Guiding Lights

Guiding Lights

“Guiding Lights”
Coloured pencils on Arches Aquarelle. November 2016. 20 x 26 cm.

Electricity powers lights which, in turn, empower people to walk around (usually safely) after dark.  Rue Quincampoix, a medieval street in the Temple area of Paris, never looked like this in any time other than our own.  This long narrow street is radiant at night.  Lamps and neon flood surrounding stone with pools of coloured light.

This drawing was difficult and I struggled.  Yesterday I wrote in my art journal, “The thing has happened where I can – one minute – see it as a success and the next minute, see it as a failure.  I cannot tell what’s going on.  Maybe I’m nearly there, or there already, or buggered.”

How timely to read last night a quote from “The Private Lives of the Impressionists” by Sue Roe.  (page 54).  “Cornélie [Berthe Morisot’s mother] observed that Manet was behaving like a madman, one minute convinced the painting was a masterpiece, the next, plunged into despair“.    (I call this state of mind Art Hell.)

This is the second time I have drawn rue Quincampoix.  If you compare it to the first drawing, below, you can see I’m revisiting Paris with a different mindset now, an impressionistic one.

Conversations at Dusk
2012

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Somewhere

Somewhere

“Somewhere”
Coloured pencils on Arches Aquarelle.
195 x 240 mm. November 2016

Somewhere in Paris.   Friday 22nd October around dusk – I walk into Saint Germain des Prés specifically to photograph its streets as the light changes.

“Somewhere” is the first drawing in what I hope will be an impressionistic Paris series.  While over there I took nearly every photo out-of-focus so that I can create atmospheric works.  I have had enough of careful detail.  I want to show the energy of pencil strokes and liberate pencil marks from rigid control.

Liberté!

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Liberation

Liberation

“Liberation”
Coloured pencils on Arches Aquarelle.
195 x 240 mm.

On a rainy spring day at the port of Fremantle, a crested tern takes off.   I worked on this drawing during my September art exhibition, only returning to finish it yesterday.

After my sense of gloom at world events this week, it was comforting to come back to a drawing where I could enjoy the purity of a bird in flight.

“Liberation” came to me as a title, as I try to liberate my own spirit from the pool of collective anger, blame and worry over the disastrous results of the U.S elections.

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Cool Parisian Shop Dogs

Cool Parisian Shop Dogs

Dog walking in Paris

I have just returned from two weeks in Paris.  It was a photographic material-gathering trip for new drawings.  While looking for inspiration, sometimes I took photos just for fun.  Below are three stylish Paris dogs in their super-cool shops.

Japanese shiba inu in the hairdressing salon

Most days I passed by a hairdressing salon in the Marais.  This immaculately-groomed dog was regularly in the window watching the action outside.  He was way too cool to look at me as I knelt down on the pavement to take his photo.

Dog on the counter

This little guy was on counter duty in a shop somewhere near Centre Georges Pompidou.  I seem to remember that it was a shop selling accessories – which is fitting as he looks like an accessory.

In the doorway of an optical shop.

I saw this shape from a distance somewhere between the 5th and 6th arrondissement and first I wasn’t sure what I was seeing.  I went closer and we regarded one another.

“Hello”

Parisians sure love their dogs!  And don’t we all?!

“Jacques Russell”
coloured pencil drawing of a Paris dog from a previous trip.

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