night1acrylicglazes

The handwriting series was a great discipline, reducing my palette and forcing me to consider which elements make a painting work. There'll more to show when I get the photos uploaded but it's time for a change. Making paintings from handwriting has become a bit too over-intellectual...

I've given up oils for acrylics. The constant use of solvents in a sealed studio was encouraging even more naps than usual. Happily, contemporary acrylic paints are proving to be a pleasant surprise since I gave them up years ago. There are now so many new things to play with: fillers, gloss, matt, additives, dryers, extenders. But why all the chemical alternatives to familiar pigments? No more Flake White, not even Prussian Blue. Toxic? Health and safety?

'Night 1' Acrylic glazes over squared-up canvas 40 cm x 37 cm (detail)

after delivering two lectures in his studio in Paris I've become slightly addicted to the work and theories of Gustave Moreau, especially his painting Phaeton. It was such a shock to discover that he hated Impressionism, and all painting outdoors. As his students developed Fauvism (he actually taught Matisse!) Moreau doggedly turned backward to 16th century Renaissance Italy and to ancient Greece.
on reading 'ATOM' by Piers Bizony. A moving history of the men and women who lived, loved - and died trying to find out what this strange object actually is. Forget those Ping-Pong ball diagrams; any artist will understand something of the problem when reading his description of the physicist, Werner Heisenberg's view of the electron...

"a shimmering cloud of options and likelihoods and possibilities".