Words paint pictures

Said so often but it really came home to me today when, having finished reading an admirably detailed police procedural, the main characters and their activities described with warmth; the progression of the plot with clarity, I returned to continue with the writing of one of mine.

I was immediately struck with the comparative stark sketchiness of my version of a police briefing. Perhaps because the book just finished* dealt with painting, I realised that my paintings and prints similarly outline; drawn with the minimum of detail for the viewer to get the gist.

In part, with writing, my knowledge of police briefings is scant enough to provide a reason for lack of detail, yet I am reluctant to go seek it, believing readers deserve to exercise their imagination.

 The degree to which they wish to has, of course, an impact on how much they are likely to enjoy my books. When I finally get them published (and this one I'm only 80% through writing.)

*Jackie Baldwin's 'Perfect Dead', set in Dumfries & Galloway, much of the action in 'art town' Kirkcudbright.

Inside outside

Inside outside - acrylic on board 48" x 24" 2000

Another re-discovered photograph.   This of an intermediate stage of a painting begun in response to CCAD's summer holiday theme of' 'inside:outside' - alien and experimental and rather disliked.

I had already promised myself a final holiday at our part-owned, sadly-to-be-sold house in Orkney, spectacularly situated on Scapa Bay, and this was to be a time without limit, on my own there, for the first time ever;  a period of mourning for the fact that the place would no longer be available for me to explore ways of depicting its magic.

My aim was to capture the way the view dominated, flowing into the house - in actuality a converted, blocked-in sea-plane station - and impacting on our days there, to pay homage to the seventeen years we had been holidaying there, and to express both celebration and sadness.   Far too much, as I now know, to try and fit into one painting.   Hence it was never completed to my satisfaction, nor to that of the tutor who marked it on my return.   The fact that she had replaced the much-loved Les who, though we did not know it at the time, was mortally ill, added to the general dissatisfaction with the whole piece