Carrot And Ginger Soup, Served With Soured Cream, Poached Egg And Wilted Greens
Watercolour on paper, January 2015
Motif
Motif
A mosaic made from colour pencil and lead pencil cuts, approximately 12 x 16″.
February 2012
The likeness isn’t great but the thing is such a mad labour of love that I still look at it often.
Leo
Survival Of The Fittest
Atlantis
Atlantis
Oil on canvas, 20×30″, November 2008.
This painting’s story is a little long and windy. Allow me to explain:
Only 6 miles or so off the cost of Monterey, California, a great deal of whales travels past more or less all year. Grey Whales and Humpback Whales travel to Baja Mexico for mating. Orcas travel along for hunting, while some Orcas even became resident in Monterey bay, feeding on seals and the occasional whale calf.
Oh, and there are Blue Whales, too. A great number of them. They weren’t known to be traveling through that stretch or water until not long ago, or they changed their routes in the early eighties, but they now come along every mid summer. I haven’t had luck with spotting a Blue Whale myself yet, but I have been out watching for whales a couple of times. The Whale Watching company of choice has marine biologists on board, and they tell me how elusive those big animals are:
Scientists have tried tagging Blue Whales will all kinds of high-tech and low-tech gizmos and contraptions, yet have still to find out where the whales go, and where they mate.
I can’t help feeling smug about this. I don’t understand why we cannot accept not to understand something. Some things should just be left in peace and on their own devices.
Take, for example, the finding of an ancient tomb. Scientists will be hugely disappointed and frustrated to find that it has been opened and raided two centuries ago, and will be delighted if not – only then to proceed raiding the previously untouched tomb. All in the name of science of course.
So anyway, those biologists tell me that one could try to renegotiate international shipping routes, for example, if those were found crossing the Blue Whales’ routes or mating grounds. I don’t know. Since hunting stopped, the animals are recovering. I am sure they’d be most happy to be left in peace.
Not through scientific instruments, but by sheer contemplation, however, I have now successfully determined the location of the Blue Whale’s mating grounds: They go to that other place that we have so far failed to find.
Finally, here’s an 2017 epilogue to that tale. Scientists were wondering about a huge gathering of whales somewhere in the Southern Ocean. I think these were Humpback Whales, but the point is that scientists were unable to explain this gathering in previously unseen numbers. The most promising theory was that perhaps that’s what they do given that numbers are back to some level approaching normality.
When The Milk Goes Off
When The Milk Goes Off
Oil on canvas, 12 x 16 ”
November 2008
A lame pun but still a nice idea methinks.
The Ultimate Luestling
The Ultimate Luestling
Oil on canvas, 8 x 12″
October 2008
The second of the Listerine paintings.
3422 C (6192 F)
The Third Swan
Frieze
No Two Hippos
Borneo (Detail View)
Somewhere In Devon
Somewhere In Devon
Oil on bamboo floorboard, 3.5 x 36″
July 2007
I quite like these panorama paintings. They really started out because we had a pack or two of those tongue-and-groove floorboards left over, these from the loftconveration aka my study aka my studio. They sit on a door frame or elsewhere on top of the picture rail and have the adorable attribute of being overlooked. These are very shy paintings, not pushing themselves into the foreground at all. That’s something I really like about them.
Lost And Found
Lost and Found
Oil on canvas, 300 x 500 mm
The second of the Swan Lake Quadriptych.
Swan Lake
Swan Lake
Oil on canvas, 300 x 500 mm
The first of the Swan Lake Quadriptych.
You must be logged in to post a comment.