SCHOOL RUN
This should read- 'It can be a nightmare getting everyone to school.'The mistake I've only just noticed, is probably more accurate.
Taking my children to school is easier, now they can ride bikes. When I had a double buggy to push and two others to walk across the park, it could feel like trekking the Himalayas.
EXTRAORDINARY JOURNEYS
This is my new project. A series of images about the travels I do as a parent. I started my book of journeys originally, as a distraction to my real work, which at the time, was looking after my children and painting portraits. I made the first image after a grey trip to IKEA. I liked the idea that this journey could be seen as a worthy subject of a travel guide.
This set me thinking about all of the endless journeys that I do as a parent. Could I make art about ferrying my kids around, the difficulties of combining artistic endeavour with family life and coming to terms with having a disabled child?
My book has grown out of exploring these questions and has ended up as a travel guide, documenting the repetitive journeys that come with being a parent and my attempt to manage these domestic travels.
Journey to IKEA through Woodberry Down.
PAINTING MUM (FINISHED)
Haven't written anything for sometime! Here is the final painting of my mum, not very flattering makes her look older than she is.
BETHY'S PORTRAIT (FINISHED)
BETHY'S DRAWING ON THE FLOOR (WORK IN PROGRESS)
I'm working on this at the moment. This is from a photo of my daughter Beth, who came down on her own, very early one morning and drew all over the kitchen floor. I haven't really started to work on her drawing yet, which was so beautiful, an endless blue line. I'm saving it, till I'm completely happy with her face. It is almost there.
NEW YORK
I felt like painting something on a different scale to the work I have been doing recently. I needed to paint without the weight and responsibility of trying to capture a likeness, and trying to do justice to my Mum and Amanda. I'm hoping to finish Amanda in the next sitting. I can't face posting it at this stage because I am so disappointed in my ability to paint her. Fingers crossed, it may improve next week.
NEW YORK
PAINTING MUM (5TH SITTING)
PAINTING AMANDA (WORK IN PROGRESS)
This is the third sitting of my friend Amanda. I hope she'll sit some more, but she is very busy.
PAINTING MUM (WORK IN PROGRESS)
I have been wanting to paint my mum for a while. She has been sitting for me once a week for the last four weeks. I didn't realize quite how gloomy I had made her look. What I have failed to capture, is a particularly quizzical expression in her left eye. I've just succeeded in making her making her look miserable, which she isn't.
I keep getting tempted to fiddle around with her features, before I have properly resolved the structure of her head. I find that once I have sorted out the structure, the features almost paint themselves. But she has such interesting eyes, it is almost irresistible not to paint them first. I love painting a face that I am so familiar with. Although in some ways it is more difficult, as I have to force myself to be objective, to understand and interpret what I am seeing and not just paint what I know. I am reckoning on ten sittings so I'll see how it goes.
PAINTING AT THE PRINCES TRUST
Each week, I spend a day working from the life model, at the Princes Trust drawing School in Shoreditch. It's a very useful way of keeping "my eye in" . At the moment, I am using the model as a starting place to explore colour and tone in a more abstract way.
TOYS
CONVALESCING
This week my daughter was off school sick. I took the opportunity to do some studies in pastel. She would only sit still for about 10 minutes at a time so I had to work quickly.
Pastel portrait 45cmx87cm by Henny Beaumont
Here she is with her sister. All better!