WALKING IN THE SOUK

 yo!.. time a thief.. innit!

figures glimpsed..

passing by..

hanging out..

coming together..

in a dance..

some kind of jive..

 some sort of beat..

can you imagine..

the morning light..

the heat of the night..

figuresinasouk.com

A MAGIC CARPET

 yo!.. Persian Rug.. innit!

I was in art class..

one day in 1970..

and I had this really great black brush stroke..

on this otherwise poor..

painting that I was doing..

the lecturer commented upon how this mark was very strong..

and I was hooked..

over the years..

I developed a style that consisted of a mixture of..

soft focus and bold gesture..

and nowhere is this more evident than in the..

FIGURES IN A SOUK

now it should be realised that not all figures..

are people..

squares and circles etc..

are figures too..

so an abstract figuration can be realised..

These blue stripes above..

are what lead to the more human figures..

and for a while they were, together with the square..

all that was there..

some time later..

I started to develop the figures..

and they became more 'real'

it's interesting to me..

that I am no happier with the new figures than the old..

one is not 'better' than the other..

it just happens when I paint..

I see them emerge..

and try not to cramp their style..

ON MY PERSIAN RUG

is a song

hope you like it..

because this is all one souk..

knowledge is finite..

imagination is infinite..

and all of life is in the souk..

it's a magic carpet ride..

figuresinasouk.com

PAINTING IN THE SOUK

yo!.. knowin when ta stop... innit! 

This is the very first painting in the series.

Virgin canvas.. 

I work with oil paint directly onto the canvas and mixed there upon..

The paint is thinned and spread around without concious thought. 

There was no 'Figures In A souk' series at this point.. 

Just a very happy artist with a few blank canvases and lots of time and oil paint.

 What you see here is genesis..

of a series which is still running 8 years later. 

The work has continued to develop..

some of the orinial canvases have bee worked upon..

sometimes for the better and sometimes not..

This canvas is as it was on the first day..

It is fresh and full of innocence and hope.

 It was a sunny day in the souk.. 

I hope you will see this and feel as happy as I felt painting it.

Influenced by Rothko, Turner and Rembrandt.. 

and Richard Parkes Bonnington.

'Figures in a Souk' is a series of experimental oil paintings.

 

I start out only to paint..

 

The figures emerge from the canvas as the process develops.

 

I usually like to paint over existing works of mine..

as that provides a unique starting point and pre-existing texture..

 

The Souk is always... imagined..

always experimental..

www.figuresinasouk.com