I’ve temporarily relocated to a new studio even further from civilization in an attempt to get to grips with landscape. I’m trying to work out what landscape can do or express that the figure can’t.

Most of my favourite landscapes were painted by artists (like Klimt, Schiele, etc.) who normally dealt with the figure. COINCIDENCE? PROBABLY. I suspect I just like the artist’s style, regardless of subject matter. But at the very least, I want to find out what aspects of my own style carry over to landscape, or don’t, so I get a clearer picture of what my own style actually is. I should know this by now. 

In other the-penny-drops news, I have been messing around with a violin and am only just getting a handle on the idea of musical keys and the parameters that can define or at least give colour to a whole genre. Like why a blues song sounds like a blues song, for example. 

A clunky metaphor. I’m trying to find out what key I play best in. 

Painting in the photo is a work in progress, 1×1.5m, oil on linen. 

This is just a scroll of paper taped to the wall that I add to now and again when other paintings aren’t going well. It’s like knitting or chewing the cud. It passes the time.

I suppose it’s abstract, but that seems the wrong word by now because I know its forms so well that revisiting it feels like walking down a familiar street. It seems obvious where everything is in relation to each other. Abstraction usually feels vague, that’s its appeal; shapes morph and colours bleed and planes shift. This one feels more like a lovely, horrible, old misshapen teddybear: to anyone else, it’s probably hard to tell what it’s meant to be, but I’ve spent so much time with it I think it’s perfectly clear. It’s meant to be what it is.

Oil on paper, 21×42"

I’m learning to use oil more like watercolour. The key is lots and lots of turpentine. So much turpentine that the fumes make you slightly headachey and you wonder if the cat glaring in the window is a hallucination but it isn’t so you feed it some ham. 

Oil on canvas 12X16"

I’m leaning more and more towards abstraction. I suppose because there’s too much to say. Reading art history & criticism and realizing all the things people thought and still think art should do or represent is slightly appalling. Turning to the news and seeing thousands of images I don’t know how to respond to, from political wrangling to vast, terrifying human tragedies, is kind of numbing. 

I suppose I could try to make art about the media age and oversaturation, but I’m pretty sure that’s what Lady Gaga said her song “Telephone” with Beyoncé was about so it’s okay, that’s been addressed. Girls got my back. 

In the meantime, I am arranging colours and textures that might suggest a place or evoke an emotion, if you’re lucky, mister. 

Acrylic on canvas, 16"x20".

A ridiculously large (6-foot) oil painting of some rocks, mainly. Still a work in progress and will remain so for the foreseeable future. The problem with working on a scale like this is that you can spend five solid hours working on it, step back, and it will not appear to have made the slightest damn difference.

My fixation on explorers may be wearing off. Still, this began as a fairly detailed portrait of a young Ernest Shackleton. But I’m really not comfortable with portraits – it feels rude, like staring directly into a stranger’s eyes for far too long. So I suppose I started pushing him back, under layers of hectic colour, til his face was almost completely abstracted. 

Acrylic on canvas, 16"x20".

My love of explorers isn’t completely pure; it’s not a sincere admiration of their achievements. It’s really a fascination with the contrast between their near-superhuman accomplishments and their painfully ordinary weaknesses. Like Shackleton: hailed as an heroic leader for keeping his team going in horrible circumstances, but chose men to join his polar expeditions on the basis that he ‘liked the look of them’ rather than their technical skills. Set various records and was awarded a knighthood for his explorations, but was obsessed with money and attempted many unsuccessful business schemes, including a run of collectible Antarctic-themed postage stamps. Had a serious heart condition but repeatedly refused treatment, even getting into an argument with his doctor about changing his lifestyle minutes before suffering a fatal heart attack.