Michael

I have been reading a book called ‘The View from the Studio Door’ which is about how artists find their way in an uncertain world. It has made me reflect upon why I paint and what matters to me as an artist. Initially, I wrote this in my journal and shared it with some of my students at s o u l s p a c e art studio. They encouraged me to ‘put it out there’ in some way and so I decided to begin with my blog. Rather than putting it on this page, I decided to create another page ‘About my Work’ so that it can stay there and remind me. Please select the tab for the page (above) or in your menu to take a look.

I received an early Easter present last week with the sale of the following prints from Longitude gallery in Clitheroe. I’m heading over there this week to take them a small collection of original moodscapes to display in the gallery. The prints meanwhile have headed down to their new home in Kent – it’s all good:) Misty Moorland Evening Glow  Quiet Sea Colours of Autumn

I’ve been working on this website for the last couple of days, adding the ‘Seascapes’ and ‘Happenings’ pages and tweaking my information generally. Please have a good ‘rummage’ around in the site to find any hidden Gems!

There are days when I feel like God is in his heaven and all is well with the world. This week’s workshops in s o u l s p a c e were like that. As theologian Frederick Buechner once said ‘Our calling is where our greatest gladness and the world’s hunger meet’

My last day of filming for the Landscape Sketching Course went really well, I think. I produced 4 final Landscape Sketches, bringing some of the elements of landscape sketching together from the programme and adding one or two new ones in. You can take a look at arttutor by following my link on the online tutorials page (Click the tab at the top of this page or in the menu on your mobile). If you decide to subscribe through this link, arttutor kindly pay me an affiliates fee – every little helps! Hope you like these:

I had a fairly intensive day of sketching and describing for arttutor.com in Liverpool yesterday. hopefully when Jon has done his editing, the tutorials will make sense. I was fairly satisfied with the sketches I did though – looking at trees in the landscape…

Hearth and Heart have come to s o u l s p a c e this week with the installation of our woodburning stove. It feels great – really warm and inviting. 🙂

I went to Liverpool last week to film a couple of pastel landscapes for arttutor.com. We started late because of traffic but I was pleased with the end results and with some good editing from Jonathon, I’m hoping my dialogue will come up to scratch too. Here are the demonstration pieces.

I’ve been feeling reflective today on the anniversary of armistice. This is a piece I painted some time ago called ‘Torn’. At the time it represented a personal sense of conflict and loss but perhaps today it can represent a more universal sense of these things.

It was a good day in the studio working with acrylics, a palette knife, memory and imagination….