Colour swatches

Bought a fig.

The fig sits plainly

Suggestive of inner life.

I ask it questions

Thinking a lot about colours today; maybe it is still the fig thing. I am also determined to get a picture over to Glasgow for the RGI show; I am unable to get there on the submission days but have emailed the carrier service. I just have a good vibe about the work I have done this summer and hope I might get accepted. Maybe I won't tell Stu I'm submitting though as he knows how it wears me down. It's like being rejected from colleges or failing exams; you come out with all kinds of excuses why it won't matter if you don't get in (talking to yourself of course) and everyone else looks at you in that way they all have of knowing that you are gutted. I've submitted to two SSA shows over the last few years to no avail and it always comes back to soul searching and 'oh no I'm just rubbish and no-one's had the heart to tell me yet...'

Anyway; think I'll do it anyway if I can sneak it past Stu and then he won't be trying to protect me from my own paranoia and anxiety. Problem is that where Stu is concerned I am the worst ever keeper of secrets; blogging about it isn't a great start exactly but I don't think he reads my words of wisdom too often. Sure way to find out!

Colours I am thinking of are those indefinable and wonderful combinations that you just see and are amazed that someone - or nature - have come up with such an audacious pairing. Tonight the sky was that amazing winter blue, with an apricotty bottom and these huge lowering clouds in slate blue. It was the slate blue that was the genius - really dark and opaque against the luminous sky. The fig is of course another thing; from the outside it is dark and brooding in purples and bruise colours but then there is that fantastic lime (? not really) green piercing through the cloudiness. And I haven't even opened the fruit yet; still more excitement to come.

Chartreuse is another that can take your breath away when it is next to certain things; I guess it would be lost in a mass of cream and white but put it side by side with a deep purpley navy or even a really rich moley grey and the effect is electric. I've also been messing with burnt sienna, which I have always kind of sidelined as something you might use in a muddy bit of watercolour depicting autumn foliage, but it can also act like a great grey; as a foil for other more vibrant, obvious colours. The picture I am just doing is the third or fourth in a row where I have offset the sienna against, in this case, turquoise and formerly, orange. Really liking how it looks and it is taking me further away from my 'old' palette, which had become a bit of a comfort zone.

The night is really autumnal, cold and flat tonight; clear sky after that great sundown and the draughts around my windows are reappearing for the winter. Time for a hasty retreat to the studio on the 'warm' side of the house. Playing with box canvasses for Ritchie's gallery which have always been a problem for me as I don't usually work on canvas and it throws me a bit. Works quite differently, and in this case they are also very small so I am trying to create shorthand versions of some things and subjects that I love. We shall see.