Solo

The Art in Music 2018 exhibition was hung at Newbury Corn Exchange today, and this painting is part of that exhibition.

Recorders and Lute: Palisander and Toby Carr (triptych)

Recorders and Lute (triptych), before framing

These three pieces were painted using inkjet printer inks (without the inkjet printer).

Violinists and Piano

This was based on a couple of line sketches made of the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra rehearsing in St. Nicolas' Church, Newbury - part of the Open Studios / Newbury Spring Festival collaboration. It was a far more complicated subject than my usual fare, but I enjoyed the challenge.

Oil on canvas, 40 x 80 cm

UPDATE: I wasn't entirely happy with how I had painted the pianist; here is the revised version (slightly wonky photograph):

Blue Guitar

A triptych riffing on my son's blue Ashton guitar, this is three 30 x 25 cm canvases, painted in acrylic. I used runs and drips and spatters in the background, but treated the guitar itself in a  more deliberate manner.

Safe as Houses

I selected Elvis Costello's "Indoor Fireworks" as a contrast to the 1812 - a large scale, dramatic piece often used to score large scale, daramatic outdoor fireworks displays. Costello's song is a small scale, singer-songwriter song, about the approaching end of a passionate relationship.

But dont think for a moment, dear
That we will ever be through...

It's the last of my 25 pages. The Song Book is done.

1812

When I started this series, I didn't think I would end up doing a classical piece. No words, but the drama is in the music, and the bangs and the crashes speak volumes.

Unable to Lunch Today

Cole Porter kills off two of his characters in this tragic standalone song-story. Miss Otis - both culprit and victim - is too polite not to send her apologies.

I couldn't resist adding a visual pun in the centre of the page...

Far Away in Time

Martha and the Muffins watching the sun go down after a day of tedium at the office.

The Beatles and the Stones

The Beatles, "Eleanor Rigby"

The Rolling Stones, "Sympathy For the Devil"

Two more entries in my song book... and a song (not drawn) about the two ubiquitous 60s bands.

All I Want is a Photo In My Wallet

A small resemblance of something more solid.

Blondie's "Picture This" lends itself well to a visual representation.

Streets Wide and Narrow

I've never been to Dublin, so I placed Molly Malone in a generic cobbled street... and then they sort of acquired a graffti'd look.

Skewball

Last weekend I went to Newbury Races (mainly for the sake of the fibreglass horse statue that we painted at the school). There is clearly a modern influence on my picture of this C18th racehorse.

I knew the rather fanciful Peter Paul and Mary song (Skewball was a racehorse/And I wish he was mine/He never drank water/He only drank wine). Then I discovered the False Lights song of the same name; it was a completely differert song. It was one of several broadsheet ballads that spoke of the wonders of this horse.

I used bits out of several of these songs.

Double Cornet...

Cornet Rainbow; All That Jazz
both acrylic on canvas, 30 x 40 cm

Two paintings, each with two views, of one cornet. All of them are from photographs, which is not ideal, but the cornet was rented and it went back when my son decided that he could oly cope with one instrument, and that guitar was that instrument. It was a lovely shiny cornet and I made a point of taking the photographs so that I might be able to paint it at a later date.

Acoustic-Electric

Guitars have lovely shapes.

Acrylic on board, 11 x 14"

Cornet in oil pastel

My son has recently started learning to play the cornet. It's a beautiful instrument - and it's rented, so, just in case it turns out to be a flash in the pan, I felt the need to make a picture of it. Oil pastels seemed like a good compromise between painterliness and time, so they got used first.

Sennelier oil pastel on Daler-Rowney oil pastel paper (A4)