Irish Fiddler

This is the hand of Junior Crehan, an Irish farmer and a wonderful fiddler, known as the father of County Clare traditional music. I photographed him many moons ago while travelling through the West of Ireland.

Starting the Year

I painted with Jacques Valin last week near Steve Shriver's place. Various people stopped by and looked at the works in progress. A woman on horseback stopped and made various maneuvers to get a better look at what we were doing. Difficult on a horse. Then Steve Mirich and Margaret appeared. Having seen the William Wendt exhibition at the Laguna Art Museum with Robert Elliott the previous week, a discussion broke out about Wendt's use of sky tones over his landscapes, and how he incorporated upward or downward viewpoints into a painting. At this point, I could see the shadows were changing my composition. Then Dan Pinkham drove up and stopped. Well, a great chatter started.

Jacques was already finished and packed up. I was done for the day, and headed out to Utrecht Art Supply in Santa Monica.

Wednesday, 14th of Jan, I started teaching a new class at the Palos Verdes Art Center - beginning painting. I gave a talk and then we started some simple painting exercises in thinning out paint, and using color to create form. I'll photograph some of the work this week and we'll see how they progress over the next few months. Should be interesting!

Friday 16th, I went with my son Patrick to the USC Annenberg School of Journalism. They were hosting the World Press Photo 2008 exhibition and seminar. Tim Hetherington, also from Liverpool, who won the World Press Photo in 2007, gave a most dynamic presentation of his photos from West Africa and Afghanistan. He and other presenters later gave a guided tour of all the exhibited photos.

I have been asked by the British Film Institute to write a short essay to accompany their DVD release of the 2008 film documentary "Of Time and The City", which is director Terence Davies autobiographical love song to his home town of Liverpool. The film uses 3 of my photographs, and they're also used in the publicity.

I've been out painting in the snow, and on the beaches south of LA airport. I'm going to post 2 paintings soon. Next week I start teaching at the Palos Verdes Art Center on Tuesday night. It's a beginning painting class. All media. And I'll bring acrylics, oils, watercolor and pastels if you are not sure which to pick.

Currently I've also been very involved with the Redondo HS Auditorium. We have had non-stop shows in since early December, and the new stage manager, Monty, is just getting acclimatized.

MVAL Pastel Painting Demonstration

Saralyn Lowenstein invited me to give a pastel painting demo to the Mid-Valley Art League in Arcadia, (in the Los Angeles area.) It was a simple Christmas theme still life. I started out will a basic charcoal drawing and gradually added in colour, emphasizing tonal value, relative warm and cool colours, then stressed highlights. It was a wickedly wet evening and I appreciated the very warm reception from the members. Mark Wood took the photographs and we raffled off the painting at the end of the demo.

Nutcracker/Degas

I've been interim stage manager for 3 weeks at Redondo Union High School. One of the performances was the "Nutcracker" ballet. Backstage is always interesting. We had dozens of ballerinas waiting, performing, then racing offstage. You can't help but tune into the Degas imagery when they wear traditional white dresses.

"Grain Barge" Liverpool Docks, 1971

"Sou'Westers" 2004

Welcome. 

This is my first posting and I'll be concentrating on paintings and photographs.

 I've made them both for most of my life. These two subjects are of great interest to all, of course. At Liverpool Art School my final history paper was "The Influence of Photography on Painting in the 19th Century". Plenty of fascinating material lies there in the wake of photography's invention, and the later reversal of painting's influence on photography.

The photograph was taken of a bargeman having a mug of tea, while the rare Liverpool sunlight danced through the grain dust behind him.

The painting is a plein air oil of fishing boats in San Pedro Harbour, south of los Angeles.

I try to wear different hats when creating my imagery, and not to wear them back to front, or at the same time, which is pretty common.