How tricky it can be to capture expressions and the character of a person

Painting people is one of the biggest challenges in artwork, especially when they are up close and you want to capture mood, expression, character and personality. In recent days I have been painting my older brother who is seriously ill with cancer. He is a farmer and I wanted to place him in his natural setting so I chose to place him on the family farm tending to cattle.
This is based on a very strong memory of mine from February of this year - 2011. I visited him and his family and spent some time helping him with cattle feeding. I've painted the picture that stayed in my head from that day and I'm very happy with the scene and setting. I've captured very well his character and personality but I'm not 100% happy that I've caught his mood which is very much expressed in the eyes. In the painting it is a profile view of him so really you can only see one eye clearly. It is his left eye that can be seen in the painting and I'm not totally happy with it. I feel that I have it 90% of the way but the full expression eludes me at the moment. I've decided to leave it for a few days and come back to it again with a fresh view of what I have done.

It is really challenging to capture moods and expressions clearly. The tiniest speck of light or shadow can change an expression in a major way. The slighest curl of a lip can change a smile to a frown. A little wrinkle near the corner of the eyes can convey laughter and good humour. Heavy or light shafows under the eyes can convey energy or fatigue.
The process of doing this painting has revealed a great deal to me.  I will have to come back to this when it is completed.      

Making changes to paintings

It is a challenge to paint a subject that really is an idea in your head rather than a scene, person or image before you. It is really difficult to work out the composition of a painting that I want to let develop and grow almost naturally as I paint. In trying to capture a mood or feeling it is very tricky to let the brush strokes flow and yet want to have a good layout and composition in a painting.
When I started the painting I had a clear idea in my head of using a pink 'wild orchid' as the central theme. There was great movement and exuberance at times in the brush strokes and yet I wanted something different at the end.
I had to remove some of the paint and start again on one side of the paitning. I've decided to try and paint the flower in two different sizes. One is huge and dominates the right hand side of the painting and the other is much smaller and looks lore like the flowers growing in their natural setting. It is difficult to determine whether I have achieved what I set out to do or not.
I look at the painting at different angles and I like what I see some of the time and I also vary the angles of the light onto the painting and depending on the angle it makes a huge difference to what I see and whether I like it or not.
An interesting reaction of mine is my response to the use of different colours. In painting this paritcular 'scene' and because I had a theme in mind I find that I really enjoyed using reds, purples and pinks. They captured a feminine quality and energy that I wanted to convey. The red gave a great sense of life and energy, and the pink brought a sense of contentment and ease, the purple gave a sense of strength and depth to what I was doing.
There is also a large amount of green in the painting, not quiet 40 shades. I always like painting with green. There is a feeling of it being natural and conveys a sense of wholeness, healthiness and environmental friendliness. It combines well with white and yellow to give a sense of sunshine and light. It works well with most other colours and deep greens show off well the strength and brightness of lighter shades.      

Painting with exuberance

In recent days I have been working on some canvasses on the theme of cancer. While looking at ways to convey awareness of breast cancer, which is associated with a pink ribbon, I took a walk with my wife along the bank of the River Lee. It was a pleasant sunny day and we decided to stay as close to the river as possible. Early on in the walk I noticed a profusion of beautiful but unusual flowers which I did not recognise. They look like tall wild orchids with beautiful soft pink flowers and some had a very pale pink almost white flowers. The stalks of the flowers looked like Busy-Lizzy, in that I could see that they were soft stems that needed a lot of water. I decided that these flowers would be the focus for a painting on using pink for breast cancer.

I returned a few days later to photograph the flowers and got some lovely pics. I started on the painting immediately. The shapes of the flowers and leaves had lovely curves and flowing movement to them which seemed to capture and convey feminine shape and movement. I was very pleased with the initial work. Coming to the final stages of the painting I started to put in some red and strong pink colours to the stalks of the flowers. I was amazed by the sense of exuberance and energy that this brought to me and the painting. It completely changed the paiting itself and the feeling that it generated within me. It brought energy and life to a topic that can have a morbid theme.
Initially I planned to have 75% of the canvas filled with the flowers and the remaining space filled with the pink breast cancer ribbon. It didn't work so I erased the ribbon section and painted more flowers but this does not really work either.
I am now thinking of making one of the flowers much bigger to fill the space planned for the ribbon. I'm hoping that the exuberant pink of the flower will capture the essentially feminine nature of breasts and breast cancer and will also convey the energy and exuberance of women.  Capturing human emotions and qualities is always a big challenge in painting.         

Some of my paintings over the last 2 years

There is no theme running through this selection of paintings. Just a random selection.

Cancer paintings

In starting out with this new series of paintings I've become more aware of the number of people closely connected to me who have either beeen diagnosed and treated with various forms of cancer or are at a stage where there is little more that can be done for them. In a good number of cases the people concerned have died as a result of cancer.
It is something that affects people of all ages all over the world. I am at present doing a painting of my brother who is in stage 4 of brain cancer. As I look at photos of him and remember many occasions in his life it brings on great feelings of sadness and loss. It is strange to think that as I wake up every morning looking forward to a new day and the challenges and opportunities that it brings, it must be a huge challenge for him to deal with a sense of a fast ebbing tide. While he is glad to greet each new day he knows that his time is limited. He has been valiant in dealing with it up to now, always keeping the sunny side out and never wanting to make a fuss or put people to trouble. It is hard to see the changes and the gradual deterioration in his condition.
How can I do a painting of him that does not offend or lack sensitivity to his terminal condition? Even using the words 'terminal condition' seem to sound harsh and blunt. How do you capture a person's character and yet show the effects of terminal cancer?        

Making a start on cancer paintings

My first painting in this series (see above ) is of a young 12 year old girl - Sarah- with a bald head due to chemotherapy. Children with illnessess and diseases are amazing. They show great courage and are determined to get on with life in spite of feeling low and frightened at times. Sarah suffers from luekemia and has had a number of sessions of chemo to help fight the cancer. Any time that I have met her she has always had a huge welcoming, brave smile on her face and is full of fun, jokes and laughter. It is a tonic for anybody to meet such a brave young girl as she has no time to feel sorry for herself or be sad about the illness that she has. In the children's cancer ward she has made many great friends and is such a welcoming face to all the frightened and anxious new faces that appear from time to time.
In spite of her courage and sunny disposition you get a sense that she knows more and that there are deeper feelings that are kept to herself or shared only with her immediate family. Looking into her eyes at times you get a sense that she is searching for an explanation for it all, why has she been affected in this way? There is a sense of not knowing what will happen, some apprehension about what the future will bring.
She puts a brave face on it all and her courage and resilience strengthen all the young patients around her and gives her family hope and determination to make sure that they support her in every way they can.    

New themes

I'm planning to do some paintings on the theme of cancer and the different forms that I have come across that  affect people close to me. It seems like a very morbid theme but very real to people's lives and one that affects people of all ages etc throughout the world. As I haven't started on any of the paintings I have no real sense as to what will emerge. I hope to adopt an unstructured approach to the paintings to try and capture the sense of the elusive and invasive nature of cancer. It can effect so many vital organs and have primary and secondary growths which gives it a shapeless, boundless dimension. Happily there are many stories of great successes with cancer treatment yet I feel that it has a deathly dark feeling to it that strikes fear and apprehension into the minds of cancer sufferers and their families. In spite of this dark side of cancer I do not want a dark deathly tone to the paintings. As there is still so much to discover about cancer I want to convey a sense of the alien nature of the condition and how we move into the world of the unmeasured and unknown when we are confronted with cancer.
As it is a subject that affects so many people I want to show respect for the complexity of the condition and how perplexed people beocme in coming to terms with it.            

Finding time to paint

As I have a full time job as a secondary school teacher it is always a big challenge to find the time and space to paint. It is so easy to let time slip by and find blank canvasses lying unused or a sketched out scene waiting on the easel for weeks to be tackled.
I cannot explain why this is because as soon as I start painitng I get totally absorbed with the subject and time flies by. I get great enjoyment, fulfilment and pleasure from the process of painting and seeing the completed work.
Of course this does not just apply to painting but so many other day to day things that could or should be done but somehow remain untouched for weeks, even months at times. I don't mind do the day to day things that need attention around a home and I get quite absorbed in them once I start but they do not give me the enjoyment or pleasure of painting and yet I have a sketched scene sitting accusingly on the easel waiting to be brought to life.
I have every intention to get started on it soon and it will be interesting to see how the paint flows for me and how the brush strokes work as it is not possible to predict the end result because mood and attitude hugely affect my painting. I look forward to posting the completed work soon.     

Contours of landscape

The contours of the landscapes that we live, work and move in, are among the great fascinations and challenges for me in painting. Combined with the amazing patterns of colour, texture and light that we get in each season here in Southern Ireland there is also a great mystique and attraction in the rural landscapes and the coastal scenes that capture the eye.
It gives great scope to use a rich palette of colours and a wide variety of brush strokes and textures to capture the rough and the smooth, the light and dark in the glens and valleys, hills and mountains, crashing waves and steep sea cliffs of the Cork/Kerry landscape.
One of my favourite memories of a day spent with my family was a summer's afternoon spent climbing Mount Brandon on the Dingle Peninsula. It was a beautiful sunny day with a pleasant cooling breeze to ease our passage up the mountain. As we got higher and higher it was fabulous to take a breather and survey the fantastic landscape that unfolded beneath us. The contrast in texture between the smoothness of the sea and the roughness of the cliffs on the rugged Corca Dhuibhne coast was a real thrill and challenge for any artist planning to capture such a beautiful scene on canvas.
The blues and geens of the sea water set off the greens, browns and purples of the fields, bogs and mountain-side that made such an intriguing tapestry of colours before us.
Such colours and patterns seemed to swamp my mind and I could not wait to get out my brushes and canvas to try and capture that wondeful afternoon spent with my family.

The painting that captures all this for me I have titled " From the deep blue sea to the purple mountain".  I am very happy with the contour lines in the painitng that reveal the richness and colour in the many layers of that much loved landscape.            

Meeting buyers of paintings

Yesterday evening I had the pleasant job of delivering a painting to a young couple who bought one at my recent exhibition. I got a very warm welcome from them at their home and we had a very interesting discussion about the exhibition and my plans for further work.
I outlined what I think my next theme will be and the timescale in which I hope to get the paintings done. They were very encouraging and hoped to be able to attend the next opening which I hope will be late 2011. It was very interesting to get their reaction to the new theme and even to see what a different view the husband had to it compared to his wife's view. It is on the general theme of sickness and illness but as yet I can't say what my specific theme will be as I want to let my ideas simmer and develop a bit before I start work on the canvasses.
It will be a new approach for me and will give me scope to adopt innovative ways to express views and challenge popular perceptions of well known subjects.
I am really looking forward to getting down to the task.