…The dreaded influenza that has been harrying me for the last two-and-a-half weeks is gradually abating and now I’m back at work trying to catch up. I’m still Frank Boughing like a good’un though. My good friend and colleague Anja Percival (Printer Extraordinaire) seems to suggest that it was a much needed break. Hmmm, I’d rather [...]

After much a-fussing and a-dithering, there is some light at the end of the tunnel with this one. Last year,  a good mate told me to look at the white walls in Vermeer’s paintings – alas, I haven’t been near one, but it’s funny how these types of comments and remarks stick in your head. Hours [...]

Ok, I looked long and hard at  the beginning stages of my last profile study and decided to scrub part of the kerchief. Had to take the ground down, too in order to reconstruct it evenly. A bit of scumbling should take care of cooling it out. Now I hope it looks like I’ve a [...]

…After an exhibition it takes me about two weeks to calm down emotionally enough to be able to start working again. I know this, I remember this clearly from previous experiences. However, something within me is compelled to start painting as soon as possible after a show and as a result, I’ve almost ruined about three [...]

As you can see, painting  self-portraits from life can leave one (i.e. me)  ’flummoxed’. And it’s not just the ‘fro that’s a looking a little rough. Hopefully, the old adage will ring true ‘A painting only needs to look good once - when it’s finished.’   This is the current state of a small painting  (250mm x [...]

I had a brilliant chat with my studio mate Pia Løye, last week. We gave each other about fifteen minutes to talk about about the strengths, weaknesses, what’s missing, or overstated in our work and dive into the ideas of our ambitions regarding our paintings. As we’ve been regularly seeing our works develop over the last [...]

Hello, again. I’ve been right ticked off recently because (amongst other things) of the amount of surfaces that I’ve had to either throw out (out of utter, utter frustration) or sand down and restart (due to realising that I’ve only so many surfaces left to work on). I’ve found out that being quite patient with oneself  is, [...]

…There seems to be a loss. Or three. Sometimes four. At the moment, it seems that I’m screwing up three or four surfaces for every painting that gets finished. There’s part of me that wants to say that my standards of finish are getting higher, therefore the critical standards are rising. Probably though , ’somebody’s’ trying to [...]

Sometimes, the lyrics of a song come to me while I’m developing a painting. With this one, which is to be further fleshed out, Flanagan and Allen’s ‘The umbrella man’came out of the ether and hooked itself onto this work. ‘I darn a sock I’ll mend a clock An apple cart A broken heart I [...]

Very, very fortunately, I’ve landed a few commissions of late and these are keeping financial things ticking over. The requests are mostly painted reproductions of old photographs and other bits and bobs. I absolutely love doing these as they are the perfect way for me to break out of a certain mindset I have regarding [...]