Showcase

 Yesterday I found the Ealing Artist Group website. No, I'm not a member - I live hours away from Ealing for a start. But I grew up there, and in many ways I still think of it as home. The website has a page for each member artist - and bloody brilliant they are too. I wouldn't put myself up with any of them. But what I liked about each artist's page was that they had a small showcase of between half a dozen and a dozen of each artist's works. This set me to thinking. If I ever did something like that - which paintings which I put there? I'd be tempted to only put ink sketches, but no, I'm happy with my ink sketching, it's my painting that I'd love to improve. So here, on my showcase page, is what I feel are my best dozen paintings. 

February 2016 Acrylic - Glasgow Tram. I painted this in response to a speculative query

.  The ironic thing about the painting is that I think that te tram is actually the weakest thing in the painting - the front end of the top deck is just leaning out a little too far. I was very pleased with the stonework effect on the buildings, and also with the cobbled floor which took ages but was worth it. 

February 2017 Acrylic -Lisbon Tram. My friend Steve, who is a proper real artist and not a struggling amateur like me, knows I like trams. He photographed this on a visit to Lisbon, and I used the photograph to produce this painting. What I really like about this is on the left - the male figure is nicely done, and I really like the columns on the other side of the road. I don't think that the perspective is quite right on the mustard coloured building above the tram, though. 

Acrylic 2017: Frankel - Commission. Just after I painted the Lisbon tram I was diagnosed with depression. While I was off work for the best part of two months I found painting to be a great help. My wife had said to me that I should paint something that she likes for a change, so I painted a scene from a horse ace, and found that I really enjoyed doing it. I posted the results on line and it resulted in this commission to paint the wonder horse, Frankel. I made the decision to paint the crow deliberately fuzzy and blurry. I think that the horse himself looks great, although a fair criticism that has been made of the painting is that the jockey does merge into the crowd a bit. 

April 2019: Acrylic: Shire Horses - I haven't included any of my 2018 paintings. That's not because I think they're rubbish. I did another horse racing painting I liked very much, for example, and also a London tram. But both those subjects - trams and racehorses are already represented in this showcase. I painted plough horses in 2017 which I gave to my mother because she liked the painting so much. But this one is to my mind better. I went bolder with the acrylic, and I think that the two horses' heads are painted as well as I'm capable of painting. 

May 2019 Acrylic: Elephant. For a brief period all of my children had moved out, and I took my favourite room, which overlooks the garden and has a bay window which lets in a marvellous amount of light as my studio. Both the shire horses painting and this elephant painting were made here. I sketched the design first, then painted all of the background around the elephant. I've always liked Elephants, and like the shire horse painting, this is a painting which comes close to what I was trying to achieve.

September 2020: Acrylic: Glasgow Tram. The irony of this painting is that I think that it's my best acrylic tram painting, but it hasn't sold. Mind you I've sold several prints of it. Maybe it's because the composition feels unbalanced with the buildings on the left half, and the empty stretches of roadway, trees and sky on the right. I love the buildings and the brickwork, and the tram isn't bad, albeit that I don't think that the perspective is quite right.

Septembe 2021 : Acrylic: The Cowboy's Return. I painted this during the second lockdown. It took absolutely ages, but I was so pleased with it. I have to work ad work and work on using colour. I don't really understand it very well, and for the most part, I think I got it right with this one. The red shadow on the girls' back and shoulder probably could have been pulled back a bit. Nonetheless, I look at it and I think - that's a decent painting. You're not totally helpless at this. This is the latest acrylic in the showcase. Since lockdown ended I've really tended to concentrate on sketching, and also waterolour. Speaking of which . . . 

June 2022: Watercolour: Swansea Mumbles tram at Mumbles. I painted this for the 2022 30x30 watercolour challenge. This is an internet challenge to complete 30 direct watercolours within the month of June. This was based on an old black and white photograph. Direct watercolour means there is no sketching out the design on the paper beforehand. I was bowled over to find that I could do something like this as a direct watercolour. Not only that though - the colours are almost completely what I wanted to achieve. For me it was the first sign that one day I might be able to get where I'd like to be with watercolour.

June 2022: Watercolour: Racing car at Goodwood. This believe it or not was painted the very next day after I painted the Swansea Tram. Normally I paint watercolours on A4 sized paper, but this was done on A3. Once again it was based on a black and white photograph. As with the Swansea one, although I'm pleased with the design, especially considering that this was all done with paint with no pencil sketching at all. But I'm even more pleased with the use of colour in it.

July 2022: Watercolour: Trolleybus approaching Ealing Broadway. Not a direct watercolour this time. I did sketch it out in pencil first. It is another which was based on a black and white photograph. I'm really pleased with the perspective, which I think I got pretty right for once. But it' also the colours again. I think that the vivid red of the trolleybus is lovely - I was drawing on my experience of painting the bright red Swansea Tram for that. I'm also pleased with the buildings behind the trolleybus. even now, 60 years later, those buildings are still that colour for the most part. 

August 2022: Watercolour: Parkers Bakery, Northfields Avenue, Ealing. The trolleybus picture started me painting a sequence of paintings of Ealing, past and present. This one has been particularly popular. Parkers bakery, sadly no longer with us, was a real Ealing fixture, much loved and sadly missed. I remember many sunny Satirday mornings passing by which is how I know that the colours are right in this.  

August 2023 - the London Underground is a subject I find endlessly fascinating and a constant source of inspiration. This is based on a photograph from the forties or fifties. I had enjoyed the 2023 30x30 challenge so much that I've continued painting in this way since - this is a direct watercolour.

August 2023: Another London Underground Watercolour.

August 2022: Watercolour: Hanwell Coronation Clock Tower. This is my favourite of all of my Ealing watercolours so far, and possibly my favourite of all of my watercolours. Prior to painting it I did a lot of research , looking at images of some of my favourite paintings of Ealing through the years, and in particular looking at how the artists used colour. I got closer to what I admired in their work with this painting than any of my other. Simple things like the white frontages of the Clocktower Cafe and Ladbrokes being given a light shade of blue on top because they're in shadow. Things like that don't naturally occur to me, I have to really think about them in order to get it right like that.