Some painting and some writing

 

In the  last year I have gone back to portraiture and painting from the life. This is Miriam who has done most of the modelling and I am now working on a very large pile of drawings to create a series of paintings.

This is Berengere who has also been posing for us for the last two or three summers and is starting to appear in the paintings. A very different type.


Creating a particular language for the collection is taking a lot of work and experimentation and I am finding that each painting or group of paintings may fall into a style rather different from what has come before. The more finished and perhaps naturalistic work tends to inform more abstract or expressionistic work, so that the finished paintings are in a sense the studies for the less polished, from which I am evolving my approach.

Over the last few years I have also been working on a new analysis of one of Iris Murdoch's novels, The Sea The Sea. There are discrepancies in the text which lead to a possible subtext based on Iris's friend Frank Thompson, the subject of the recently published A Very English Hero. I delivered a paper on my findings at the Sixth International Conference of The Iris Murdoch Society at Kingston University in September. The trail started with the curious fact that the house in the book was bought from Mrs Chorney, which is Russian for black, and sold at the end of the book to Dr Schwarzkopf, German for Black (head). The trail led through the congress of Berlin in 1879 to Bulgaria, and the execution by fascists in 1944 of Iris's dear friend Frank. If anyone would like to read the paper, send me an email to chris@chrisboddington.com, my website.

One of the classic exercises in life drawing is the reclining nude - also one of the most difficult poses to make interesting. I did these three studies in oil on canvas. The canvas is oil primed Belgian linen which is a beautiful surface to work on. The gallery stretchers are quite deep which gives a solid feel to the piece.

In this one the model is reclining on a sofa reading a book by Nick Hornby which gives me the title for the painting - How To Be Good. I suppose it could have been About a Boy...

A close up of the head and torso gives a more interesting composition than the full length of the figure. I call it simply Sleeping Girl.

The first two more literal or realistic studies led me on to a more graphic viewpoint and more vigourous colour and brushwork which I am calling Blue Bed.

The next stage involved de-personalising the model to create a more generic image. For this reason I painted the model with no features. Here are a couple of examples. The first is called Full metal T-shirt.

The second includes one of my cats, Lizzie who seemed to take a fancy to the model and wanted to be included.

These two paintings were done last autumn and are early in the new sequence.

Back again

Back again. It is now mid-October and the brushes have been busy over the summer. I am still working on the collection of Tarn landscapes and have been doing a series of the churches at St Cecile, Gaillac, Vieux, Itzac, Labastide de Levis, Montaigut. Some of these will shortly be appearing on the website, chrisboddington.com.
I am working closely with Alan Ansell; we paint together in the countryside. Alan and Gordon Frickers, are sharing my studio. In May Rodger Naylor, Ruth's brother and a successful American painter, came to stay and joined us labouring in the vineyards. Their paintings can all be seen on their various websites.
We have taken part in a number of mixed exhibitions some with local groups, artistes-en-liberte and entreesdesartistes in Albi and elsewhere, and with Helene Wolbert near Montauban, and are getting ready our plans for future exhibitions. I am hoping to have a show in London in the new year.
I have installed two big pieces this year. Aurora, commissioned by a friend for her house near Lavaur is a big symbolic painting of the coming of dawn in the local landscape, with life size figures of Aurora and Night.
Secondly, the guest bathroom here has finally seen the installation of the camel frieze, which I designed too long ago and which was made for me by Wiart Tiles of Salernes.
It has been a beautiful autumn here in Itzac, rather better than when I have been in London, and the storeroom, which is decorated by my harvest mural, is filling up with pumpkins, apples, onions, garlic and other crops from my garden.

Intro

Just to let you all know I am still trying to work this thing out. More exciting news to follow.