We spent a warm sunny day celebrating our 35th wedding anniversary and as Lou Reed sang it was Just a perfect day. First we visited Tapely Park where an old vintage sale was underway, we had cream tea under the sun and looked around the many stalls there. Later in the day we had dinner at the Boathouse in Instow and watched the sunsetting over Appledore. Once the sun had disappeared into the sea we walked the beach in the warmth and enjoyed the last Bank Holiday of the year! Al
I’m pleased to be part of another Black Art’s project organised by photographer Adrian Beasley. This residential course will run from the 12th to the 16th September and will be based in North Devon. The project will feature the following artists.
Adrian Beasley who will be based at Hartland Quay featuring landscape photography and computer enhancement of images.
Stephen Raff, will be taking students through the wet plate photographic process and creating glass plate images.
Al Brown will show how to make and use the local Bideford Black pigment and use it to create landscape paintings of the North Devon coast.
These few days should prove to be an exciting challenge to create memorable black and white images of North Devon. There are still a few places left! Al
A smaller composition 10 x 20″ just to keep my motivation going whilst I plan my latest large scale project! Image painted from a recent visit to Lee Bay with my wife for a glass hunting forage. My wife Donna makes sea glass jewellery under the name Flotsam & Then Some! We had the usual beer and lunch at The Grampus pub then ventured onto Sandy Cove, for a rare afternoon we had the beach to ourselves and we felt like we were on a deserted island.
A move away from landscape painting and back to figure painting. A challenging composition in the making! 30 x 40″ deep edge canvas.
Another visit to Lee Bay in North Devon in search of seaglass, known locally as Mermaid’s Tears. First a very enjoyable lunch at The Grampus pub consisting of ploughman’s lunches washed down with their own brewed ale then on to Sandy Cove. Once there we discovered that we had the beach to ourselves and we made the most of the situation by searching amongst the rocks and crevices. The climb back up the steep cliff steps was rewarded with a fabulous panorama of the North Devon Coast and on the walk back sloe berries were already on the trees lining the pathway waiting for the gin makers harvest.
I spent a rather enjoyable few days at this year’s Cropredy Festival in Oxford. It was the first time this has been held for a few years and an air of excitement hung over the area. This festival is run traditionally by the fantastic Fairport Convention and always shows an eclectic mix of the best music around. I loved visiting the village in the morning, having coffee by the working canal and listening to the fringe music at the Brasenose and Red Lion Pubs.
Highlights for the weekend for me were, Trevor Horne with Lol Creme of 10cc, Robert Fripp & Toya, Steve Hackett of Genesis, Turing Brakes and of course the emotional end of the festival featuring Fairport Convention with Richard Thompson and Dave Mattacks playing the entire 1970 Full House album. Matty Groves was a favourite of mine too. Harvest Moon pictured at the top features Steve Hacket playing Afterglow!
Above the Fairport Farewell with all musicians.
An hour of getting rid of the blank white canvas and laying out the basic tones and colours for this painting. It’s been quite a while, for various reasons, since I daubed paint on canvas so this initial start should commit me to action.
We loved our stay here a few weeks ago and the coastline along this particular part of the Cornish coast is stunning. I sat sketching the sea from ontop a cliff here and watched a sailing ship weight anchor and it’s small boat venture into Mullion Harbour over the crystal clear turquoise water.
The final acrylic painting is 24 x 30″ on canvas please note that the colours are not as the original painting! Al
A visit to Bristol for the Harbour Festival and to pick up some large canvases in view of trying to break my creative lull. I think Mullion Cove will be next!
Well I had a good time at the festival meeting up with old friends who I haven’t seen in about three years due to the Covid Pandemic. I work every Glastonbury as a member of the Recycling Team and receive free vegetarian food, a rather nice camping field and our own massive marquee serving local beers, ciders and evening entertainment, we also get the festival ticket for free too! All in all we spend just over a week here and when we first arrive there is no public on site so it’s great to see open fields and no crowds.
It became alive when the festival opened and I managed to make the most of the late nights and also discovered new places I haven’t seen before. Strummerville, named after Jo Strummer of The Clash who used to make camp here, with it’s sofas, camp fire and reggae music. The Bimble Inn in the early hours was fantastic with it’s weird eclectic bands, real ale and Lord of the Rings vibe. Arcadia with it’s laser display and Spider were impressive along with Shangri-La and it’s twilight alternativeness!
On returning home from the festival a few of us quickly came down with the dreaded Covid and am now suffering from the usual fever, headaches, lack of taste and smell. This lack of taste and smell has now changed, so everything now tasting like rancid coconut and burnt electrical cable.
I haven’t placed brush to canvas for a long time due to family matters and now Covid but I hope to regain the fire soon! Al
I came across this painting of mine from a few years ago on another website and got to look at it through fresh eyes. The sentiment of it’s original concept still moves me today!
Acrylic on 36 x 36″ canvas.
Adela Legarreta Rivas 1979.
Original image by Enrique Metinides.
The tragic scene in my painting was originally captured by photographer Metinides and is of Adela Legarreta Rivas, a Mexican journalist. Rivas had visited a beauty parlour where she had her hair and nails done in preparation for a press conference later that day. On her way to meet her sister she was hit and killed by a white Datsun on Avenida Chapultepec in Mexico City. In the scene her perfectly manicured nails, expensive jewellery, makeup and hair look almost flawless was it not for a single line of blood running across her nose and face.
In painting this scene I explored my own ideas of death and often use circles seen in the background to represent reincarnation. We hang onto material things and ego to boost our self esteem then suddenly a scan or an x ray can change all of our preconceptions of life in a second. A quote I heard sums this up quite eloquently, ‘Death is not the greatest loss in life, the greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live!‘
Al Brown Artist. 