Category Archives: Painting

A mentor, a gallery opening and painter’s block

Venice by David McEwen

This painting of Venice has been lurking for four years.

Our town, Lodeve, is known as the town of the Artists. That’s not all that special as about ten other towns in this part of The Midi are known as the same but there are quite a few painters here; good, bad and abstract (so they don’t really count… I may get letters after that comment). Anyway, we met a painter shortly after we arrived in the area, his name is Shelley and he has been a painter for a long, long time. He paints the most beautiful landscapes in pastel on brown wrapping paper and uses acrylic to produce some rather unpleasant nudes. Shelley is the only person, apart from my brother, who I’ve ever allowed to paint on my pictures; they are both exceptionally good teachers.

read more »

Waiting and painting…

So, as we sit and wait to see what happened to the art we sent to the U.S. for sale…

I’m working on a series of watercolours, pastels and oils of  The Garde Républicaine for an exhibition in Paris at Easter. We’re going to see the Colonel of the Regiment in Avignon on Friday with some works in progress, which I hate doing, I don’t like anyone but Sally seeing things half done, but he’s the boss.

I hope to have about eighteen ready in the end. The series is teaching me a lot but it’s boring to go from painting of Gendarme to yet another painting of yet another bloody gendarme. I do hope you understand that the life of a painter is not all drink and wild bohemian parties, it’s HARD work.