This painting was worked up from the initial sketch reproduced below. In many ways I like the unadulterated rawness of the sketch. There’s always a danger of over-working a painting, refining it and and putting in too much detail leaving little to the imagination. I hope I’ve not taken this painting too far in that direction.
Perhaps a few figures may yet appear on the beach to give the cliffs a sense of scale.
Oil on canvas board, 12x16inches.
A small oil painting of the popular and oft painted Smeaton’s pier in St Ives, Cornwall. This iconic landmark was built between 1767 and 1770 by the engineer John Smeaton. I have used a limited colour palette, and have resisted the temptation to put more detail in the foreground boats, preferring the ambiguity of the forms that suggest, rather than fully articulate, the complexities of the working harbour. Oil on canvas board, 8 x 8 inches.
This is an oil painting finished today 10 inches square, framed size 17 inches square. The frame shown is a ‘St Ives style frame’, popularised by the modernist painters who inhabited that area of Cornwall around the mid twentieth century. They are still popular with the artist community of west Cornwall and I always buy a few of these frames every time I visit St Ives. I like the simple, clean, modern style, and have been unable to find a framer in my neck of the woods who can, or is willing, to make them.
This surfer could be Cornish, but happens to be local to me, spotted on a Gower beach. There are several beaches popular with surfers on the Gower Peninsula, including Langland Bay and of course Llangennith at the far end of Rhossili beach, which catches the Atlantic waves as they roll in.
This painting was finished this morning although it was started some weeks ago. Caswell Bay is one of the more easily accessible bays of Gower with a broad sandy beach. Oil on canvas board, 12 inches square (30x30cm).
The weather has been miserable over the last week, mist and murk, so I haven’t been able to get out drawing. Instead I’ve been finishing a few paintings that have been hanging about in the studio for far too long. This one is another oil painting of Mumbles Head with the setting sun catching the lighthouse and the moon rising. It’s 10 inches square painted on canvas board.
I know I’ve neglected this blog for some time now, so here is a new painting fresh off the easel. I recognise that my style of painting hasn’t changed, and neither has my mental attitude and approach to painting. With this in mind, I have been considering in which direction I would like my work to develop. I am trying to be more generous in my application of oil paint, use larger brushes and to enjoy the qualities of the medium for its own sake and allow the paint to do its own thing and to embrace the ‘happy accidents’. I do feel I no longer want to be so rigidly attached to the forms I see in front of me, and to explore my feelings more, feelings of actually being out there in the landscape – the sounds, the smells and the warm sun and the cool salty breeze on my face – the total immersive experience. Eventually I hope to develop a more personal aesthetic, rather than focussing on making an objective topographical record of what I see in the landscape.
I have been experimenting with mark-making in my sketchbook and a looser style of drawing using a variety of tools and materials, and now need to translate that into paint – more of that to come soon.
An oil painting of the dramatic cliffs at Rhossili, Gower, with Worm’s Head in the distance painted against the light and finished today. It’s on 10 inch square canvas board.
This is a reworking of a painting I completed and posted here last June. Not sure if it’s an improvement! It’s another 10inch square oil painting on canvas board.
An oil painting of Mumbles Head looking across Bracelet Bay towards the lighthouse on a grey, damp, November morning. Ten inches square on canvas board.
An oil painting of Langland Point finished today. Not the first time I’ve tackled this subject, and it’s one I now paint from memory. The second painting I completed some time ago en plein air at Porthmeor Beach in St Ives.
I bought these simple tulip-wood frames on a trip to St Ives, Cornwall. I like these frames but unfortunately I can’t get the same locally in south Wales. It seems it is a style peculiar to St Ives, so whenever I go there I stock up and make paintings to fit.
Les Thomas - the painter's progress 