Sorry, I've been a bit busy

Sorry I've not posted in a while.

Stuff to catch up on.

I'm off to uni in September. Not Glasgow, as they decided that on seeing my eportfolio I was decidedly below their standards.

Huddersfield offered me 2 places, the standard of my work was so high.

Leeds College of Art just didn't like anything about me and turned me down flat, they didn't even ASK to see any work. However, it is my understanding that they turned everyone down. So I'm less bothered by that.

And sorry Lincoln, buit after the 2 offers from Huddersfield and little commuting time, I had to go there. Plus FABULOUS Dahling! facilities.

My time at Hillsborough nears its end. 6 more weeks and its all done and dusted. I'm going to miss everyone, although a couple of them will be joining me at Barnsley Campus of Huddersfield Uni.

I recommend a visit there. You walk in the front doors and the place SMELLS like a real art school, turps, sawdust and sweat. Yummers!

Healthwise I'm still struggling with painful knees, sore back and panic attacks, but hey! I went shopping the other day and managed to do £50 worth of food shopping. Forgot the eggs and the milk but a small triumph I think.

Open Up was good, with a couple of wobbly moments, but lots of visitors and some sales. Plus new contacts and meeting other artists nearby. Oh and a small party at the end.

My project won't be finished for the final show, but as my tutor said, an altered book like that is a lifelong project. Gulp. This may be the final straw that breaks the back of my sanity.

I'm looking forward to having time to catch up with other projects, ideas that have been rattling around my small brain, playing with new techniques and maybe running a couple of workshops from my lovely, messy, cold and draughty studio. Leave a comment with your email address if you are interested in print, textile and collage workshops, or any combination of the three.

Enough catching up now. I'm off for another cuppa tea and possibly yesterday's leftover veggie paella.

Applications, alterations and augmentations

I have applied to university. That, I think, you all know.

I nearly didn't.

I went to uni a few years ago, but only completed 3 semesters. I had a major emotional collapse for many and varied reasons, but couldn't complete the course, didn't get the real support I needed to return and quit completely. It was, in short, a horrific experience.

And now I'm doing it all again. This time, however, I am not naively expecting everyone to be socially and politically aware. Or even intelligent. God forbid we waste education on the clever!

I put off applying, in fear and trepidation. What if I am rejected? OK, so I have put in insurance applications, just in case my first choice rejects me. What if something worse happens? What if they accept me and I fail all over again?

Right, Sam, pull your socks up, stop thinking negatively, you can and will do this, because this is the key to your future, you will be spending 3 years in a fantastic city in a historical building doing exactly what you love to do! How could it go wrong?

So the application went to my college tutor, who sent it back for corrections. Not the personal statement, apparently that was "so you", and was perfect in tone and expression. No some minor numerical details were needing adjusting.

At this point I could have completely chickened and 'just not got it done'. Failed by lack of time.

I made the corrections and sent it back. All that was needed now was a reference from my tutor.

It glowed, throbbing with bright fiery light that burned the eyes that looked upon it and the hands that held the flimsy copy, it was so good. I didn't recognise the person she was talking about. But at the same time, yes, that WAS me.

GULP!

I might actually get in!

Ah but I still have to submit my portfolio. It will all go horribly wrong with that. bluff can only get you so far, but then you have to come up with the goods.

Looking at my work over the past 2 1/2 years I begin to see that, maybe, I may just about be able to squeeze a half decent portfolio of work out of it. Plus I have been printing a series of plates based on one drawing specifically for my portfolio. Just to show what I am capable of. That I can work in lots of different ways. I have ideas. I have skill. I have technical knowledge. I may even have talent.

And here is the latest addition to the portfolio. I really rather like it.

Development

As I go to life drawing most weeks, I end up with huge numbers of drawings of people. I have always had ideas about what to do, but mostly have never quite known how to execute them or how to move things on.

I'm getting better at this as time and my course move on, but occasionally it is still a struggle.

The recent drawings I've done at life class are a case in point. They are interesting, strange and in some cases lovely, what do I do with them?

One of them in particular was ripe for development and so I chose to turn it into a lino cut and see what came of it. Here are some of the results.

So in order:

1. The original drawing

2. Print on to black origami paper

3. Print onto bleached and dyed tissue paper

4. The reverse of the tissue paper print

5. A greetings card made from the print.

I want to do some further work on this plate and the printing, adding some background texture and detail perhaps, and creating something multi layered. Possibly over printing and reduction printing. But whatever I choose to do, the initial prints are looking very promising even though I say so myself.

Happiness

Sometimes when I get into my studio I start work immediately, and those days are lost in productivity, ease of creation and satisfaction.

Other days, like today, I get here and proceed to play on the computer, download research for an essay that doesn't need to be handed in until May, update my facebook status, read twitter posts, update twitter, read blogs, tidy up, mess about filing things that I will get out again tomorrow, mix paint, throw it away because it simply isn't 'right'. Get the picture?

Ultimately, however, whether I am a having hit the ground running or a slow starter day, I know that I am happy here, even if the weather is getting cold and the heater is barely adequate to heat the 3ft in front of it let alone the rest of the studio. Never mind that I have to keep getting up and walking about to stop my knees and hips from seizing up, it is an excuse to have a little dance to Pink, Florence or Paloma.

Happiness is something elusive. I daren't relax into it, because each time I do I feel that it will somehow be stolen away from me. This is the depression talking I know, but I do feel afraid that if I am happy today tomorrow will be awful, for whatever, unpredictable, chaotic devastation reason.

So today I am happy in my studio. Tomorrow I hope for the same, but I never expect it 2 days running.

This is one of my happy days, chilling on the beach with Gaia, no shoes and my camera, last summer. A day out at the beach feels like it can cure almost anything.

Essay

Here it is,the finished, slaved over article.

Jenny Saville and Walter Sickert: Looking at the world through reality coloured glasses

Jenny Saville and Walter Sickert are separated by a century of painting tradition, but, to my eyes, both are equally able to look at, examine and reveal the reality of our society. In this revelation they force us to see beyond this discomforting image in front of us, but to create a narrative that gives the discomfort meaning and therefore emotional validity, which is missing from many of their contemporaries more socially acceptable works. For me the definition, the very purpose of art, is to create an emotional response. To fail in this delegates it to mere interior decoration. This accusation can never be levelled at Saville or Sickert. In fact throughout both of their respective careers, they have openly courted that emotional response.

Jenny Saville was born in Cambridge in 1970, to parents who were initially teachers, but who ascended the educational hierarchy to such a point that their careers created a peripatetic existence for the family, causing regular moves around the country, and putting Saville in 15 different schools. This inevitably placed Saville in the role of outsider, irrespective of her ability to assess the characters of her new school cohort. She watched and categorised the other children around her, developing the instincts to survive and assimilate in the new school. These instincts give her the ability to place herself in arenas which many other would find impossible to enter. In the operating theatre as the surgeons are recreating, augmenting or reducing breasts, meeting with transsexuals, pre-op, post transition or midway through their metamorphoses. These very subjects have fascinated Saville from a young age, “I like bodies in a state of transformation, whether through injury or surgery. Even as a child, if I was in the playground and I saw a girl fall and skin her knee, I would look at it and be fascinated.”

Walter Sickert was born in Munich in 1860, to a Danish-German father and an English mother. At the age of 10 he moved with his parents to England. His father Oswald, was a painter of some note and was invited to England by Ralph Nicholson Wornum, Keeper of the National Gallery during the Great Exhibition. As a result of his parentage, his mother was illegitimate, and his birth nationality, Sickert was to enjoy the status of outsider his whole life, although he often played with this role. At a dinner attended by Sickert and ‘several rather conventionally-minded young officers’ at the outset of WW1, Sickert was heard to declare “-And no-one could be more English than I am - born in Munich in 1860, of pure Danish descent!” It was this very otherness which gave him such a view of the world that was at odds with the aesthetic paradigm of his time. He published an essay in The Art News in May 1910 arguing that Idealism is an absurdity, citing John Singer Sargent’s work as “a form of flattery in which the sitters were beautified and rendered as glamorised and ideal versions , not of what they were, but of what they would have liked to be”. Art can only function when describing “gross material facts of bulk, shape and colour…..such are the conditions of the very existence of plastic art” “The more art is serious, the more will it tend to avoid the drawing room and stick to the kitchen. The plastic arts are the gross arts, dealing joyously with gross material facts. They call, in their servants, for a robust stomach and a great power of endurance, and while they will flourish in the scullery, or on the dunghill, they fade at a breath from the drawing room.”

Whenever Saville is compared to other artists, the first is always Lucien Freud, for obvious reasons, but she credits Willem De Kooning as her greatest influence especially his use of paint. “De Kooning is my main man, really, because he did just about everything you can do with paint.” Francis Bacon is also a major influence, with his use of paint to create a tension with the subject, that is less about representation of the form and more about creation of that form on the canvas. Sickert’s influences read like a who’s who of great painters. Some were his teachers - Whistler, Degas, and some his contemporaries, from the Camden Town group, Lucien Pissarro, Wyndham Lewis, and from the wider world, Van Gogh and Gaugin. However Sickert’s style was his own, developed as it did under Whistler’s tutelage and Degas’ mentorship.

Although both artists look at the discomforting truth, the truths they observe take different forms. This is, I suggest more to do with their historical perspective rather than personal places. Saville creates large scale nudes, in oils, initially exclusively of huge women, bloated, obese and white fleshed, as in the triptych Strategy (fig 1).








Fig 1

In recent years the subjects of her work have extended into pig carcasses, transsexuals, transvestites and victims of disease, injury or surgery. This can be seen as a maturing of her oeuvre rather than a search for new subjects. She is still painting the marginal within our society, only now she has a stronger, broader palette and a more mature style, where the subject and the process meet to create a tangible tension in the work that was not evident in her early work.
Sickert chose to look at the reality of everyday, working class lives, be they out in the Music Halls or in the bedrooms of women forced by domestic violence or poverty into prostitution. His nudes were “lower class women in cheap rooms”. He worked on a smaller scale, also in oils, but in a more impressionist way. His work did look at these subjects from skewed, distorted or unusual positions. In his musical hall paintings, he used mirrors to confuse the composition, as in Little Dot Hetherington at the Bedford Music Hall (fig 2) creating a tension in the viewer attempting to resolve the confusion, and forcing them to create a narrative to resolve the tension.










Fig 2

With his nudes, often a second, dressed figure was included, portrayed in a menacing stance over the always female, nude figure, for example, L’Affaire de Camden Town (fig 3) These relationships within the paintings again forced to viewer to create a narrative. But these narratives were uncomfortable for many, suggesting as they did domestic violence and forced sex.


















Fig 3

Despite the apparent differences in their work, style and subject matter, what is clear is the connection they have in their obsession with the apparently uglier side of life. Saville has followed her fascination into the most uncomfortable places and with marginalised people to portray them not as specimens, but as real people, deserving of sympathy, empathy and a voice of their own. Her depictions of transsexual people, in Matrix (fig 4) and Passage (fig 5) are an investigation into the changing nature of gender and sexuality.












Fig 4


















Fig 5

Of Passage, Saville states “That body couldn’t have existed 30 years ago. Its possible because of silicon implants”

Jenny Saville works almost exclusively from photographs, although when she does use a model she will use photography first. She will employ a model for 6 hours, shooting up to 10 rolls of film, all in close up and work from the photographs. This allows her the time to get to know the physical structure of the model. She then uses the photographs to rebuild the model on the canvas, building up in sections rather than working on the piece as a whole. Saville learned Photoshop to enable her to change the colour saturation of the photos. Using this technique is how she has extended her palette into reds, blues and greens over recent years, creating stronger, more striking works. In addition to using models she collects medical literature, images of war zones, bombed out buildings, disused buildings, medical photography and accident scene photographs. Although she doesn’t use them directly in her work, they inform it and add to the intellectual architecture.

As Saville’s work has matured, her confidence with the paint has grown, not only extending her subject matter and her palette, but also the in how the process of painting has equal, if not greater importance in her work. Up close with these massive works, one can believe they are masterpieces of abstraction, the paint is heavy in places, the directionality of the brush strokes and the swift changes and juxtapositions of the colours and tones are alive with an incredible energy not seen in contemporary figurative painting. But step back, get a view of the whole work and one is astounded by the precision of that paint, which only a minute ago was almost random in its application. There is not a mark out of place, not a section that doesn’t fit exactly where it should. The expression in the eyes and the texture of the skin are real, the image is a real person, massive, vulnerable and naked before us, even when we know this is a composite being, drawn originally from photographs of models and medical illustrations.By every definition Saville is a painterly painter, using abstract techniques with the paint but with figurative work.
To achieve this energy and precision, Saville makes paint swatches and test pieces, usually on newsprint, trying out ideas and sections of the painting, always finding something which she can add to the work to keep it fresh, and energetic, even though the paint is heavily impasto and added in layers in some areas of the painting. “I like thick paint. I think you’ve got the solidity of the body of the paint itself. But there are areas of flesh that aren’t thick. So using thick paint’s not appropriate. The feeling isn’t big lumps and bumps, you know. So sometimes I use thick paint, sometimes I use thinner paint,”

These combinations, the duality of her work, using the latest technology - Photoshop - and the ancient craft of painting, utilizing the human form, but laying the paint in the way an abstract painter would, working on a gigantic scale, but always keeping her subjects very human in their identity, even when they are composite beings, that one would expect to create an irreconcilable dichotomy within her work, but it doesn’t, it instead gives us the chance to bear witness to one of the most interesting and important painters of the 21st century, possibly of the last 200 years, one who has taken a traditional process and subject and made it not only ultra modern and shocking, but also beautiful, poignant and personal.
Sickert also used photography in his work, but later in his career, the most notable works being Miss Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies as Isabella of France (fig 6) and Miss Earhart’s Arrival (fig 7).













Fig 6







Fig 7

In his earlier career, initially under instruction of Whistler, Sickert worked in an almost abstract way with his preliminary sketches, “concentrating on the central part of the motif first of all and then to work outwards towards the edges of the paper.” Later Sickert would move entirely away from this, Whistler’s favoured ‘alla prima’ technique, feeling it reduced the images and subjects too far into over-simplification, “The obligation, or effort to cover entirely necessitated an excessive simplification of both subject and background …. shows itself in subordinating, in arranging, in digesting any and every complication …… mastery …… is avid of complications.” As Sickert moved to France in 1883, met and was mentored by Degas, so his style changed. He found Degas’ methodology more in tune with his own ideas and ideals, and was able to adopt and adapt it to create his own style of work. Spending time creating detailed sketches of his subjects, which he them worked from, using under painting and building layers of paint, making changes and corrections as he developed the paintings. During this time Sickert also began to experiment with his subject matter, clearly influenced by Degas’ concentration on café life, music hall and domestic subjects. The “painting of modern life”.

As Sickert painted more of modern life, he was drawn to the grim reality of that life, his paintings became darker, his interiors became oppressive his style of painting more impressionistic. His figures went from interior working class domesticity Ennui (fig 8) to vulnerable nudes, The Rose Shoe (fig 9) and women of suggested easy virtue, Two Women on a Sofa - Le Tose (fig 10) In this move towards the seamier, less acceptable part of society, Sickert’s work became more interesting, stronger and much more important. At the same time it became, and remains controversial.


















Fig 8














Fig 9















Fig 10

In conclusion, I consider the connection between Sickert and Saville to be more than a matter of vaguely similar subjects, both looking at and illustrating the unpopular, ugly truth of the reality of marginalised people’s lives. Both are painters influenced by great artists, but not slaves to that influence, artists who have developed their own styles and techniques and have created a tension within their works that forces the observer to create narrative to resolve these tensions, but do not supply the narrative themselves. Sickert and Saville have challenged our view of the validity of subjects and in doing so have created works which have opened us to understanding, empathising and the humanising those society usually considered to be beneath us.

Arrrrrghghghghghghghghg

I think I may be having a bit of a bad day.

Please ignore any references that you may find miserable and complaining. I expect to have some work lined up by now, but nothing is happening. NHS Professionals are being positively obstructive, because their stupid online forms only give you 20 minutes to complete them, but they take at least 45 minutes to complete.

Whinge moan, complain, general grumbling and miserable noises. There that that out of my system.

Good news is I am actually getting on with the test pieces, and they are starting to look quite good. Going to go in the bath once my cotton on Farmville is ready to harvest and I can plant something new. More sewing in the meantime.

No photo today. Feeling grumpy. Sorry.

The canvas 1

Today, the day has been spent waiting for paint and glue to dry. This is why I prefer textiles, no waiting for stuff to dry/set/cure or generally be ready for the next stage. Straight on to the next bit once something is done.

I'm working on some test canvases for the Growth project, which is the main project for college and has a deadline of November 11th. I may manage it, but it will be cutting it very close.

So far I've tried paint first then collage on top, collage first then paint on top and now I'm going to give stitching on top a try. Working towards a slightly different approach which, I hope, will look the best.

Here are some progress pics. Let me know whet you think, but be gentle with me I'm having a rather annoying day with it all. it's not doing what I wanted it to do. The words bugger arse and poo chops come to mind!

Need to update my sketchbook for this project and then get my sewing machine out. I'm looking forward to that cos it's been a while since I played with my machine. Yummyness will abound.

I'm more in the mood for making and playing with books. Must.....remain.....focused......or ....will.....lose......way. Or I may turn into Captain Kirk! Oops, the geek popped out there, I'll just.......push her back into the the cupboard. *Slams door and locks it securely* Right she's safely out of the way for now, not sure how she keeps getting out of there unless she's got a sonic screwdriver in there with her! Oh bugger it's catching!

Annnnnnnywayyyyyyy! Back to the focused self, sketchbook, tidying and sewing! Yay! The problem I am having is that other things are always distracting me and maybe I just have to accept that this is probably the way I work, with a lot of preplanning, thinking and general navel gazing prior to actually getting down to it and doing something. Or maybe I just need to be more disciplined. I'll get back to you on that one.

Just need to get these pictures looking tidy for my blog. I'm not sure that it will work, but I can try. At last, after about 5 minutes of fiddling, got them to line up tidy like. Right, publish and back to the desk of doom.

As for the pics, they don't look much at them mo, but shortly will be rather good. Honest, I'm not sh**ting you. They have to be good, cos I'm submitting at least three of them for the Winter Open at the Clocktower, NGH, which of course everyone will be attending won't they? Please? Ta, love you all. Mwah!

New beginnings, old endings

So I am now jobless. Without a paid, proper job. Unemployed.

I am happier than I have been for some time, relaxed, getting (slowly) organised, starting to have ideas about how to bring enough money in to pay the mortgage and feeling I could take on the entire world, I have so many ideas.

I've decided I am having a complete week off from any thoughts of work and getting up to date with the house work, college work and life and friends. Feeling so good about the whole process of packing my job in that I really cannot imagine working for someone else ever again.

My last day was a bit of a day from hell, but the rest of the weekend was fantastic and I feel like I did the right thing and maybe should have done it a year ago, but hindsight is a wonderful thing.

My friends are being so incredibly supportive, even trusting me to do their wedding photography for them when I have very little experience. Claire and Sonia, Sharon and Ashley you have no idea what your faith means to me.

I have been getting bookings for modelling, so I have regular work lined up, though it doesn't pay a huge amount it is work and some money coming in. I am also going to try and organise a life drawing class near me to see if I can make a small but again regular income from that. What I'd really like to do is organise some kind of community arts project in the north of Sheffield to create my own arts role here and support people who need art to help them through whatever issues they are dealing with, personal, professional or familial. I know I have to energy, drive and ideas to make all of this stuff work for me, but I just need to believe the next couple of months aren't going to be disastrous.

I have a canvas prepared for my major project at college, which I will be working on tomorrow, setting the whole day aside for it. Today is reserved for odd jobs and housework. Off to a meeting tonight for ATT, which is Art Though Textiles. I have some good friends there and will be able to make connections and network more effectively without having to be at a paid full time job. Although, don't get me wrong I am looking for paid work, I just need to not be doing it full time.

I resolved not to worry about money or paying for the things i need, I'll have enough cash work to keep me ticking over and I hope that I get enough temping work to be able to pay the big bills. And you know what, if I don't so what? Things will come together like they always do. I have faith that the universe will provide what I need when I need it. The universe has never let me down yet and always shows me the right way to go, even if sometimes I'm stubborn and won't go that way.

I must now go to the loo and eat some lunch, then ring the nice young man who is giving me a fridge on freecycle. Long story, but I'll tell it on another post.

Just thought I'd pop a couple of my latest experiments to see what you think. A mixture of monoprints and bleach and ink drawings.

The Grand Canyon

So here i am with a huge hole in my back that for a few days looked like it was going to stay as a suppurating wound forever, non healing and infected forever. But, finally I can lie down properly, which means the pain in my lower back and hips will subside. It is also itching like a freshly infected crab carrier.

Wanna see a picture? Here ya go then. Yes it was painful and I will be glad when it's all better.

I just had a sarnie while I was waiting for the picture to upload and had a cuddle with my pet Corn Snake, Rosie. She is such a cutie, but I disturbed her from her torpor, so she was a little disoriented and not happy to be handled. She usually wakes up around 8 to 9 pm, so I'll go and have a play with her then.

I've finally made some headway with the summer project, and I'm pulling my research together, found loads of stuff on JMW Turner, my favourite landscape painter by so many miles no-one else comes close to the feelings I have for him. Anyway I already waxed lyrical about him in my previous posting so I'll not bore everyone again.

I also managed to do a fairly ok sketch of a really beautiful sky I photographed on my phone a couple of weeks ago. Very pleasing. I may upload that to another post. I still haven't worked out how to get the picture inside the words, cos at the mo it always ends up at the top of the text and it doesn't make sense to have it there all the time. Ahh I think I just cracked it. Cool.

I'm having the occasional breakthrough these days, but not the kind I would prefer to have. Mostly to do with technology, not art. But soon, I will be able to draw and paint without having a crisis of belief in myself. Or maybe not. Parhaps it is not worth producign if it is easy to come by, and the struggle to create makes it a valuable act and not simply the recreational act of a bored talentless moron, who would be better off watching soaps and eating cake. Ooh cake. I may go to the shop and buy some. Or I may make one. Sounds cheaper and better. Need cream though. Or icing sugar. Bugger it all involves a trip to the shop. I may as well just go and buy a cake. But then I won't have made it how I like it and it'll be full of flavourings and additives to give it a shelf life. Oh the quandary.

I'm going to stop with the stream of dribble that comes from my head from time to time, or ok all the time. Work now, work, work, work!

Bye

Well the computer is now back, fixed and with a nice big hard drive, but of course I have to reload all of the software and everything, but it never goes smoothly does it? Oh no! Trying to get my email account to work properly and it won't send mail, but will pick up the new mail, so I may well have to ring technical support for some assistance, and eventually after three hours of talking to someone with an accent I can't understand, who has an imperfect understanding of the English vernacular, I may eventually get through to someone who knows what I want and can give me the 1 piece of information I have been trying to get for three hours! I HATE technical support! They always treat you as an idiot and ask the same stupid questions all the time. Have you tried switching it off and on again? Oh the ultimate solution to everything! Switch it off and on again! Of course that's the answer to everything!

Solution to the Middle East Crisis? Switch it off an on again!
World hunger? Off and on again.
Civil war in the Congo? Off and on again.

Sorry ranting now. And yes I am aware of the situation in the Congo and I'm not actually making light of the situation there, but I digress. Also I procrastinate.

Turner and Auerbach, my chosen subjects for my summer project, can I pull it off? And back on again.....oops sorry force of habit! Two fantastic landscape painters, Turner the father of abstract landscapes, Frank Auerbach, the damaged grandchild of the master. Mmmmm, I think I have the start of something there. The joy of living that Turner revelled in, with his travels, mistresses and general bigness of personality in a Brian Blessed kind of way (whenever I think of Turner I always have either Brian Blessed ot Leo McKern playing him!) and Frank Auerbach, displaced child of the Nazi pogroms, alone in the blitz ridden city of London, his world reduced over time to the bit of world that stretches from Mornington Crescent to Primrose Hill, his models his closest friends and almost nothing else to distract him from the purity of the forms and the feelings he wants to express on the canvas. His energy and vitality reserved for the heavy impasto on the canvas. Fabulous. Cool I may even be able to use some of that.

What has amazed me about Turner over the years, and I have to admit loving Turner from a very early age, is his ability to capture the light. I am beginning to understand how he does this, in his waterclours with the use of successive washes and scratching back, the precision of his finished paintings as opposed to the looseness of his watercolour sketches. He would fill 5 sketchbooks on a two week visit to his favourite places, and I was wondering how he did it, but now I understand how he managed. He would start with the loose, watery washes to create an impression of the landscape or more often the sea scape, and then would return to refine, define and create a more in depth painting, still working initially in watercolour all the time, until he was ready, had enough sketches and ideas to begin the work of the oil paintings. Although the various collections and bequests around the country, in Edinburgh and at the Clore Gallery all show the more refined watercolours, it is refreshing to me to find the initial sketches, in a copy of one sketchbook from 1845, showing his working technique and understanding the development of his ideas. I did have an epiphany with his composition at the new year when I went to Edinburgh, and kept notes of this, and now I am having the same kind of thought process while I am blogging. Great stuff! There is light and I can see it!

Now for an end to the chain of consciousness with reference to JMW Turner and back to ordinary life. Ah bugger it. That'll do for now.

Oh yeah the random picture is on the beach at Chapel St Leonards, I just thought it was an interesting image.