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harbour arts centre | Scottish Landscape Art - Scottish Landscape Paintings - Part 2

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Another day…..

It has become increasingly more difficult for me to see what I’m doing when I go to the polling booth on election days and so for yesterdays vote on independence, I decided to register for a postal vote.  As such, I voted about a week ago and so while record numbers of people went to the polling stations, I had a very normal day.

It was in short, very like many other working days for me and started with an hour or so doing jobs on the computer.  Being an artist isn’t just about splashing paint….. It’s also about doing all the things other businesses have to do ….in short, the paperwork!  As my sight has very slowly deteriorated, this side of my work has become more and more time consuming.  I’m currently writing this blog with the screen magnifier on 8x and the screen reader reading each word as I type it.   This is still quite quick but once I’m using email or the internet it gets much more difficult I find.  My morning sessions on this computer usually end up with me swearing at the thing as I make yet another mistake.  Yesterday however, things went quite calmly for once and I managed to place an order for new gift cards.  I’ve sold most of the ones I had printed a couple of years ago and suddenly realised I was down to the last card of one of the four designs…and that sold to a lady who visited the studio with her husband yesterday morning.  With our Open Studios Weekend looming it was time to get some new cards made.

 Once I’d checked my emails, ( and sent one off to the Harbour Arts Centre to arrange a meeting to discuss promoting my forthcoming exhibition) ….well, I’d had enough of this machine and  it was time to do some proper work and get down to the studio.  I grabbed a lift with Nita in the car down to town and then walked the half mile along the harbour side to the Courtyard Studios.  I had a chance to have a close look at the new entrance-way to the Maritime Museum yard.  They have somehow printed their sign directly onto the wall …and it looks very good.  Quite how they got it through the local council planning department I haven’t a clue …but well done to them, it’s quite impressive and I certainly enjoyed standing looking at it.

I arrived at my studio about 11am I guess to find several of my colleagues there working away with Alison and David both running classes I think.  I have to say that I’m not a quick starter when I arrive at work.  First job is always putting on the coffee maker ….one has to get ones priorities right!  Once that is bubbling and gurgling away I can relax, put my sign out and sit in my rocking chair looking at the work I did the previous day.  This usually lasts a good half hour and only then do I start work.   I have four main paintings on the go at the moment and with the paint still wet on the two large canvases, and the 80 x 80 cm acrylic and pastel piece almost finished, I decided I needed to get on with the new 122 cm x 61 cm painting I started about a week ago.  It’s still in its very early stages and is based on a view of Buachaille Etive Beag.  Unusually for me, the view point is from down low in the glen and the painting is in the more traditional “landscape” format.  The early stages of these big acrylic and pastel paintings are pretty methodical work.  I just slowly build up alternating layers of thin paint and pastel and this is quite time consuming.  It doesn’t need too much concentration though and so I often play music or listen to one of my talking books while painting or scribbling away.  Yesterday was just such a day but by the time I left in the early evening I’d got the piece to a reasonable state.  Today, when I get down there, I’ll have to start concentrating and the talking book will be turned off!

My immediate priorities now are to make sure I have a good selection of work ready for my exhibition at the Harbour Arts Centre starting on November 27th.  Of course, before that starts, we have our annual Open Studios Weekend at the Courtyard, on Saturday 4th and Sunday 5th October.  This actually involves a lot of work as I have to clear all the surfaces, move the tables and hang all the work ….and paint the floor again as it’s really messy now.  Some years I spend the whole of the week before the event getting the studio ready but this year I have so many other things to do that I may well carry on working until the end of Wednesday 1st October ….and then have two very mad days getting everything done!   If I go down this line I’ll be very tired at the end of it and visitors to my studio over the weekend will probably find me slumped in my rocking chair …oh well, nothing new there!

I left the studio at 7pm and went home to watch the gathering news from the referendum.

Glen Rosa test drawing 3

Glen Rosa test drawing

Glen Rosa test drawing

‘Glen Rosa test drawing 3’, Graphite stick on paper.

I’ve spent a number of days over the last two weeks creating several of these small graphite drawings. They are helping me to work out the basic composition for the big drawing I’ll be doing at the Harbour Arts Centre in Irvine between November 27th and January 12th. This recent small piece is about 70cm long and so is a mere sketch compared with the final big piece which will be 450 cm long and 150 cm high. These small drawings can’t possibly show what the larger drawing will look like as the scale of the marks will be completely different ……but they are starting to focus my ideas.. I’ll probably create several more such pieces before I start work on the big drawing in November.

For those of you living within striking distance of Irvine, you’ll be able to visit the gallery while I’m working on the big drawing, watch the progress and let me know your thoughts about the piece. Alternatively we’ll be filming the work each day with a time lapse camera and this will be put on-line at the end of each day so that you can follow the progress from wherever you live.

My big drawing project starts on 27th November 2014 at the Harbour Arts Centre in Irvine, Ayrshire and will be part of an exhibition of my Scottish Landscape work. I’ll also be doing a talk about the work at some point during the course of the exhibition and I’ll be posting full details a little nearer the time.

Plans

Yesterday I had a meeting with Alison and Graeme from the Harbour Arts Centre here in Irvine.  The meeting was to start to discuss my plans for the forthcoming exhibition and big drawing project, scheduled for the end of November through until 12th January.

Starting point, the Dom drawing, Speyer 2010

Starting point, the Dom drawing, Speyer 2010

There were a good number of things I wanted to check with them not least the practical side of doing the big drawing.  I wanted, in particular, to check just how much access I’d get to do the work…… creating a 4.5m x 1.5m drawing is going to take quite a lot of time.  Thankfully I needn’t have worried as I should be able to get to work on the drawing for up to 12 hours most days and should be able to work some of the days over the Christmas / New Year period if I’m running late!  This is quite a relief as I was thinking I’d only have about five weeks in which to complete everything…now it seems, I’ll have nearer 6 – 7 weeks.

Test drawings in my studio

Test drawings in my studio

As you know, as well as creating the drawing in the gallery, I’ll also be holding a standard exhibition of smaller works and we’ve decided that on the preview evening, I’ll speak about my work and the drawing project for five or so minutes so that everyone has an idea of what they’re looking at and what will be taking place throughout the course of the exhibition.  Slightly more unusual though is that we’ve also agreed to hold a ‘Post view’ at the end of the exhibition.  By this stage, I should with a modicum of luck and a bit of hard work, have finished the big drawing and it seems a good idea to invite everyone back to see what it looks like.  I’ve also proposed that I donate the finished drawing to the North Ayrshire Council art collection and the post view evening could be the ideal opportunity to formally hand the drawing over.

Among other topics discussed was the idea of setting up a web cam so that we can promote the project to an audience outside of Ayrshire.   Having something that would be ‘live’ however, made us all a little nervous I think and after some thought Graeme suggested that instead, we set up a time lapse camera that would record the work regularly throughout a 7 hour period.  At the end of each day, the resulting footage could be checked and uploaded to a website so that folk could follow the progress of the drawing on-line….but just not ‘live’.  It seems a very good idea and I’ll be very happy with that.  I’m leaving Graeme to sort all this technical stuff out…..needless to say I’m not very good with things like that!

More test drawings

More test drawings

Alison also asked me whether it’d be OK if she arranges for some schools to visit while I’m working on the drawing.  She’s suggested that I could perhaps do a formal talk in the Harbour Arts Centre theatre the same day.  This seems like another good idea and I’m more than happy to do this.  Over the last few years I’ve been asked to speak about my work on several occasions and although it involves quite a lot of preparatory work, it has always been worth while.  Indeed, I’ve recently had two enquiries to work as a guest speaker which is quite exciting especially as one of them is abroad.  Anyway, more of that another time; for the moment I have enough to think about with this project.  As you can see though, things are well under way and I’m really looking forward to starting the drawing in five months or so time.    I’ll keep you up to date on how things progress.

Working drawing – Glen Rosa, Isle of Arran

1 Working drawing, Glen Rosa

Working drawing, Glen Rosa. Isle of Arran

Working drawing – Glen Rosa, Isle of Arran 

As you already know, I’m planning to create a large 4 m long drawing during my exhibition at the Harbour Arts Centre in November / December this year.  The drawing will be about walking up Glen Rosa on the Isle of Arran.   I’ve walked this glen many times and have been over there once again this year to do sketches and take photographs……another trip there is due shortly.  I’ve started working on ideas for how to do the big drawing, playing around with different types of mark and composition.  This drawing is one of the latest although I’ve actually played around with the image on my computer to end up with this.

I’m really not sure how the big drawing will look when completed but I’m enjoying these early stages of working rough ideas through and trying them out.

Working on a larger scale

Work in progress, 120 x 120 cm

Work in progress, 120 x 120 cm

One of my colleagues at the Courtyard Studios, Margaret Carslaw, nearly always works on a large scale.  Her drawings and paintings are rarely smaller than 120 x 120 cm and usually bigger.  As someone who generally works on pieces that are less than a metre square, I’ve always found it fascinating seeing Margaret’s large paintings and watching how she approaches them.  Over the years we’ve had many discussions about our work and she’s tried to persuade me of the merits of working on a large scale while I’ve been trying to persuade her that it’s just as challenging working on something small!  I guess when it comes down to it, we’re probably both right but I’ve certainly found myself drifting towards creating larger work.

Of course, all the creative bumf aside, there is a practical side to this which if you want to exhibit and sell work, does come into it ……..the simple question of how to transport large works.  When we changed vehicles back in 2010 we had originally thought of getting a small van instead of a car.  It seemed to make sense except for the fact that we occasionally need to carry passengers…..apart from the legality or otherwise of it, we didn’t think our friend Guy would enjoy sitting on the floor bouncing around in the back of a van all the way to Glencoe and back and Nita’s parents on their annual visit certainly wouldn’t enjoy the experience either, even if it was just to go down to the Harbourside!  So then, Nita spent many hours pawing through the ‘What car’ magazines before finally coming up with a Citroen Nemo …..a boxy thing that would take a lot of paintings up to a metre wide and a vehicle that was very economic too.  It’s been a very good compromise and I can fit a lot of this smaller sized work in it when I need to and Guy and Nita’s parents can ride in it comfortably.

As I say though, I’ve gradually been moving towards doing larger work and decided last year that I had, in the exhibition / drawing project arranged for Nov / Dec at the our neighbouring Harbour Arts Centre, an excuse to do a couple of larger paintings …..it’s less than 100 metres from the Courtyard to the HAC so no vehicles needed to transport the work ….I can simply carry the paintings across.   I bought what for me is quite a large canvas ….120 x 120 cm back before Christmas and started work on it almost straight away.

It’s been a really good experience and I decided from the outset that I’d try using my father’s big old horse hair house painting brush on this painting.  I want it to be quite bold as well as quite textural.  The brush is at least six inches wide and the course hairs leave wonderful marks in the thick oil paint.   Four months on from starting it, the painting is still in progress but starting to come together now. I’ve been spending a day on it and then letting the paint dry for a few days so that I can build up overlapping layers of colour and mark.  The painting is a reworking of an idea I had back in 2008 but which at the time I did on a much smaller scale and in a landscape format.   I want the painting to be as much about the colour, composition and texture as about the landscape…..but as usual will try to create a balance between the two.

Anyway, with this piece well under way, I’ve just made a note to order another 120 x 120 cm canvas as well as something around 120 x 40 cm ……this to create something based on the wild snow covered landscape that we experienced around Corrour the other week.  Margaret may well be winning the battle of wills…..I seem to be getting hooked on doing bigger work!  And what about my transportation argument I hear you shout?  Well, just last week a lady visited my studio who is planning to set up a small business in the area transporting artwork in a large van she owns.  She’s a painter herself…..so if she gets set up, transporting the occasional large canvas may not be so problematic…..that’s my excuse anyway!

Glen Rosa – a working walk

Don’t be too shocked, we finally got the boots on again and made it across to the Isle of Arran yesterday. As you know, I’ve wanted to get back to Glen Rosa for the last couple of months but the extremely poor weather has until yesterday, kept us at bay.

Glen Rosa, Isle of Arran

Glen Rosa, Isle of Arran

Have to say that it didn’t look altogether promising as we disembarked from the ferry in Brodick at eight o’clock yesterday morning ….it was absolutely pouring down with rain and we got quite wet just getting the 100 metres to the waiting room where we’d planned to don the waterproofs. Of course by the time we had all the gear on the rain had passed and as we walked along the promenade the first breaks in the dark cloud were appearing.

It’s always a good walk from Brodick to Glen Rosa and well worth doing just for the spectacular scenery but this trip was a working one. With the plans for creating a big Glen Rosa drawing all arranged with the Harbour Arts Centre in Irvine later in the year, I needed to get back to the glen in order to start planning how exactly I’m going to do the piece. Yesterdays visit to the glen was to look at and record the first half of the glen. I wanted to spend time looking and thinking and making a few simple sketches.

As we entered the glen a Golden Eagle flew overhead, low enough for me to see it ….it made a good start to our day. Up to this point it had been difficult to know quite how much snow there was on the hills as the cloud level had been very low, but things quickly improved and we started getting glimpses of Beinn Nuis and Beinn a’ Chliabhain, the summits of both looking white and wintry.

Goat Fell from glen Rosa ...approaching shower

Goat Fell from glen Rosa …approaching shower

A little further on and the glen swings around to the NW and at this point the views open up even more and the fine peak of Cir Mhor stands dramatically at the head of the glen. With the cloud rising and breaking and the periods of blue sky and bright sun increasing, we got some wonderful views and the colours were really quite intense at times. I spent a lot of time standing or sitting doing some quick sketches as we made our way up the footpath at the side of the river. Nita was busy taking photos and was particularly interested in the river that was full and busy but with incredibly clear water ……in the bright sun the patterns of the rocks underneath the water looked wonderful.

It was a very profitable day and I got a lot of information in the way of sketches and photographs. I’m still not one hundred per cent sure how I’m going to do this big drawing but I have come away with a much better idea. Now I need to get up to the head of the glen and record that section.

‘Winter scene, Glen Rosa, Isle of Arran’

282-winter-scene-glen-rosa-isle-of-arran-acrylic-pastel-2013-30-x-30-cm

‘Winter scene, Glen Rosa, Isle of Arran’

 ‘Winter scene, Glen Rosa, Isle of Arran’, Acrylic & Pastel, 2013, 30 x 30 cm,

Price £485. To check for current availability please contact me on 07742 437425

 

Well, as I said just a short while ago on my Face Book page (Keith Salmon – Scottish Landscape Artist) this morning Nita saw the first snow of this winter over on the mountains on the Isle of Arran.

When I was walking over in Glen Rosa in January and again in March, I started to develop an idea to create a large (4.5 x 1.5 m) drawing based on the idea of walking through the glen in winter.  Over the intervening months I’ve developed the idea and recently put a proposal to the Harbour Arts Centre in Irvine ….the idea is to use their large main gallery wall to create this new drawing.  They’ve agreed to let me use the gallery next November / December (2014) to do the work and while I create the piece I’ll also hold an exhibition of my usual smaller paintings.  Anyway, I’ll write more about that nearer the time.

This little painting is one that I did following our walks in Glen Rosa earlier this year. With the new snow once again starting to fall on the mountains around the glen, I’m going to be going back there soon to start honing my idea for the big drawing, spending time looking, planning, sketching and taking photos.  It should be a fun time and I’m really looking forward to the project …this time next year it should be well under way!

12 Open Doors ….

Courtyard Studios Open Weekend Saturday 5th / Sunday 6th October

With just over one week to go until our annual Open Studios Weekend, artists at the Courtyard Studios are starting to get into the swing of it. Brian Craig created the posters and invitations and these arrived back from the printers last week and have been either displayed or sent out to customers. Nita and I put together a press release and sent this along with photos of several of the artists, to all the local press and radio stations. The real job of getting the studios ready for the weekend starts next week and if everything goes as usual ….most of us will be madly cleaning, tidying and hanging pictures etc until late on the evening of Friday 4th Oct! I usually reckon it takes me two days to get my studio sorted out but I like to leave it until the latest possible moment so that I can continue painting for as long as possible.

Anyway, this year 12 artists will be opening their studio doors and I thought I’d use this week’s blog to let you know who they are and what they do.

Studio A: Chick McGeehan, painting.

Chick McGeehan

Chick McGeehan

Studio B: Sheila Kerr, jewellery.

Sheila Kerr jewellery

Sheila Kerr jewellery

Studio D: Margaret Carslaw, painting.

Margaret Carslaw, Painting

Margaret Carslaw, Painting

Studio E: Nita Groves, ceramics

Nita Groves - Ceramics

Nita Groves – Ceramics

Studio G: David Reid, painting

David Reid, Studio G, Portrait painting class

David Reid, Studio G, Portrait painting class

 

Studio H/I: Tom McEwan, hand book-binding.
Michelle Muir, painting
Ethan Foy, painting.

Tom McEwan, Hand book-binding

Tom McEwan, Hand book-binding

Studio J: Keith Salmon, painting.

Keith Salmon

Keith Salmon

Studio K: Stewart Souter, painting, stained glass.

Stewart Souter, Stained Glass & Painting

Stewart Souter, Stained Glass & Painting

Studio L: Brian Craig, painting, photography and graphics.

Studio M: Alison Thomas, painting. Alison will also be running some drop-in craft workshops for children aged between 5 and 14 years, throughout the weekend.

Alison Thomas

Alison Thomas

The Courtyard Studios are situated on Harbour St, next door to the Ship Inn and close to the Harbour Arts Centre and bar, the Magnum Sports Centre and Small Talk, a very popular and traditional café /tea room.

The studios will be open: Saturday 5th October, 11am – 5pm and Sunday 6th October, 12 noon – 5pm. Entry free.

I hope you can make it along.

Courtyard Studios, Irvine

Courtyard Studios, Irvine

Snap!

West from Cul Mor, Assynt

West from Cul Mor, Assynt

I’ve loved taking photographs ever since buying my first camera, (a little Ilford instamatic) through a special offer on the back of a cereal box, back in 1969.  It wasn’t the finest of cameras but at the age of ten it seemed pretty good to me.  I bought it just before we went on holiday to Eire and I came back with 12 (albeit rather fuzzy) photos of the Dingle peninsular.  What is more, they were the only photographs of the holiday  ….my father had failed to load his 35 mm film properly and came back to find an unexposed roll of film in his camera!

That little camera certainly got me into snapping photos whenever we went anywhere and before long I moved up market a little and got myself a very solid Zenith SLR. This camera was certainly not a sexy beast, (I think it was made out of plate steel) and I  lugged it around along with a great little Weston light meter, for many years.   By the time I was at Falmouth School of Art in the early 1980’s it was a bit of a joke to many of my friends who had spent much of their grants on new hi tech cameras.  In the Easter break in 1981 a small group of us spent three weeks up on North Uist enjoying the wild beaches, the loch strewn land and the isolated hills of Beinn Mhor and Hecla.  One of the group forgot to take a spare battery for his camera …and it ran out on the first week  …no place to buy a replacement of course.  Another friend, Paul, dropped his camera and being made out of plastic, the top cracked.  And so it was yours truly  (feeling rather smug) with my battered old iron clad manual Zenith who came away with the photos.

From Am Bodach, the Mamores

From Am Bodach, the Mamores

The Zenith, (now almost 35 years old,) still works although I put it into retirement at least ten years ago) and I’ve now moved into the digital age!!  As my sight deteriorated I found I was taking more and more bad photographs.  Using film and finding that 22 out of the roll of 24 were either tilting the sea out, had a thumb in the corner, or were simply just dreadful …well, it was getting expensive….hence my getting a digital camera. Now I can tilt the skyline as much as I want, take hundreds of dreadful pictures and get all five digits in front of the lens …and it doesn’t cost me anything …and if you snap enough you tend to get a couple of reasonable pictures most days.

On the edge of Rannoch Moor

On the edge of Rannoch Moor

Anyway, the reason for rambling on about photographs and cameras is that we’re holding a small Christmas Affordable Art Fair at the Harbour Arts  Centre in Irvine on Sunday 5th December and Sunday 19th December.  Around about a dozen of the artists and makers at the Courtyard Studios will be taking part with a wide range of paintings, drawings, prints, jewellery and cards on sale.  I’ve decided to show a dozen photographs taken on the Scottish hills during the last 10 or so years.  Most of them are my own but I’ve also included a couple that my partner Anita took….with her permission of course!  It’ll be interesting to see what reaction I get with them.

The Cobbler

The Cobbler

So, the event runs from 12 noon until 4 pm on 5th & 19th December.  The Courtyard Studios are only two doors away from the Harbour Arts Centre on Harbour Street in Irvine.  I’ll have my studio open as well so if you want to see some paintings too, then just drop by.  There should be other studios open at the Courtyard too.  I look forward to meeting anyone who can get along.

Back in Business!

'Every one a critic!'

'Every one a critic!'

On Sunday last, the pipes at the Courtyard studios finally thawed out, and surprisingly there were no burst pipes or floods.  It was a great relief and on Monday morning I moved my painting gear back down and got back to normality …whatever that is!

The pipes were frozen for just on two weeks and I found it very strange working away from my studio space.  For this time I was working in a spare corner of the spare room in our house.  It was rather cramped and I didn’t have much space …but, I did have water to make coffee and I didn’t have to wander along the road in order to use the toilets in the Harbour Arts Centre.  So then, it wasn’t too bad, although the room I was working in happens to be the one the cat spends most of his day sleeping in and so we had a few falling outs over the two weeks!  This was due mainly to me keeping him awake with my cursing every time I mixed the wrong colour or lost the particular pastel I was using.

One thing the temporary move did point out though, was just how much I rely on everything being in their places.  At the studio I have a place for everything.  I can’t see things well enough to look for them when I need them …so I have to be able to find them by memory.  Now, as anyone who’s visited my studio will tell you, I certainly don’t keep it tidy.  It’s a bit of a tip to be honest, but, that said, it is usually an organised tip!  I know exactly where amongst the rubble on my desk, to lay my hands on the tape measure or the scissors.  So long as I keep to this routine, I can move about and work quite quickly.  Of course, if someone comes into the studio and distracts me and I put something down in the wrong place, then it’s usually a ten minute job finding again once the visitor has gone.

This then was what I found working from the room in the house …I didn’t have set places for my gear and so I spent all the time I wasn’t arguing with the cat, searching for the right paint or pastel.'December afternoon, Rannoch Moor'

Surprisingly enough then, I managed to get two paintings completed in my spell in the spare room.  Not big paintings, but finished all the same.  The first piece was one of my long thin (76 x 23 cm) paintings.  This is the first of a number of pictures I’m hoping to produce based on the short day we had on Rannoch Moor back just before Christmas.  The second painting was one I’ve wanted to do for a while now.  It is based on a day last year when we were over on the Isle of Arran and got caught in a series of heavy rain showers.  They made the hills look splendid especially in the early morning light and this is one of what I hope to be a number of works on a similar theme.

'Passing shower, Isle of Arran',

In the end, quite a good and productive couple of weeks in my make shift studio.  I was though glad to get back to the proper one on the harbour side …. and I think the cat is glad I’ve gone too!