AMATEUR ARTWORK: 2002 to 2005
Please note that all paintings listed by Artist Codes 0000 to 0020, and 1986, were painted prior to my turning professional. I started to number them in this way not in any particular order, then realized that if I was to be a professional, I needed to have a proper coding practice. So I decided after these 21 pictures that I would have four-digit Artist Codes, the first two digits representing the year, and the second two digits the order in which I either painted or sketched the artworks (not necessarily completing them at the time), i.e. “1023” was painted in 2010 and was number 23 of 23 paintings started during that year.
1986 Ghostly Galleon and Gulls
Artist Code 1986. Completed January 1986. Original. Oil painting with a palette knife (January 1986)
I do actually remember painting this picture when I awoke one morning very cross with the world. All the children were at school and husband was at work, and I felt that I just had to paint something. I had this vision of a windswept galleon with gulls flapping about on a choppy sea – and this painting is the result. Done wholly with a palette knife, straight on to canvas board with no preparatory drawing. I felt so good when I had finished it!
The painting featured in my Calendars for the year 2015 (as a blast from the past) and this is the poem that went alongside it:
When angriness is hard to quell,
On reprobate I do not dwell,
Instead I get a canvas out,
And squeeze my oil paints from their spout,
And grab my knife to load with paint,
Then splatter colour rich, not feint,
With sweeping strokes in marked defiance
Slapping shades in deft alliance
This angry sea with ghostly ship
Really helps me get a grip
As flying gulls now swoop and swirl
and foaming waves all in a whirl
And darkening skies o’er distant hills
Work better than those little white pills
So now as ghostly sales are shred
The gremlins can be put to bed
My inner self is greatly eased
My torment lessens, is appeased
As peace and friendship come to mind
To “Happy-face” I am inclined.
[Bless the world this Christmas time.]
