Barbara's Blog

A lot has happened since I last posted my Blog.

My husband had a bad fall on our staircase and broke his ankle and foot which required hospitalisation,followed by three months in respite then weeks in rehab.He finally came home ,promising me he would always use the stair lift in future.It has been a long year with continual trips to specialists,physios and now a Diabetic counsellor.He strives on daily doing his exercises ,riding his static bike which our children gave him and eating the correct food .

Meanwhile I have tried to paint in between visits to hospitals,respite centres and rehab.hospital.I even got the house painted out in case we had to sell.I managed to declutter quite a bit too,giving away furniture ,books etc.We have to cater for five walkers in various rooms of the house and outside in the Japanese garden as well as in the garage which has two steps down into it.Another is in the boot of the car.

I have been experimenting using graphite,watercolour pencils,crayons and various types of paper.Fun.Some pieces are more successful than others.

I have been inspired by my visit to Japan in May to see my daughter Julia...and hope to do more Scenes from there at some stage.I love the work of Shirley Trevena too and have been trying to compose paintings and work using her methods.Not easy to say the least.But,I will go on trying.

I have also been trying to use more water in my watercolour paintings.

If only I had more time.

Wednesday, 19 August 2015

Explaining my recent paintings.

As shown in my paintings,I have been doing lots of watercolours and have been using some old photos as a resource.As shown in the boat scenes I experimented with repositioning the boats,I changed the format and also altered the scene to remove the car and include a couple of people.I enjoyed the challenge of using the same scene but creating different paintings.

I also experimented with a new style in acrylics too and tried a more abstract approach in the landscape scenes.This was fun.

Next I tried to be very creative and used inks to paint some very abstract paintings.Totally different!

I attended a workshop on abstraction a few weeks ago but have not really worked out going from realism to abstraction,so I intend to spend a lot of time in the next few weeks working on this challenge.