Indigo Blah: New studio and new art in England

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

New studio and new art in England

I've now been back in England for a few months and feeling very at home deep in the heart of the Warwickshire countryside! My studio is small but fully functioning and more than adequate.

Moving from the hot dry features of the eastern Mediterannean island of Cyprus with it's lively Greek culture, to the cooler, greener landscape of Britain I expected my art would begin to develop along fresh lines. Portrait work is a constant love yet I'm looking forward to experimenting with other ideas.

Beginning my first winter back home I have been fascinated by the beautiful countryside surrounding our new home and itching to get it down in paint. But what I wasn't ready for is a sudden interest I've developed in the art of children. I've loved painting them for years, but now I find myself looking at the artwork children themselves produce. I'm not the first of course to notice what natural artists children are. Pablo Picasso famously said;

All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.

Pablo Picasso

All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.

Pablo Picasso

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/p/pablo_picasso.html#1jm7MdMhtCfKDO2Q.99'A

'All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up'.

All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/p/pablopicas169744.html#bSczOfAQgmKTviU2.99

and

'It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child'.

I know what he meant. Influences of art school and working towards fine art degrees etc can often mess with what perhaps sometimes should be left alone to develop naturally. Some outsider art produced by self-taught adult artists can be so fabulously exciting!

I'm feeling my way with my 'other' work (that not connected with portraiture) and with my new start back home in England, now is as good a time as any to play around with ideas. One of which is to study the artwork of children by making a series of drawings. I would like them to be all the same size, 6 inches square and I shall make them in tone only. I have absolutely no idea how, or if, this will develop. To start I've taken a couple of photos of drawings by my grandsons and hope to acquire more. Here is my first attempt at making a drawing inspired by the work of a child. A drawing of a drawing becomes something entirely different. I hope to learn something from this.