After a few weeks absence due to my having to put in much consideration and practice at being spontaneous, here are some more examples of ordinary scenes from everyday life.

There are not many people about in my pictures - perhaps they are indoors watching Masterchef on the telly or at their computers writing blogs?

Burnt Umber

These small works on paper are loosely based on images from my local suburban Melbourne environment or near my family home in rural New Zealand.

I recently began producing water colour paintings in response to familiar, everyday settings chosen without too much deliberation in order to establish an ongoing, intuitive process.

While walking in my neighbourhood I am sometimes struck by the beauty of something quite ordinary - a patch of sky framed by architecture or a tangle of weeds in lane way for instance.
It's the feeling of that sort of brief momentary vision that I am trying to convey.

I am frequently attracted to certain things such as signs of aging or decay. Although I do not use burnt umber in every painting , since I am trying to keep things pared back in these works this pigment often seems to suffice. It has a lovely silty quality as does Payne's gray.

The landscapes are more about the memory of places I know well, where water, land and sky are the dominant features.