Another Day

This is the view looking towards the sea on Komene Road. I drive this road mist mornings to walk my dog on the beach.

This is Adam and Alex Scott, two brothers, and sons of my cousin Mark Scott. I have met them a couple of times whilst they were visiting Taranaki with their father. Alex, I believe is now working in IT, and Adam is still at school.  Adam was recently in the news, when he stepped in to save his friend from a schoolyard bully. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3459821/Sickening-video-shows-playground-bully-swinging-punches-disabled-boy-t-fight-crowd-boys-cheer-action.html I was pleased with the way this painting turned out. I have discovered that I like the dynamics inherent when you have more than one person in the picture. I believe that this original selfie was taken on their last visit to NZ. It looks like they were at the top of the Auckland Skytower.

This is my cousin Chris Scott. Younger brother of  Mark and son of Valerie and Malcolm Scott. This was an odd picture to paint. It seems to be an old photo taken some years ago, which has then been rephotographed, and now turned into a painting. I kind of like all these transitions of the original information. Each layer of transformation contains it's own distortions and artifacts, such as the flash of the camera on the righthand corner of the photo, and the key-holing effect of the original perspective. These all add up to give the image a kind of hallucinatory, or dreamlike quality. And it is kind of like how our minds skew and distort our past memories, I think. 

This is my cousin Mark, again, on my father's side. The son of my father's sister, Valerie, and Malcolm Scott. When I was still living in England in the early seventies, Mark was still a little boy, and I have memories of a large and exuberant child, who would leave our Nana Hutch rather exasperated, in spite of which she always had a soft spot for him!  Much later, I got to know Mark a little bit as an adult, on his several visits to New Zealand with his two eldest sons, Alex, and Adam. He works in IT and seems to travel the world quite a bit. He still has a bit of the childlike about him, as his profile pic with a lemon snowfreeze, or something, indicates! I had a bit of difficulty getting this one right and had to have two goes at it.

This is my cousin, Lesley. She is the daughter of my father's brother, my uncle Malcolm, and Auntie Margaret. Lesley is about the same age as me, I think, and she also has a younger brother, Michael, who is not on Facebook. They all still live in the North of England. During the years I was back living in England, I saw quite a bit of Lesley and Michael, and I went on several holidays with them to Scotland and Wales. My uncle Mac, was a very active outdoors kind of man, and he took us hiking and climbing. I have very fond memories of that time. Living on the other side of the world, I havn't seen much of my cousins since that time, although I have made a couple of short visits back.  Through Facebook I see that Lesley is still very fond of animals and nature, and seems to be interested in spiritual self awareness and personal growth.

This is my niece Georgina, daughter of Valerie and Trevor and sister to Jessica. In her Facebook profile she is in the arms of her boyfriend Dylan, outdoors in a woodland scene. I think it must be Lucy's Gully, judging by the Redwood trees.  The image appeals to me as it kind of has a fairytale "babes in the wood" feel to it! This is one of those images where I regret choosing such a small size to work on. At only 100mm, or about 4 inch square, it is just too tiny to effectively capture likeness in the faces, with the impasto oil paint I use. However, I have been considering developing some of these little sketches further in larger paintings. We will see.

This is another niece, Sarah .  Daughter to sister Karen and David Keeble. I haven't got to know Sarah quite so well, as Karen and Dave didn't live so close by as the rest of my family. One aspect that occurred to me as I was painting this one is how three out of four of my nieces profile pics are taken in the Great Outdoors. Not sure if this has any significance, however, Sarah definitely seems to be an outdoors kind of person. Perhaps taking after her father David, who has always been a keen tramper and climber. In fact, as I write this, Sarah and her boyfriend, who both work for the Department of Conservation, are embarking on a long, off grid walking adventure in the South Island.

This is my niece, Jessica. Daughter of sister Valerie and Trevor Barrett.  She was born about the same time as my own daughter, Toby, so I watched Jess growing up at the many family gatherings over the years. She has recently married , and is the mother to two beautiful girls, Cassie and Tayla. I found this one difficult to paint as it is a high contrast sepia tone photo. I had to have two goes at it.

This is my niece, Lauren Otis, daughter of Lynne. She studied Consumer Food Science at Otago University. She married Jason Otis, and they now live in California, where she works at the Chlorax Company as a sniffer and taster, or something along those lines...!  In her profile pic, she looks as though she is about to take a giant leap of faith, or perhaps commanding nature.

Lynne Oil on aluminium 100x100mm This is the eldest of my three sisters, Lynne.  Seen here embracing her daughter, Lauren at her wedding. This is Karen who is about a year older than me. She lives in Tauranga, so I don't get to see her too often. My youngest sister, Valerie, is not on Facebook. Being the only boy in a family of girls, I guess I grew up with strong female role models. My father was always rather distant. Lynne, Karen and I were all born in England, in Middlesborough. I think we were all very well behaved and mannered children when we were very young. Very English.     In the 1960"s , Canada was financially assisting young families to immigrate. We were all taken to start a new life on Vancouver Island. Not long after we arrived there, Valerie was born and I think its fair to say that she had a different, more relaxed upbringing in Canada, especially with three older siblings to dote and look after her.  ...

Dale Copeland oil on aluminium 100x100mm This is my partner Dale. She is an assemblage artist, website writer, mathematician, teacher and a long time friend, and mother to our daughter, Toby. She doesn't approve of social media sites. Despite this, she gets far more likes and attention than I could ever hope for. When she learned I was painting my Facebook friends she immediately changed her profile picture to this one. I was tempted to paint the old one, but I'm happy with the way this one came out.

Toby Oil on aluminium 100x100 I almost aborted this project as soon as starting it.  I always feel vulnerable and full of self doubt when embarking on a new project. I guess the only thing to do is to knuckle down and do it. Man up to it. Suck it up, and other vaguely obnoxious platitudes. This is my daughter Toby's FB profile pic. She is seldom online on Facebook. Too busy with her life as a doctor working in Canberra. She is currently completing her study and training to get her GP licence. Being quite a reserved and private person it comes as no surprise that she only reveals her ear. I found it surprisingly difficult to make a painting out of. Not her ear so much as getting the flower and hair right. Working from a photo it is all too easy to find yourself making a photographic kind of image, and that's not really what I'm trying to achieve. ie: not photo-realism.

Enid Hutchinson Oil on aluminium panel 100x100mm I've had this idea for a new series of small paintings for a while now, and this is the first one.  The idea is to use my Facebook friends profile photos as the source for the imagery and make small paintings from them, which I will post to Facebook as I do them.  I felt I should start out with someone who's face I know well, and who better than my own mother? One of the objectives of this excercise is to see if I can paint from photographs. It is, I guess, my way of facing up to that perennial debate that a lot of artists have, over whether to use photographs, rather than painting directly from life. I have used photographs many times before of course, however, for the last decade or so, I have been quite rigorously painting my subjects directly from life. The predominant genre I have been painting recently has been still life which is ideally suited to working from life. I can set up the subject and stare at it fo...

Here is the finished painting Caput Mortuum. I am having an exhibition with the some name, Caput Mortuum, at Kina Gallery in New Plymouth on February the 12th.