Painting and Driftwood

I haven't put one of my paintings up for a while so here is one that was finished not that long ago. As usual it has a long working history and was started on a piece of wood that I picked out of a skip in about 1992. The red part at the bottom dates from about this time whilst the rest of the paint was applied over the course of the following years. The white part in the middle was the last paint to be applied some time about a year ago and finally it was framed earlier this year - not the fastest of working methods.

Recently I have been experimenting with oil paint again as a bit of an exercise and to go in a different direction for a little while. A lot of what interests me about painting is to try new techniques out if I get too comfortable with a way of working, for instance a lot of my earlier paintings were based upon spontaneous line drawings and I became very content with the quality of line work, so as to take myself on a bit I attempted to paint entirely without lines to see where that would go. Maybe I just like making things difficult for myself, I don't know. When I get to a place where I think "oh I can do that now" this seems to lead me to "Well , I can do that now, what can't I do?" so a lot of it has been about working on the things that I find difficult or cannot do easily.

Last of the Bluebells

These photo's were taken a couple of weeks ago now, just as the last of the bluebells were doing their thing. I'd never seen this piece of woodland before but when walking I try to find the time to take the odd detour to see where it leads and this was the result on this occasion. I like to do a bit of exploring around the country lanes as sometimes you find a whole new part of the landscape and then a new walking route is born. New woods and new views appear, in fact most of my favourite walks have developed from these little detours up a lane to see where it goes or to the end of a field to look round a corner only to find another small path leading away somewhere.