The view from here!
Back in October last year we swapped village life in Hampshire for an apartment in Bath. Our two dogs Dexter (the dachshund) and Scout (the spaniel) have learnt to love squirrels, cafes, buses and four flights of stairs. Yes we are on the second floor! Half of the contents of my studio in Hampshire are in storage and half is with me in Bath. We are in a Grade 1 listed building with huge windows and although my new studio is small it is flooded with light. How do you protect the walls (cream) and carpet (also cream) when you are a messy oil painter? The answer is you nail plastic and corrugated cardboard to the walls and put old rugs on the floor. So far so good. It is amazing how much more disciplined you have to be in a small space - I clean my brushes regularly rather than leaving them in water, and tidy up properly after every session. My preferred way of working can be chaotic and I struggled initially to get myself into the right headspace, but I am beginning to love working here. I realise now in my new streamlined space that I had accumulated a ridiculous amount of stuff - much of it sitting waiting for the day when it might be useful. I think the only things I am missing are my sketchbooks - I was only able to bring a handful and more often than not they are not the ones I am looking for.
A new landscape..
There is no question that I shall always be drawn to that part of Wiltshire and Hampshire that has inspired so many of my paintings. Bath is very different. But we are on the top of a hill with beautiful walks outside our front door and I am out most days with Scout and my sketchbook. I normally carry a Seawhite 25 x 25cm clothbound sketchbook or a Pith sketchbook which has the advantage of lying completely flat when I open it up to sketch. One thing I am discovering is that it is nearly always windy so also have to carry a bulldog clip to stop the pages flying around! The picture above shows my UGO pochade and tripod looking across to the South side of Bath one early morning in January. It is one of a series of new paintings that I shall be adding to my website over the next couple of weeks.
