An Un-palette-able Truth

I do sometimes wonder where the time goes. Maybe this confusion is directly proportional to age…I’m beginning to think so. Before I began to set up the present blog I looked at the last post in “Reservoir Dugz”, it was dated May 2015. As if that wasn’t bad enough it was written about an event that took place in October 2014. What the hell have I been doing since then?
I know one thing for certain – I haven’t been writing blog posts.

Admittedly the big walks ended – courtesy of my erstwhile canine companions. To have them off the lead risked the extermination of Scotland’s remaining wildlife, not through unparalleled aggression but rather through clumsy over-enthusiasm. To have them on the lead risked what was left of my muscular and skeletal structure. They are both three so maybe this year they will calm to a point where they become socially acceptable. No…I’m not holding my breath either.

So what have I been doing to pass the long weary days of early retirement?

In the last post in the old blog I did drop the bombshell that I had become an artist. This has been a quantum leap in belief for those that know me. I think it is fair to say that I have, up until now, never displayed much by way of competence in this particular field. In fact I recall my early high school efforts at painting a forest fire degenerating into a quagmire of green/brown sludge. Had I the foresight to call my painting “A Nightmare of Sewerage Overspill” I just might have got away with it. The subsequent parents evening resulted in a mutual understanding between teacher and parents that my pursuit of Art as a course choice would be strongly contested by all parties, the world not yet being ready for my particularly offensive offerings. Taking that early curtailment of my expressive genius into account it makes it puzzling that so many years later I would show some inexplicable talent for the subject.

What makes the whole artist thing even more bewildering is the fact that I have actually sold paintings. Family have also acquired a few and there have been some handed out as presents to those of discerning artistic tastes (ahem!). So in the space of a year and a half I have paintings hanging in three different countries. They may possibly be hanging in toilets in three different countries but we won’t dwell on that distinct possibility for too long.

So…how I did I make the transition from no-hoper to artist? Short answer is I have no idea. I have, at this point, to say a big thank you to Craig, Hania and all my friends at Delta Studios in Larbert whose misfortune it was to find me parked on their doorstep in August 2014 with the vague idea that I might like to apply paint to canvas.

It didn’t take long to discover that I was ideally suited to a form of abstract-expressionism; abstract based on the fact that it was unlikely I would be able to produce anything vaguely recognisable and expressionist on the premise that there was not another heading under which my particular talents might comfortably fit. However, there is one thing in my favour, when let loose with my box of acrylic paints, gels and texture pastes I have the enthusiasm of a 2 year old left alone in a room full of play dough.

I will leave you with a quotation from Henri Mattisse which rather sums up how I view my painting:

“It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else.” (Mattisse)