…. as Spike Milligan famously asked. I managed to get in my planned trip to Almscliff Crag this morning, and returned with a bag full of stones, which are now sitting on the table in the studio waiting to be interpreted. I am quite pleased by the differences in colour and texture that can be exploited. Particularly pleasing is the fact that I did manage to get down to the River Wharfe and return with a couple of river-washed pebbles. Now all (!) I have to do is to produce a painting.
It may seem bizarre but the first step in this process will be to locate a good quality frame currently in use to display one of my older pictures in which I now longer have confidence. I have to confess that in the earlier part of my time painting I was perhaps too ambitious in framing work. Another way of putting the same idea is to say that I was not sufficiently critical of work that I produced, over-estimating its worth. We learn with time and experience, however, and it does now mean that I have quite a range of formats in good quality materials from which I can choose.
Another thing I have to do is to make sure that I am not distracted by writing. My mind is buzzing at the moment (apropos of my thinking about the Green Msn) with ideas about the concept of “Nature”. I really must resist the temptation to get too deeply involved in that, however, because I have discovered in the past that I simply cannot write and paint at the same time. These activities appear to require totally different mental orientations. It’s the “dominant hemisphere” idea about brain function again, on which I’ve commented several times in the past.