PAINTINGS BY YEAR

THE SWAN BOOK

Posted by Jane Wheeler

oil paint over acrylic on collaged canvas, 61 x 61 x 3 cm

excerpt from my poem Pterlya (the specific areas on a bird’s skin where feathers grow), published this month in Poetry Scotland.

In the hot weather I am wearing short-sleeved tee-shirts. I look at my arms. Exposed they are dry in scaly patches, like a scabby potato.
Early life sun damage. Raised spots and chicken skin wrinkles. Like an old avocado. Running my fingers over the crepey skin, over the bulging blue veins is like feeling rough cotton sheets dried out on the line. I continue to expose them, nevertheless, under SPF 50 so the sun may make them glow golden instead of luminous white.
*
twinkling conifers
the dark sings   sleep obsolete
pin-feathers under my skin

– swanniness inspired by Alexis Wright’s book the swan book which is on the table in this painting – but of course I am in the wrong country and the wrong person for her swans, which are black Australian swans. It is an amazing book anyway. painting partly inspired by itself,

ON THE KELIM SOFA

Posted by Jane Wheeler

 

oil and acrylic on collaged canvas, 50 x 50 cm

I have at last heeded the advice of my dear friend Daphne Wright, who did the MFA at Northumbria with me back in 1990, to go back to where I was in the 90’s with my painting, to the self portrait. Suddenly, on seeing Aubrey Levinthall’s paintings at Ingleby gallery, I got a clue as to where I could go with this. I had already made a start with my painting Waiting for Bonnard

and of course Bonnard’s almost invisible figures, usually Marta his wife, in his interiors, are one way of doing this. Here the recumbent figure is merely hard to read at first amongst the busyness of cushion, the patterned rug and blanket.

SELF-PORTRAIT WITH FIRED EGG ROLL AND GHOST TEMPLE

Posted by Jane Wheeler

oil and acrylic on collaged canvas 70 x 70 x 4.2 cm.

at the Pillars of Hercules. My breakfast before a walk. The temple is now a ruin, it was built for Onesiphorus Tyndall-Bruce at Falkland in the 19th century, he named it the Temple of Decision. The Pillars is a delightful vegetarian and vegan cafe and shop and veg nursery and campsite and bothy holiday place. Named after the stones used to stand coffins on while resting from waulking them to the nearby burial place. Up on the hill is the Tyndall-Bruce Monument.

 

A DREAM OF SCOTSTARVIT AND A SHOAL OF SUNS

Posted by Jane Wheeler

oil, acrylic and collage on canvas, 80 x 70 cm

within walking distance of Cupar there is a classic Scottish Tower House built in the sixteenth century, and very near to that is the steep little Hill of Tarvit. Both loom in the background of this semi-abstract landscape painting.

SOME LANDSCAPE PAINTINGS FROM A WALK AT FINDO GASK

Posted by Jane Wheeler

Findo Gask is a tiny place in Perthshire where ancient and recently modern warfare come together. Around it are the traces of a Roman camp and signal stations, and during WW2 there was an RAF airfield , all invisible now, although there is a monument memorialising the airfield and the personnel. This memorable shape of sitka plantation and lochan, or pond grabbed my attention and I made a very quick sketch, which was the seed for these paintings. The day moon was present high up in the clear blue sky, a special spring phenomenon, I think, it was mid-April and a warm day.

This first painting, day moon and reflections at Findo Gask, is oil over acrylic and collage on cradled panel, 76 x 76 cm.

Findo Gask day moon, oil on cradled gesso board, 20 x 25 cm.

day moon and pond at Findo Gask, oil on plywood panel, 30 x 30 cm

Findo Gask, oil on plywood panel, 25 x 20 cm

TWO BLACKBIRDS, EARLY JULY GARDEN

Posted by Jane Wheeler

acrylic and oils on collaged canvas, 150 x 100 cm

Continuing to paint my garden, on a bigger canvas, this is another corner, next to the studio door and the old shed. We have had glorious singing from the blackbird, he’s up on next door’s television aerial. And sometimes down in the flowerbeds and on the grass finding bugs. I am sorry to say there are not many worms in my garden.