Sitting here watching the rain come down, very welcome, I just thought I'd say hello to all my readers, all two or three of you.😀 The reason I want the water is I help with the extensive
communal gardens here. May was both hot and very dry so many plants suffered.
It's a really grim time here in the UK with one of the worst death rates in the World with Covid 19. Unfortunately without getting too deep into politics, I'll just say I've no faith in our current administration to navigate us out of this crisis with the worst damage to the economy yet to really impact, although bad enough at the moment.
Anyway enough of that. I'm painting and / or drawing most days, certainly three to five times a week. I once read that you needed to paint at least three times a week to just stand still and more if you want to improve. Unfortunately at approaching 83 it's rather late in the day after painting in watercolour for just over 20 years. I should be a lot better than I am after this time still Brabazon only achieved recognition in his eighties so all is not lost.
It's really odd at times. Facebook regularly come up with my posts from years ago. I look at them and think some are better than current work so has the rot already set in. A few years ago I asked an older friend and fellow artist, sadly deceased, at what age you stopped improving. His comment was that it was more a case of not going backwards. It's a great hobby though and watercolour a fantastic medium. I've already got the paintings organised for the next two months and there are some stunners amongst them, many from artists I was previously unaware of. While there is a strong watercolour following in the UK oil has always been the main medium, partly through the snobbery of the art establishment. The British great Edward Wesson had some of his oils accepted by the Royal Academy but none of his watercolours. He was acclaimed elsewhere but a similar problem existed with Edward Seago, although a favourite of the Royal family. There was a programme on Seago a while back and Prince Philip appeared on it. He was asked about this shunning of Seago by the establishment and put it down to 'snobbery'. I laughed at that one considering where the comment came from. The real reason was he was gay and did get into trouble over it, due to the attitude and laws of the time, but it was covered up. Sad really because Seago was a great painter, better than Wesson in my view.
Finally I noted a while back that realistic and super realistic paintings seemed to be becoming more common. I actually got into a spat on Wetcanvas with one individual about this which turned really nasty - not on my part - and I left. This person even suggested we exchanged e mail addresses and continued the argument. There is no place in art for this sort of abuse. I asked the late Charles Reid on one of my last workshops with him about this trend. He said he did a lot of judging and had also noticed the move towards super realism. I'm amazed at some of the paintings I find. Not only how they manage to produce such work in watercolour, but the time it must take to produce them. Charles said a painting should take two to two and a half hours in total. That's my game! Thats it folks. All the very best to you all in this terrible time and KEEP SAFE.
