Inside the studio
Daylight is a fickle friend, unsteady over time but so pleasant to the eye. Here’s some pictures from both my studio in the countryside and from atelier training at the Art Academy in Stroud (Gloucestershire).
Leaves and buds
Nature studies. Exercises in observation, looking for the light, for volumes, for shapes, structures and shifts of plane. Both meditative and exhausting.
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Czechoslovakia Bewildered
A past that is still present: an essay on Czechoslovakia one year after the fall of the communist regime, a country caught between revolution and an impossible restauration.
Quick Sketches Life Model
The brain is conservative. It tends to have set ideas about the human body that get into your way when drawing with live models. Models often hold poses for only three to ten minutes. The classes are designed to get you out of your comfort zone. No time to think about proportions. You have to trust your eyes, and your hand. Either you get it, or you don’t.
The Russian Army Leaving Berlin
An essay about the facts and the emotions surrounding the orderly departure of the Russian army after the reunification of Germany. Many of the 373,800 soldiers and 208,400 civilians from the former Soviet Union left for a future of great uncertainty, leaving behind devastated housing areas, polluted soils and vast empty spaces.
Quince Conversations
Quinces are old-fashioned fruits. Bumpy, irregular, voluptuous individuals. Two quinces next to one another quickly evoke a conversation.
Legion of honour – Légion d’honneur
The Legion of honour is the highest order of the French republic, established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802 to distinguish citizens for military or civic merits.