Monday 7 January 2019

What the circus left behind











What the circus left behind #1
Below the neighbourhood where I live, is a circus tent. It has been there longer than I have lived here - A place offering hope, and the tutoring of acrobatics to over 300 children, many of them living on the streets. The owners have struggled to keep it going, and in 2015 they were given an eviction notice. I don't know if it is still used, but I pass it every day and the grass has grown long around the tent pegs and the nets are wanton of knots and repair. I think about it often.
As a child, I saw the movie "The greatest show on Earth" and wanted, like many children to run away and join the circus. It represented magic and play and all the seemed wonderful, and then as an adult I saw the film "Freaks" which was filmed in 1932, and tells a different story of circus, and makes you never want to go to the circus again. But the crazy wonder of circuses and fairs, and all they represent, is pretty universal.
Doing the paintings of elements of circuses left behind, void of humans and life and nesting in dark landscape with a golden glow burnishing all and everything, gives me chance to escape to a world of my imaginings.


What the circus left behind #2

What the circus left behind #3

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What the circus left #8
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What the Circus left behind #11




What the circus left behind #12

What the Circus left Behind #13    


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Sunday 6 January 2019

Seascapes in the Summertime..& a few landscapes

The heat arrived with the African Summer and suddenly I found myself longing for winter seascapes. The clouds heavy above the Atlantic ocean and the promise of mist and rain.
In December I did a pop-up show for a week in my neighbourhood and filled an old Victorian building with images of the sea and slipped in 4 tiny landscapes.
All the works are done in oil onto gold and silver leafing.

Seascape study 1. Oil on silver leaf on canvas. 150x150cm

Seascape Study 2. Oil on gold leaf on canvas. 150x150cm.


Seascape Study 3. Oil on silver leaf on canvas. 150x150cm


Seascape study 4. Oil on silver leaf on canvas. 140x160cm    














Sea studies. 30x25cm. Oil on metal leaf on board


Landscapes. 30x25cm. Oil on gold leaf on board.

Friday 4 January 2019

Embroidered Millennials

I began painting the Millennials in October last year. I worked in oil onto paper and on a relatively small scale, but after finding a bolt of good linen at the fabric store, I decided to do 2 large portraits (140x180cm each) in oil onto the linen and then pull the thread across from the abstract works I had been working on.