Expectations, Revelations and Complications

Painting figures using oils, still all new to me. Somehow it gets under your skin, into your brain and sits there..challenging you, pushing you. I want to rush and rush and finish but it does not happen that way. You battle and struggle and try to get comfortable. I Love painting figures, I Hate painting figures...at least once a week I want to quit painting altogether, then it draws me back like a drug I cannot exist without. I need models, real people. I often see a person on the street and would love to ask them to sit for me, but I never do...I feel like some kinda art pervert freak. People think I am strange, not sure if I care about that.

When a painting is near completion I have to at least have visualised the next one, if I don't have a planned next move I feel anxious, disturbed. I would love to know if other artists suffer for their work as I sometimes do...frustration is me!

Expectation, Oil on Canvas 18"x 24"

Yesterday, Oil on Canvas

Yesterday, Oil on Canvas 24"x 18"

As usual a bit more to do, it is the final touches that take me so long to do. Not sure why that is. All I know for sure is that after the London Riots this week, I feel less like words and more like dissapearing into my head and seeking solace in my happy place, if I can find it.

My Newest Figure Study in Oil

Not quite done, a few tweaks here and there and that's it. Whew, I need a holiday.
The Paint is still very wet and a Title eludes me.

Oil on Canvas, 18"x 24"

With Love From the Sketchbook of Lucy

Lucy Helene Caine nee Firmin

Lucy Helene Firmin is my great grandmother. My hero and one brave lady! She comes from Greater London but lived in France and travelled back and forth from Southampton to the coast of South Africa. Along her travels she sketched and painted in true Victorian style and I am lucky enough to have in my possession one of her sketchbooks which dates from 1901 to 1935...perhaps there is an Artistic gene?

Painted in July 1886