Went swimming at Felixstowe where the sea was surprisingly and beautifully warm…. Finding ways to appease my frustration about not being able to move into my new studio yet.
The council are taking forever to deliver the paperwork involved and as I’ve now returned the ex-studio room in my house to it’s rightful function of a dining room, I cannot paint. It’s driving me crazy. Especially as I looking critically at the painting I’d just made relating to the Welsh swim, I just hated it.
It’s awful and doesn’t say what I want to say about the swim. What makes it worse is that I’d posted it on Instagram !!!! It had to go !!!
And it went ! To be replaced by this reworked version. I first rotated it to landscape. Then working very fast with some messy, partly dried-up acrylic, I thought myself back to the view I saw underwater. The peaty glow and rising bubbles…thrashing about to keep afloat while trying to take photos and keep my head above the water.
It’s better but still not quite there.
When I finally get my studio, I’ll try again with oils, I think. It needs more fluidity, more movement, more ambiguity and maybe oil is the way to go. Until then I’ll have to keep swimming. Preferably outdoors.
