it would suffer from distraction. I now have several boards on which to work towards a finish.

The flat was clean and tidy by 9am, a time I had set myself so I could take out the bags to the car before the kitchen team arrived. I had fewer bags than when I arrived, having managed to sent somethings back home with my husband and having consumed, reduced and generally finished off and disposed of  most of my supplies. It seemed a little early to go down to the summerhouse so I stayed in the flat where I did have internet connection. It was a good decision for there were a couple of heavy showers that were best looked at through the kitchen window.

When I did move I drove the car to the summerhouse where I could load up much of my painting gear, already packed away on Tuesday afternoon. This meant I was left with very little by way Art material - a pad of water colour paper and a box of paints so I could make a pretence at painting. In fact, I intended to make notes from articles I had on my tablet via photosnaps or other WiFi free sources.

Thus, the day passed slowly and in three hours we had three and a half sets of visitors (the half being a German gentleman with little English who hovered near the entrance). It was a slow warm day and although the cafe seemed busy we could see few visitors in the grounds and so by 2:30 we decided to call it a day and started the final clear out. I was in the car heading for home via the Beverley by 3:15pm.

Goodbye, Burton Agnes Hall and the Artist In Residence Experience. Will I repeat it  - never say never - it was a good, enjoyable two weeks but I would have to think seriously about the accommodation in the future. The surrounding were beautiful and the staff we encountered delightful and so help. I am left with lots of positive experiences and emotions.

Tuesday

Decided today would be my last acrylic painting day so I put another few marks and colours on these boards and will leave them until I get home. Why is it the paintings do not look as bad when photographed than in real life? Do not know where I am going with these but that is OK. They are play boards and this is only the second or third pass.

I think I would find it difficult to do any serious, high concentration painting in this situation for there are frequent distractions. It has been much quieter this week but often the people who call in to see us  can stay for a long chat and it is not always about our art work on display.  The conversations are more likely to be about their art work or they are seeking tips about materials and techniques about painting because many people seem to take up painting in retirement or are thinking of resurrecting their painting equipment put into store many years ago. It has also been interesting to find out where people have come from, many coming from some distance to holiday on the east coast or in the Wolds.

It was a finishing off day for the canvas roll painting and the last section proved to be very different; a different colour way and style from the rest. In many ways the earlier parts seems tighter and more controlled but it was an interesting challenge and so different to be working on canvas again.  Various other little activities were also finished or packed away and we had a good tidy up.  By mid-afternoon we both begin to wilt. We have had some very good weather, any rain coming at the beginning or the end of the day (in the evening we had a short thunderstorm) and for the most part it has been warm and sunny. So between 2-3 pm the summerhouse gets very hot and we frequently find ourselves having to go outside and seek shelter in the shadows cast by the yew bushes.

Monday

We had a bus trip in this morning.  A group of Leeds Loiners enroute to Bridlington. In many ways that was the highlight of the day, however, many were quite elderly and they were clock watching anxious not to miss the bus.  There were one or two other interesting folk called in to see us but generally a very quiet day.

It is getting harder to do the work as we are both feeling quite weary. However, I did paint some more of the canvas roll which I would like to finish before I leave.  I also did do some more work on the small board series but it was the wrong time as I was feeling quite tired by then. The other thing I wanted to do was a big sky landscape.  I did not want to use the boards but I had not brought my acrylic paper pad so I used some thin watercoloured paper which I gessoed.  The results were not good as the paper buckled and I was not happy with the colours I had or how they sat on the watercolour paper. I will finish it tomorrow but only for something to do.

The day started off with heavy rain and it had rained in the night too. Eventually, about 1pm the sun came out and in spite of a cloudy and windy hiccup mid-afternoon the sun remained. Thus the summerhouse got very hot again. Paint was drying very quickly yet this morning the cool damp atmosphere made the drying time longer than usual.

Sunday

The other day we realised that perhaps it was time to go inside the house to visit and familiarise ourselves with the paintings. We had had several visitors referring to specific paintings and I for one could not bring them to mind. So at 11am, a quiet time for us we locked up and had a lovely time inside the house admiring the furniture, the wood panelling, the moulded ceilings and of course the paintings, the majority of which are housed up in the long gallery.

Today, there did not seem to be as many visitors in the grounds as last Sunday but we had a steady trickle of interesting folk. Many of them were local,  especially from Driffield some 6 or7 miles away.  However, it did, also, seem a long day today; this was our eleventh day on the trot when we have been 'trapped' in the studio. It is an indulgence to be able to paint all day, every day but it can be tiring. I have had a variety of things to do and this has helped distract me and keep me fresher. I left the play boards of yesterday and revisited my canvas roll and added to the section I did previously, a few days ago. today For  some reason I was drawn to pattern work so spent a fair time painting dots and lines but then I did switch and  amended an earlier section where I had left some paintwork very messy.  I indulged in some free play and mark making on some gessoed book paper, to use up the left over paint and then did a little bit of collage in an old book. Weariness did get the better of me so I packed up, swept up and locked the door at 4:55pm. No visitors were to be seen or heard in the grounds so I toddled off back to the flat for a coffe and a chill!