Painting With a Story in Mind

This is the collection of paintings that have now headed off ready for the Summer 2010 exhibition at Beside The Wave.  With this set of paintings I have tried to let them tell a story.  It is not complicated, it is the walk down to the sea.  It is a walk that I do often, through every season and every kind of weather but here it is early summer.  To me, a walk to the sea, through rich deep green lanes and paths, past billows of wild flowers and beneath towering beech trees, is an essence of Cornwall and hopefully it will say similar things to other people, wanting to buy a little bit of that to hang up at home.
Putting the collection together as I have done here is a very useful excercise.  It lets me see what my painting habits are, what colours I rely on, what strengths and weaknesses are in my painting style, where I need to concentrate more, where I need to loosen up.  It also lets me enjoy my own work, after all this might be the last time I see these paintings, I am always sad to see them go but also very happy that they have sold.  There is nothing quite like the buzz of selling your work, (someone else likes it enough to want to live with it!)  I suppose it is a bit like children, you bring them up as well as you can, hoping that they will be lovely rounded people who want to leave home and who are nice enough to find someone else to share their lives with and be happy... but you still miss them, and you miss their littleness.  So it is with a painting, that excitement when you start, the descisions that you make that make it work, that make it stand on its own as a thing, an entity, a little window into a slightly more magical world.  Gosh!  What responsibility!
Anyway, if you dont do it already, try it, put a little collection together and see what it tells you about yourself as an artist.  It is interesting!