I have had requests to show more of my photos on the site; I don’t want this to become one of those sites that is just all photos, but I have had a quick look over my posts for the last few days I realised it had got a bit art heavy so I thought I’d start today with a photo from last week, before the rain came back. This is a view out over Carlow from Blackstairs mountain and I’d have to say I think you can probably see most of the county in it. Hopefully we will have another day like this soon and I can add more to my portfolio.

I’ve got heavily into working in the work shop in the last few days, I’d to some extent forgotten just how much I enjoy working with wood and having a good workshop makes it just a pleasure. I have just completed the building of a quite small but rather complex stretcher for a spatial painting. Now I need to get the canvas sorted out for it, it will need to be stretched as two hexagonal panels as it is actually both sections of a diptych on one stretcher. Actually, although I say the they are two hexagonal canvases, they will in fact, from the forms I have been modelling for them, end up as two six pointed stars by the time all the stretching is done;  I will have to stretch these particularly ones by starting at the corners and working inwards on all six sides at once, gradually taking up the tension as I progress. Should prove interesting.

One of the other new features about this spatial painting is that it will need to be framed and not only the frame but the actual framing section will have to be custom-made as it has to both frame and reveal two separate paintings at the same time. Although making the job a lot more complicated it also makes it a lot more interesting as it means that the frame has become part of the piece and has been “designed”, not a word I like to use in relation to art but sometimes it’s necessary, as a part of the concept of the whole piece. I had been considering adding a photo of the stretcher at this point, but I’m not sure if I’m ready to share it yet; as you’ve probably guessed by now I like to keep these things quite close to my chest at first.