On a hawk's wing

I wish I knew where I clipped this from, and from whom, but it certainly makes sense. I noticed that I too, bypass most galleries and almost exclusively go to museums when in cities.   

These three studies are from the same night a few weeks back and they seem to possess more tactile feelings than I've seen for a few months. I do understand that this series does rather cycle through different styles and ways of working over the long haul because either the weather prompts a shift, or because a new feeling comes over me that facilitates a change in my painting habits.

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 25 July 2023, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm 

They are presented in the order of execution. In the first two pictures there are two different feelings which reveal different ideas. The first one at top, has a flatter graphic feel which I always like when I am lucky enough to make it work. It has become my true North of directions, to a place where my inner compass desires to always point. If I thought I could make thick pancake paintings in colour I am sure I would try.

The second picture below is obviously quite different. There is a fuller use of brushwork in the construction of the plastic elements of the picture. What I mean is that contrary to the one above, it invites a more freely spontaneous approach to the problem of volume in an image but I like them both. 

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 25 July 2023, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm 

In the following small study there is another feeling altogether. It was the last one of the night and I had almost packed up everything when suddenly I saw this abstract configuration in my mind so I grabbed a small board to see what I could make of it. I didn't like it at the time but to be fair, dusk had fallen quickly so I had  to clean up in the dark and I could barely see it.

But today what I see is a more simple, 'classical' image, perhaps more traditionally inspired maybe as well. I had wanted to do it for the colour because the spot-like clouds floating over the pink area popped out with the  colour of a ripe pear. I have seen this often but have always had a great difficulty in trying capture it with an appropriate amount of wonder. It's so subtle, an ephemeral sensation like the hint of perfume as a woman passes at a cocktail party (as I have too often described it, sorry). But anyway, it is almost always this frail puff, or tiny pop of inspiration that can set off the pictorial sensation that gives a painter his goose bumps and will force him to return to the scene of the crime.

I also like this last one because it was started out with such confusion in my mind, it was just enough of a feeling that it allowed me to jump on a hawk's wing. I was hanging onto a thread of an idea but not with my usual sense of faith and yet like the fisherman, the painter always likes a bountiful outcome.  

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 25 July 2023, oil on canvas board, 25 X 20 cm