My step son and his wife came over for lunch today, and surprised us by a gift of his home-made smoked bacon. I’m constantly astonished by the range of projects this man will turn his hand to. The safety–net in his life is a routine administrative job in a paint factory, but apart from that he is constantly developing new things to try.
He and his wife already cultivate two allotments, on which they grow a proportion of their own fruit and vegetables. He has a license to make his own cider and gin, which he sells commercially. (He has just returned from a festival at which he had his own stand.) Now, I gather, he has acquired the kit to smoke his own food, and has begun with bacon although he expects soon to experiment with fish. (Incidentally, from his own cider he also has a line in vinegar.) Whenever we meet I never know what novelty will confront us.
This line of thought was set in motion by the fact that I left aside my painting to welcome them. It’s going very well, but I decided after some thought that I would stick with pastels, having considered some possibilities with acrylic paint and mixed media. I don’t think that I lack a sense of adventure with my painting, and the current project on which I’ve embarked employs pastels in a way I’ve not used them before. Even so, I don’t think that I really qualify for the term “versatile” on the basis of current practice, and not in comparison with my step son.
At the moment I’m working on a support of a very rough water-colour paper, using a very soft pastel. In some areas the texture of the paper is allowed to make itself felt, but in others I am producing a very dense and even surface by working the colour into the surface using paint-shapers. All good clean fun, but hardly adventurous. What would be the equivalent of my taking up smoked fish? Trying my hand at metal sculpture? Etching?