Dan Young, Studio

I thought I would update my small part of the web with some new paintings. I completed these paintings far too close to the deadline date for the Threadneedle Prize last week. But I got them in on time and they were dry! Thank you Mr Siccative!

I have used the library of objects that I have built up over the 200 odd days of my current daily painting project http://danyoungdaily.blogspot.com to select from. Some of the objects I painted during this project I have kept on various shelves and pots around the studio not really knowing why but always wondering how they would work together in small groups or even large groups of all of them. 365 objects in one painting, oh boy!

These three pictures grew out of a selection process based on sympathetic or contrasting ideas. So, the soft kangaroo head gets paired up with a sharp mussel shell and (for added anticipation and excitement) an unpopped popcorn kernel. Three very different and, other than their previous selection by me, completely unrelated objects.

I have spent some more time over the weekend creating small groups of objects limiting myself to things I have already painted. More soon I hope.

I thought the most difficult days to make a painting in my odessey would be family holidays. The christmas day and boxing day paintings were hard to fit in but eventually nephews who are under four years old do sleep so you take adavantage of the quite time and paint a sprout or one of their toy boulders. But making this saturdays painting while camping was slightly tougher. First of all you have to make sure you take everything you need and pick a limeted pallette of colours, while at the same time not knowing what you will paint. You also have to find time in your busy schedule of laying out in the sun, BBQing all your meals and using the wash up facilities on site. It's a tough life. But I was blessed when we spent the afternoon at cleawell caves in the forest of Dean which is now an iron mining museum but used to be a working Iron ore mine. The red oxide in the caves is quite spectacular in some areas and it was a piece of iron oxide that I painted that day. I also made my own oil paint out of some pigment they sell there made from the rocks from that very mine! Brilliant.