davidabse.com

Yes I have updated and redesigned my website - Matelles-Art is no more - it's all about me, me, me. My website now shows my artwork in an easy to follow format (I hope) and links directly with this blog, which effectively works as a page within the blog. I decided to leave the blog on blogger rather than move it within the site, for no particular reason other than I don't think losing the built in google stuff on this blog would be that sensible. But I hope the site is more useful than it was before. No t shirts for sale via the site - not enough sold to make it worthwhile. But every picture is for sale unless I have already sold it (or as in one or two instances, painted over it). Anyway I hope you like it. Tell your friends!

As for painting, it has been so cold in the atelier that I haven't done much. Started a painting which is sitting staring at me as I type -  but more to do on it. In case you are interested this is what it looks like now:

Work in progress...

Another flower painting, so far it's spray paint and ink. I imagine they'll be some other things added shortly. One of the things I intend to put on thew site is a video of me painting. I know someone else did this and I found it fascinating -  I probably won't be that fascinating, but I will learn the art of editing. Another idea is the process of an iPad painting - one of the iPad painting programmes I use allows you to record the process which I think I will be able to upload. Once I've worked that out. Anyway, it's all fun.

More flowers, more styles

And so it goes on. Two more flower paintings,two more styles. One renoir-ish, one i'm not sure what-ish? Perhaps a touch hockney/pop art-ish but perhaps not. Definitely Ish. AS for the biscuits, they've all gone, and only the flowers remain. I'm sure I could make a country and western song out of that. Such a sad story.

Flowers in gold frame

Stylised flowers

Different flower styles

Yeah I'm still on my flower kick. I blame the oil paints. And the flowers. It was either flowers or biscuits, and I decided to eat the biscuits and paint the flowers. What can I say?

Anyway two paintings to show off today - the way I am working at the moment is that there are more than one painting going on at the same time - it's these oils see - take so long to dry and it can be really frustrating waiting rather than painting - so 2 or 3 at the same time. As it happens it means that more than one can be finished more or less at the same time. Here are two, very different, flower paintings: One is some pinky/red flowers in a white vase - a bit less overflowing bouquet-wise than some of the previous paintings. The second painting is an imitation fauvist/Matisse effort. Why not? I love fauvism - I love Matisse and Dufy especially. I love the colours, the outlines and the deceptive simplicity of the images. Anyway here are my efforts. You may notice that I've slightly re-designed the blog template allowing me to show bigger versions of pictures - a good thing I think!

Red flowers, white vase

Fauvist flowers

Tulips from Hamsterdam

Tulips from Hamsterdam

I have always liked tulips. They are a nice symbol of spring - along with daffodils as well. Tulips, daffodils, freesias, roses - those are my favourite flowers I think. I quite like lilies too, but not the smell - and spoke people seem to think Lilies=death for reasons that are beyond me - despite thew fact I could probably find out with a quick wikipedia search. Never mind. Anyway, another flower painting, oils and oil sticks, 40x50cm. I also loved "the Wire" obviously, and with serious neck pain I am slightly drugged up...

So HERE we are! Everyone find it ok?

As warned I changed everything to reflect the move away from "Matelles-Art" towards "David Abse". Yes I am referring to myself in third person. I need to watch that. Meanwhile back in the atelier as usual I am writing this while i am waiting for paint to dry. Am still working on more flower paintings, nothing else seems to work at the moment, and I am getting a strange satisfaction from doing them. The (vaguely) interesting thing is that none of them, have been done from life - I haven't seen a real live bunch of flowers for ages. Flowers are ridiculously expensive here in France. Anyway, it doesn't reality matter: believe it or not none of my abstracts are done from life either. except this one, obviously:

More flowers - and blog title website title re-think

I've been doing more flower painting. This time I have developed the picture slightly differently , layering an abstract background with spray paint, oil sticks and acrylics, before creating the flower image with oils/sticks. Also another one more like the others which I can't stick online yet as it's a present for someone, and I can't send it yet because bloody oil takes so long to dry! I don't actually think this photo does this painting any favours - I can't seem to quite reproduce digitally the richness of the colours.

Flowers in tall blue vase

In the meantime I have been rethinking this whole "Matelles-Art" thing. My gallery has gone, and I do very little in the way of giclée printing for others now, so perhaps I should just be "David Abse". A bit radical, I know. I have started the process on the matelles-art.com website - if you go to davidabse.com, or dabse.com you get to the same place - I'm going to redesign the site and remove all matelles-art mentions. Eventually I'll drop the matelles-art name altogether. Mind you I've got a stamp and a banner and a couple of t shirts with it on... so maybe not completely... In the meantime I have no idea how you change the name of a blog like this one hosted by blogger. I don't want to lose the history on here, the traffic is pretty good.