Location:Keir St,Edinburgh,United Kingdom

Location:Meadowbank Ave,Edinburgh,United Kingdom

Location:Grassmarket,Edinburgh,United Kingdom

Very quick update of the last year and a half;

I was on my way to my show in Chichester in December 2009 the last time I blogged. Well that happened - looked good and then it was over. Not much else has changed since then, I continued to work at Edinburgh College of Art coordinating the Lifelong Learning courses and I continued to paint. For a while I had a studio with Catie at Coburg House Studios in Leith, but I actually did less work and of less quality than when I was working at home and on location. We moved into a new studio at Art's Complex in Meadowbank recently, and I have since been making a lot more new work and on a more ambitious scale.

In May 2009, my father passed away, and this took some time for me to process and deal with. Since January 2010, images of my father have been appearing in my drawings and paintings. I used to draw my father both from life and memory when I was growing up, and I have this version of him in my head, visually ready to be explored. I am not quite sure why I am painting him, and particularly since I am painting him in my own current domestic setting, where he never visited. But this is what I clearly must do, as it is all I am willing to do at the present moment.

I expect I will put more work in progress up in due course..

Blogging is quite a fun commitment, but has to take second fiddle to living a real life. In this age of Facebook, Youtube, Myspace, FLICKR, perhaps everyone now feels the urge to make sure they update their pages to ensure that their friends, family and colleagues know that they are living a life. I started my blog when I had taken time out of a full on work life when I was living in Hastings over 4 years ago. Back in those giddy days, I got anxious if I did not update my blog two or three times a week showing off my new drawings and paintings. It was fun and a nice way to reacquaint myself and anyone who was interested with being an artist once more. But like all those 'fresh start' diaries I am sure we all started in our youth, the novelty wears out and you start to wonder what you are doing it for. Mostly vanity really - or just showing off.

Anyway - I have two choices. Close it down and be done with it and just get on with the rest of my life or give it yet another go. Hmmmm I am still deciding. If I knew there were thousands of you waiting on baited breath for my next utterances things might be a tad different I guess. Or perhaps there will be generations of artists and academics in the future who will digest and my every word when I am long gone. As I say it is all just vanity.

OK! Here is what I will do; I will write an update once a month summarising what is going on in my world. If I get the urge to write out with these times, then what the hell! Fair enough?

But first I need to provide a summary of the last 6 months - of course I do. So let me try.

March 2008.
My short stay at the Cyprus College of Art in Lemba came to an end. I made around 30 small gouaches and watercolours of varying quality. It was bizarre being there in the early spring when it can be cold and wet. I had a hired car which I accidentally left the handbrake off on a hill when I parked it. It rolled down the hill and only a curb saved it going into a large gully. Phew.
On my way home to Edinburgh I stopped by Hastings to visit my sister Claire and her family. Short but sweet! Thus ended my holidays!

April 2008
Back to work at eca and the long haul towards preparing for Summer School 2008. My ability to paint dried up as I become immersed in this. Once I let go of this, I was ok - but it takes a while to adjust and I never learn that. So life became fairly routine - busy at work, relaxing and functioning at home and not much else in between. Oh, my portrait of Catie I made in January was rejected from the BP portrait award so I plonked it into the Aberdeen Artists at Aberdeen Art Gallery, where it did get an airing at least.

May 2008.
Much the same as April really. Planning Summer School, a bit of teaching and not much else to talk about.

June 2008
Things got particularly frantic at this point. Not only was the Summer School looming large with much to, I was planning and preparing a teaching visit to Tallinn in Estonia. I was to teach one of my week long courses for 'lifelong learners' at the Estonian Academy of Arts and run a weekend workshop for their Art Lecturers in peaceful seaside town called Haapsalu. Tallinn itself is a wonderful place and the people I met, both staff and students were generous and charming. It extremely nervous about the whole affair, but it went extremely well and the students loved the class. So thanks to Anne, Katre, all the students and staff I encountered.

July/August 2008
In my job, you either totally immerse yourself in the Summer School at eca or you sink. Therefore, for most of these weeks in the Summer, I am doing little else - teaching, preparing, hanging exhibitions, running workshops, sorting out teaching spaces, hospitality - I could go on. This year, for a number of factors was particularly onerous for me. So I just have to accept that I cannot make art at this time of the year. We did on occasion venture to an Edinburgh festival exhibition or fringe event.

September 2008
Some deserved time off work. A trip to the Isle of Skye at least got me making some work from direct observation (see Skye 2008 in Picture Galleries), but I doubt whether I will develop a body of work based on this. Although it was fantastic to drive through to the west coast highlands - such a long time since I last visited these parts. On our return to Edinburgh, I made a series of small observational drawings of locations in Edinburgh. I developed some of these in small gouaches to test out whether this was the direction I wished to pursue. But, I still had the nagging doubt that I had not fully developed or resolved my work based on the Wellington Place flat. So, as with the same time last year, I made another series of directly observed oils. Some are small and very loose and some have a figurative dimension added as I was painting. I am really enjoying the direct observation and I can thank Catie for this, who has even influenced me to make some oils outside.

October 2008
Despite being back at work at eca, I have managed to continue to make some progress in the work. I also am preparing the work for a show of a selection of my Cyprus pictures at the University of Chichester's Otter Gallery in December - but more about that in another blog entry.

After nearly a week out here in Cyprus, I have made a series of small watercolour and gouaches mostly from direct observation from my drives around the island. I am only here until next wednesday, so I do not expect to develop them until I get back. If I can get at least two new works for my show in Chichester then i will be very happy.

Weather remains a mixed bag. We had a spectacular thunderstorm the other night and today is extremely windy. I think my images at least convey that it is not the summer and I must admit, that when you take the heat away from Cyprus, it does all look a bit tacky.

I am going to make a prediction that Wales will lose against France tomorrow (6 nations rugby) and not win the grand slam - I would like them too, and I am going to visit a welshman tomorrow to watch the match in a cyprus cafe.. but I am not optimistic.

It is weird being here when the weather is moderate (but still tropical compared with Edinburgh) - the place seems more pedestrian because of it. There are very few students here and two left this week. However it is very nice to get away from work at eca before the onslaught of Summer School.

I will post some of the new pictures soon.

So, now I find myself in year in to my new life in Edinburgh. Catie has moved up and is also painting and teaching. My job role at eca has been fluid flexible and quite demanding. But, I am still managing to paint as I have finally realised that I have to use most of my available free time to make art if I am ever going to develop. This has meant far fewer opportunities to see family and friends and far less gallivanting across the country or abroad.

From the period I moved to Leith with Catie, I have solely used the interior of our rented Georgian townhouse flat as a backdrop for subject matter. I have done more direct observational drawing and painting than I have since I was a student, and I have learned so much by doing so. I think it has recharged my pictorial armoury and freed me from the often-tiresome need for inventing compositional devices. Using a combination of biographical with observed topographical elements has allowed me to reflect on a more explicit portrait of my new life with Catie. While I have maintained my gut need for flippancy and irony in the use of a collection of soft toy animals, I am trying to evoke a greater depth of time and place.

Most recently, I have completed a large two panel portrait of Catie with our soft toys (the bears!) revealing the exuberant and delightful space we live in. The carrot for this was to enter the BP portrait award. While I am pleased with the ambition of the picture and its sense of place, I am not sure whether it works on the level of a portrait and I am not optimistic that it will be successful in being accepted for the show.

Here are eight stages of the portrait which I did almost entirely from working in situe over about 5 weekends.

I have three other things I am developing;
In December, I am showing at the Otter Gallery in Chichester, a compendium of works I did from the times I visited and worked Cyprus from 2002 to the present. There is also a possibility to show it in Cyprus College of Art later and I am trying to pull together a catalogue and possibly find a venue in Edinburgh also. I have never shown most of this work before and I am delighted to finally have the opportunity. I hope to make one more visit to Cyprus to complete the cycle of work for the show.

While I have been living in Leith and particularly Leith Links, I have started to research its history and how it remains such a distinctive and vibrant part of Edinburgh. The history of the Links themselves is fascinating, having been the place of the first golf course and the base for Oliver Cromwell’s men. Therefore, my next series of artworks are going to use my research as the background for what I hope will be a new pictorial development in my work. For further information see here.

I am also trying to find ways to make an extended visit to India to develop new lines of research. I have discovered that in the new India with one of the fasting growing economies in the world, there is a newfound confidence in contemporary painting that uses narrative and sense of place. Directly at odds with esoteric contemporary western art, this new art celebrates both hand skills and crafts, yet places itself in a world of mass media and conceptual ideas. I feel there is much for me to learn and experience and I am waiting with baited breadth, the result of a research funding application.

Another big event at work this week at eca. We planned, organised and delivered Creative Workshop for 27 Lawyers from the Office to the Solicitor to the Advocate General, an office established specifically to provide legal services in Scotland to United Kingdom Government Departments. We got them making pictures using collage and sculptures using hatmaking heads in a dirty studio and they loved it - and they made some wonderful work.

say no more really!

I had to get at least three very small painting finished this weekend in order have them dry in time for framing for the Scottish Gallery Xmas show. So I have been enjoying just simply painting little snippets of our flat with our collection of bears. It is so long since I have so much 'look and put' painting (well 'look and put and add a bit of my own' really) and it is about time. This is how to refuel your image bank and be able to paint things out of your head with authority. These are not exceptional pictures but they feel right and the right direction. The bigger one in the picture is just a limbering up for the portrait I want to do for the BP portrait award.

So, I went back to work at eca after my short painting break in August, but have managed to continue to paint. I am planning a portrait of Catie for the BP portrait award and want to set it in our wonderful flat in Leith, along with our collection of 'bears'. So I have embarked upon, what may in the future be referred to as my 'bear period', been painting tiny pictures of the bears as a limbering up exercise. I have quite enjoyed doing them actually. I am also showing some small pictures at the Scottish Gallery this Christmas, so I am hoping that one of these bear pictures will cut the mustard.

Meanwhile, as Catie's Job does not start until after xmas, she has been drawing and painting out and about in Edinburgh (urban gardens) - more wonderful work, which will be on her site soon.

So, it is very nice to have a partner who paints and we are finding each other a great motivator to work.