May Crops

 Oil on Board, 6x8 inches

This is a view near my village with quite a bit of artistic licence used. The oil-seed rape fields are as is, but the country track is acually a tarmac road, but having painted it, I felt it was a little too clinical, so I painted over it and turned it into a grass track, laden with cow Parsley that grows in such profusion at this time of year, and is known coloquially as 'ladies lace'.

 

I just loved how mauve the distant tracks and hedgerow lines appeared next to the brilliant cadmium yellow of the crops, and being complimentary colours, they fitted very nicely together and suggested the aerial perspective of the valley.

Roach Fishing

Oil on Board, 6x8 inches

I managed to pull this one in today amid the loads of phone calls and emails to various parties concerned with our imminent new gallery, of which more very soon...

This is a backwater of the River Nene a few miles away from my studio. It's rich with fish, especially the lovely silvery-blue Roach, so reminiscent of the Mr Crabtree goes fishing books of my childhood - the anglers reading this of a similar vintage to me will be lying back in their armchairs, sucking an imaginery pipe and visualising Peter, Mr Crabtree's son, listening to his dad with the innocent enthusiasm of days gone by depicted so brilliantly by the venerable Bernard Venables....

The reeds in the foreground were painted with the same No5 Long Flat, Series 279 (mongoose) brush from Rosemary & Co that I use for my big 22x30 paintings. Here I use less pressure to get the fine points than I would on the big ones.

April Reflections

 Oil on Board, 9x12 inches

I painted this one as a demonstration painting to the Wollaton Art Group in Derbyshire. Above is the finished piece, titivated back home in the studio, and below is the painting as was, after the couple of hours demo. 

Not being flooded with sunlight, I had to pay very close attention to the close tones in the scene, and really the painting came to life with depicting the lovely, glassy surface of the water. Painting water is always the 'coup de grâce' in a demo, and the fear that some amateur painters have can be dispelled by staying calm and remembering that all you are painting is a reflective surface, not a clear substance, and you just have to paint what you see, making sure that the reflections of any trees or features are perpendicularly below them, otherwise the brain will find it disturbing and unreal. Even some fine painters have fallen into the trap of painting great reflections that don't marry-up with what they are reflecting above the water.

Two NEW Paintings!!!!

Well, just to reassure you that I haven't fallen down a big hole, I thought it was about time I painted for a living again!  I've been somewhat busy in the last 6 weeks trying to get my garden back in order after having my big brand new studio built at the bottom of the garden, and a winding gravel path to get to it.  And my partner Janey has moved in with me too, so have been sorting out all the detritus of an artist's life scattered in almost every room of the house, now into the new studio, and letting the house become girlified - you know, cushions breeding like flies everywhere,  and flowers and stuff.

But you don't want to hear about my domestic arrangements, let's cut to the chase and see the new paintings.  I've really got to paint like fury over the next few weeks to supply my galleries who all need new stock after a selling spree, so here goes with the first two:

April Bluebells, Oil on Board, 6x8 inches SOLD

Well, it's that time of year isn't it - the glorious English Bluebells are carpeting the woodlands with their violet colours, making that stunning spectacle that just says 'Spring is here'. Using my 1" brush to depict most of the fresh green foliage and grass and the sunlit flowers, woods are always a joy to paint at this time of year

Summer Breeze, Oil on Board, 6x8 inches

Another little painting, I enjoyed painting the lively sky with its clouds skudding by and the warm breeze just catching the water and reeds in the foreground.

I've painted this view from a bridge near my studio many times in different seasons, and it always presents a lovely composition with the winding river taking the eye through the landscape. The bush just left of centre is an Elderflower and used to have an abundance of flowers on it, but it is it's twilight years methinks, with its best years behind it. When it does finally topple over, the composition won't be nearly as good, but hopefully, it's got a few more years in it yet.

Spring Has Sprung!

What a fantastic day today was! It truly was the first real day of Spring. I was moving studios - from my conservatory to my custom-built one at the top of the garden - and whilst traipsing up and down the winding path lugging all my gear, there were lots of butterflies flitting about, sipping nectar from the few flowers in bloom and taking their first flights after their long hibernation in garden sheds and woodpiles. I saw four different species (these are all my photos, apart from the Brimstone and the bees, taken last year):

Commas, above

and here's the underside, showing the distinctive white punctuation,

Small tortoiseshells,

Peacocks

and male Brimstones, the males a particularly bright lemon yellow.

Queen Buff and Red-Tailed Bumble Bees too were stumbling and buzzing about, looking for suitable nesting sites. And of course, the real harbinger of Spring, the Ice Cream Van was in full voice in the village! Here's my tribute to him in a painting I did last year:

I love Winter, but when the first signs of new life, or at least awoken life show themselves, it really is a special time, a glimpse of things to come, like the greenery and Cow Parsley in my painting.

Summer Clouds

Oil on Board, 9 x 12 inches

This painting was a demonstration piece I did for the Grafham Art group today. Here it is, untouched after the two hours  demo. 

A simple composition, with the big tree to the right of centre and distant trees appearing bluish on the horizon - so typical of a hazy summer's day.  I used old warn brushes to scrub in the drawing and the dark tones, then hog brushes for the sky and distant fields, then the 1" household brush for the foliage and vegetation, and finally hogs and Mongoose brushes for the water and weeds and lilies.

The end of an era

No painting to show you today, just a tribute to a friend, John Fountain, who died early this morning in hospital.  John was co proprietor with his wife Carole, of the Stamford Artists Gallery in Lincolnshire.

John gave me my first break as an artist, 29 years ago in 1985, after my career as a golf professional.  He and Carole took some of my paintings, which sold, and from then, right up to today, lasted a very happy working relationship.  

John was also an excellent picture framer, and was still making my frames until his recent illness just a few weeks ago.  He was meticulous in his frame-making, and his precision of cutting and assembling was second to none.

But, above all, John was a genuinely lovely man, absolutely straight and fair, and I will never forget his help in getting my foot on the first rung of the ladder of this wonderful vocation that I enjoy.

In 2010, Claudia Winkelman's Radio 2 Arts Programme conducted an interview with John and Carole about how they first encountered my work, and you can still hear it at http://www.peterbarkerpaintings.co.uk/Audio%20Files/Recording2.wav

February Sunlight

Oil on Board, 6 x 8 inches SOLD

This little painting will be going to the Affordable Art Fair at the Marine House stand.

This is the River Welland between the villages of Colleyweston and Ketton. I do like the skeletal trees of winter and when the sun lights up the landscape, there is a surprising amount of colour. Here I used a full range of yellows, reds and blues and all shades between. Most of the tree and vegetation was done with my 1" household brush, with a few strokes of a rigger for the tree branches and posts, whilst the lively sky was painted with a No 5 hog.

New Gallery

I'm delighted to say that I've joined the great stable of artists at The Harbour Gallery in Portscatho, Cornwall, run by Mark David Hatwood FRSA:

Mark has a very prominent presence on Facebook, Google+, Twitter and You Tube, all of which can be accessed from his excellent website at www.theharbourgallery.co.uk

The Gallery has all four of the recent paintings I've done from the Roseland Peninsula in the last couple of weeks:

Low Tide, Portscatho Harbour:

 SOLD

Molunan Beaches, St Anthony Head:

 SOLD

Calm Waters off St Anthony Head:

and Towards Falmouth Docks:

Details can be seen on my page on his website and via my own website, link at top right of this Blog.

September morning, Beer Beach

Oil on Board, 6 x 8 inches  SOLD

I painted this little study en plein air from the lookout balcony above the shingle beach of Beer in Devon. When I started, there was a bright sun trying to peak through the low cloud, giving a gorgeous sparkle on the sea and a halo of light on the boats and figures. However, after half-an-hour, the sun was gone and the scene was totally different, the sparkle gone and the colours flat with no contrast of tone.  This is the most difficult period for the plein air painter - do you carry on, re-painting a different scene that first inspired you to paint, or pack up and try to recreate the original lighting back in the studio? I carried on for a while, but the lack of sparkle lacked what I wanted, so I finally gave in and put the panel away to finish off just now.

Fortunately, I took a photo' of the view early on, so I had the basic information and managed to finish the painting off in the studio with little alteration, just adding the figure in the foreground to balance the composition. The old rubber conveyor belt, with the sunlight bouncing off it, provided a perfect 'lead-in' to the focal point - the red fishing vessel, with the fisherman looking out to sea.

Low tide, Portscatho Harbour

Oil on Board, 9 x 12 inches SOLD

Another oil from my Cornwall trip. Unfortunately, there was no sunlight on the day I was at Portscatho, so I had to make the best of what was on offer. 

When there is no sunlight, all the tones are close and subdued, so in many ways, more difficult to paint. Luckily, there was plenty of colour in all the boats lying on the mud, so it made for quite a polychromatic composition. I used my long palette knife to drag dark paint over the drying mud colour to get the effect of seaweed and stones. On this scale it was a little fiddly with all the bits and bobs on the boats, but they make up for the lack of sparkling sunlight.

Molunan Beaches, St Anthony Head

Oil on Board, 6.25 x 10 inches  SOLD

Here's another painting from my trip to the Roseland Peninsula last September, looking down on one of the Molunan Beaches - not sure whether this is Little or Great Molunan. This view is looking in the opposite direction to 'Calm Waters, St Anthony Head', the painting in my last post.

I quite liked the rhythm of the rocky outcrops, making your eye go in a zigzag path through the picture, with the tones of each mini-peninsula getting ever paler and bluer to give that sense of distance. I also loved the purpley colour of the rocks as they were covered by the green, milky sea in the foreground. This was towards the end of the season, so there wasn't a lot of activity, which adds to the tranquillity and sense of place I think. Ooh, get me, all poetic and lyrical...

Calm Waters off St Anthony Head

Oil on Board, 7.5 x 10 inches

This little painting is a view from the SW Coastal Patch around the Roseland Peninsula in Cornwall. The day I was there, it was a rather dull and benign - a far cry from what has been blowing on these islands for too long now. 

With little in the way of light, aside from a hint of colour in the sky, I had to pay close attention to the tonal relationships between the foreground and headland in the distance with the lighthouse and the little white paraffin store. Soft brushes and hogs used to stroke the paint in the headland, and, conversely, plenty of texture dabbed in with my coarse 1" household brush for the vegetation near me, also helped to give spatial awareness to you, the viewer, hopefully!

Sun and Wind, Brancaster Staithe

Oil on Board, 7.5 x 10 inches

Here's my little effort from this Wednesday's paint out at Brancaster Staithe with the UK Plein Air Society. The view I picked was a little challenging, starting out in sunlight, then extremely dull, then sunlit again. I parked myself in front of a wall so that I was sheltered from the howling gale, apart from the back of my neck and head, so had to wrap them up with a scarf and my very fetching hat with earflaps to stave off rigor mortis.

Chasing the light is never easy and much like shares, boats can go down as well as up on the tide.  The poles (technical term) on the big boat were dark against the sky for most of the painting, then the sun came out and thay were bright white against the blue sky.  So, I ended up chasing the light and in the end decided to paint the high tide with the sun out, and finished the painting off in comfort of the studio.

This is how far I got on the day, with the exposed mud in the foreground, before opting to paint out the foreground mud and changing the mood of the painting.

Sunset over the Thames at Richmond

Pastel on Clairefontaine Pastelmat, 13 x 19 inches

Back in November, my friend Haidee-Jo Summers (a familiar name to many of you) and I went down for a day of plein air painting by the Thames at Richmond with a band of painters called the Brass Monkeys.  We only did one painting each, nowhere near finished, because poor Haidee developed a migraine (I have this effect on people!), so I dashed to the nearest chemists to get her some Migralieve, which, fortunately, did the trick for her.

On walking back to the car, I snapped a photo of the glorious sunset, which provided the basis for this painting, with a little artistic license.  As you'll know if you're familiar with my daubs, I tend to paint trees with perhaps more apparent detail in oils, so it's sometimes nice to ring the changes and tackle them with Pastels, which gives a softer, more painterly feel, I think. There were an awful lot of subtle changes of tones in the mauves and yellows and the corresponding darker notes, and these had to be observed with a lot of concentration (just in case you thought we artists just hold a magazine in one hand and paint with the other, barely glancing at the paper!)  Sunsets are tricky, getting the brilliance of the oranges and warm sky tones to shine out without getting the darker tones too dark.