As mentioned before on this blog, I love abstract painting and I have it in my mind to some day make some enormous abstract artworks to cover our walls. The only trouble is, I don’t really understand how to do it. Early in our lock down, I dragged out some masonite boards and started experimenting. I have done a little research into contemporary artists whose work I admire and most say that when they start a painting they have no idea what they are after. While that seems like fun, it also seems a bit intimidating. How do you judge your own work when you have no image in mind? It’s like being blind. I did paint four or five canvases this way, all quite different, and enjoyed the process a lot, but had no sense of where I should go with it or when I was finished, so I put them all away in a stack. I have started painting over them lately. I pulled out the one above to gesso over it and begin something else, but I paused. I sort of liked the painting. It has a landscape feeling and it reminds me a little of a painting I grew up with in our family house, so while I’m not sure what I will do with it, I did decide to allow it to live.

This week I also did a little collage work, incorporating some of my old drawings. I have so many beautiful old papers and stacks of drawings, so I tried to see if I could put them together in an interesting way. I like this technique and I will continue to explore it. Rick is less enthusiastic about it, as it is something of a technical challenge to line up all the little collages correctly and roll them through the press to adhere them to the moist printing paper. One mistake and the whole thing has to be trashed.

This week we stayed home, but the phone has started to ring again and the world is getting back on the road over here. This weekend all our rooms are taken. Meanwhile the sun is making it’s own ornate paintings on the terrace…

and in the hallway. Summer weather is upon us.

The spring flowers, my favorites, have passed, but we’re still left with a carpet of campanula in the terrace beds…

and star jasmine growing up on the fence. As to the delicious scent, as you stand by our gate, I will have to leave that to your imagination.