Greg Ramsden

After a few succesful days in the gallery. I have managed to pull and musclein me neck that or trapa nerve. Its a real bummer. I had been drawing everyday in the same position for 3 hours maybe this has damaged me neck.

Annyway the charcoal drawings I have produced in the last few days have a strong tonalquality to them and at least to of them I am intrested in making larger paintings of. I think the drawings dont quite flesh out everything in the subject I want to explore.

The drawings I am happy with are of Venford resivour on Dartmoor. They sum u the moody atmosphereof the place. the isolation and expanse of the water. This said there is more to these images than that and this is what I wan to explore with more room on canvas and oil.

I like the drawing stage of this kind of work it allows me to find out if the image has more than a simple athetic. If I draw it once and lose intrest then its low on intrest if I draw it again and again then there is something in it that intruges me.

I have a few of these at the moment one is a barn door off its hinges and moved to the side of the barn. The other is the top of the sea with light shinning off it, another i the light down the local estuary/river, others include cloud formations over land and sea. I return to them for different reasons, emotions and intrests. these include different approaches to painting, different moods I am in with my work, how commercial I am needing to be or feel, how lose and experimental I am feeling. At different times of the month i have different practises and I am in different areas of Devon. Moors, estuary, shop, gallery salcombe studio. I guess it depends on what I have seen that informs what I am enjoying investigating. A walkor series of photos might lead to a messy experimental mud painting, a cloud might inspire me to work on the cloud series, a new painting mark might mean I revisit works that reached a crouxs.

These posts help me work the next day. I write them at the moment last thing at night. It gets the days work sorted in my mind and means that I can osely plan the next days work, then sleep better as I feel that the ideas are there and ready to act on when I wake.

Well sleepy time

after a morning painting outsidde I realsied that I was recreating works gone by . I want to undrsatnd them better what made the intresting to me. Was it the subject, forms, colours or a other.

In the afternnon I made works in impasto they were imagess of the farm done in the studio tommorow I think I will work from life on one and see the difference in colours and tone.

Iplan to do more of this in the mornings hopefully, working quicker over a coloured base in thick oils not far form my home. I have plenty of dawings to work to and even the cows that arre here for the winter are begging to be painted.

I would also like to work about the river again and take my paints to the place of a successful drawing and be effected and inspired by the landscape and place.

I have a problem its that I keep coming back to why I make art works. When ever I start to think down these lines it completely ruins my creative output.

Its an important part to be critical and reflective about your parctise but this question is a killer.

I know some of the reasons and other discuss there reasons with me.I always end up questioning the end point, is it to selling is it for the sake of artor the learning that happened by going through the process. What ever it is I feel its maybe unimportant. If the work turns out to have commercial properties then so be it aslong as it isnt the starting point of the work. sometimes a one of painting I may think has no commercial value in the devon market but the work reaches out to something in someone and they see the artist value.

I am always revisitng these thoughts its about time I put them to bed.

I make images about the world around me and the specific qualities of that area. This can incompass many things and subjects such as light , time, season, geology and space.

I work best outside away from the studio where the world around me effects the painting. I have been studio based this year and spent little time outside drawing from nature. The result is a end piece that is lacking in the kind of detail that brings a place to life.

I will try to get out more and draw from life onto canvases with charcoal then make these obvservations the base of the work it is how I did it in the past before moving house so its about time I got back to the practice.

I will post tommorrow on how the drawing went outside and try to remember to photograph it