From Mentone

When I first started painting there came a time when I finally thought I painted something worth keeping. I painted the view looking across the bay towards Mentone. The Mentone Hotel is the featured building on the rise. I can't remember what happened, perhaps I accidently kicked sand onto the paint or repainted an area that I was not happy with, but eventually I painted the sky about six times, and I was never as happy as I was with the first sky I painted. It's probably been on my mind for nearly four decades so recently I decided to repaint the entire painting but using the old one as a model. I took some tracings and retraced the basic forms onto a new panel of the same size and redid this version. I'm fairly happy with this one and although the initial sky was blue, I liked the idea of a grey sky since there can be just as many wonderful colours on a grey day as there is when the sun shines brightly.

I've aways loved Vermeer's work and his View of Delft must have had a big influence on my choice of site.

Grey Sky over the Bay, 2020, oil on panel, 35.5 x 45.75 cm

    Mentone, 1980s, oil on canvas board, 35.5 x 45.75 cm

Vermeer's View of Delft, 1660-1661, oil on canvas, 96.5 c 115.7 cm

Eastern Light

This painting was done on a property at Mount Helen. The view was from a high rise looking across to Mt. Warrenheip. The time was morning because I always like to see things backlit and the eastern morning light was just perfect for this painting. The view from the hill is actually a three hundred and sixty degree view, and it's one of the most inspiring I have seen. The cows often hung around the car but when they tried eating the mirrors they had to be encouraged to go elsewhere. As the pic shows, the back of the car makes a great easel and offers protection against the wind. It's like a small mobile studio, and without it I couldn't do much outdoor painting.

Eastern Light,

At Mount Helen with a 360 degree view of the surrounding area

One Hundred Faces

Trudy McLauchlan has a small shop in Sturt Street Ballarat called Playing in the Attic. She invited a number of local artists to make an image of a face on a canvas board measuring 10.2 x 10.2 cm. Trudy's aim was then to exhibit 100 small canvases in her shop window, leading to the title of the exhibition - One Hundred Faces. There was a maximum of 5 boards per artist and the faces did not have to be human! My two works are below and although they are small, each oil painting took about the same time as it does for a much larger canvas.

The jigsaw painting was a little tricky. I painted the entire face and traced a jigsaw pattern from my iPad onto tracing paper, blown up to the same size as the panel. Then I traced the tracing over the painted face. The next problem was which pieces do I eliminate? So I traced the same jigsaw pattern onto a white piece of paper, cut up the pieces and placed them over the corresponding part in the painting to see if eliminating that section would work. What I wanted to avoid at all costs was not to repaint any of the face.

  Work in Progress

Mirror Mirror

Deborah Klein viewing the One Hundred Faces exhibition

Trudy McLauchlan outside her shop, Playing in the Attic