Remembering uKhahlamba

Holidays are great but often it is really hard to get back into a working routine once back home. Facing a large blank canvas is also something many artists find challenging and setting up a painting routine is hard. A warm up drawing is a useful way to break the impasse. 

Mountain range - graphite 

This year, though, starting a new painting was so much easier. I received much inspiration during my short trip to the mountains of the Southern Drakensberg while I was on holiday. I have one new painting well on the way and ideas for a few others. I love painting and once I get into the groove after a break I can’t understand why I struggle to start painting.

Here’s a cropped WIP section - just the very top of the canvas Remembering uKhahlamba. In Zulu, uKhahlamba means the Barrier of up-pointed spears. The Afrikaans settlers called the mountain range Drakensberg - the mountains of the dragon. This vast escarpment stretches for some 1000 kilometres from the Eastern Cape as far as Limpopo Province in the North. 

Finding Inspiration

When I was writing the previous post about the Lethbridge 10,000 and the current theme of my paintings, I realised something. I realised that somehow, surreptitiously, I had become a landscape painter.

I hadn't been in Australia for very long, maybe six or eight months, when I drove up the coast to Mooloolaba to have a look. Previously, rocks had featured in a number of paintings and I wanted to find something here in Australia to kick start a new series. The day seemed fine when I set off but when I arrived it was cloudy and gloomy. I took a lot of photos of the pounding sea and the rocks. 

Then I wandered into a gallery - The Gallery Beneath and chatted to the owner. I explained to her that I had come up from Brisbane, having recently arrived in Australia, looking for inspiration. 

She turned to me and said: 
"You can't look for inspiration, you've got to feel it here," holding her hand over her heart.

Her words took me by surprise and I almost felt chastised, as though my explorative outing was in some way false. And perhaps it was. The couple of paintings I did from those photographs were not very good at all. I needed to do more than take some photographs to understand a place.

Riverside Trees - oil on linen 

Her words have stayed with me and I've thought about them often - she was absolutely correct. I really needed to be here longer, to live in the country and to let the special places find me rather than the other way around.

When I look at the paintings done over the last few years - Riverside Trees, Windarra Reflections,  and Bunya Riverside and  I see that the landscape has become part of me and that inspiration has found me after all.

Inspiration from Coolum Beach

My holiday at Coolum Beach in December was inspirational on many levels. Time to relax and sketch, time to sit and watch the sea - to hear the waves crashing on the rocks - all these things feed the soul. 

Here are two paintings done in the studio. However the inspiration for them lies not only in the photographs taken early on Christmas Eve, but also in the sketches done on the spot that morning. The beauty of digital photography is that there’s an accurate record of the time and place of each image. 

Watching - Coolum Beach  oil on canvas 910mm x 610mm © 2015 Carol Lee Beckx

Coolum  24th December 2014 6.54am oil on canvas 610mm x 610mm  © 2015 Carol Lee Beckx

Lethbridge 10,000 Exhibition

At the beginning of May I sent off an entry for the Lethbridge10,000 Exhibition. It was with great delight that I recently received the exciting news that I am one of the finalists selected to show in the Gallery when the exhibition opens on Saturday.

Windarra Reflections - 24” x 20” - oil on canvas © 2013 Carol Lee Beckx

Sometimes inspiration occurs and it can be a while before the painting is created. It’s almost as though the idea and image need time to incubate, waiting for the right moment to be given life.

So it was with the images which inspired the the selected painting, Windarra Reflections.

I took the photograph of the creek on Windarra Estate some time ago. It's been there, waiting to become a painting. Excited by the light on the water and the patterns of the reflected reeds, I wanted the painting to convey the light, colour and a little mystery.

From the Lethbridge Gallery website:

“The Lethbridge Gallery has established a strong reputation for exhibiting works    demonstrating exceptional detail and creativity. With the intention of fostering the next generation of artists, the Gallery initiated the Lethbridge 10 000.

In its fourth year, this exciting art competition is open to national and international artists for small-scale artworks. Entrants may submit paintings, drawings, photographs and all 2D artworks up to 60cm (24 inches) in any direction.”

The Exhibition opens on Saturday 15^th June and runs until 30^th June.

Lethbridge Gallery

136 Latrobe Terrace, Paddington.

07 3369 4790 M 0407 005 800

Open Thurs, Fri, Sat 10am - 5pm Sun 10am - 4pm or by appointment.

Virtual travelling in Paris - blog by blog.

In a previous post, Deja Bru - The Project  l wrote about surfing the net for references for my Paris street scene. There are also numerous blogs that extol the delights of Paris. I turned to these for more inspiration.

Detail: The Eiffel Tower Deja Bru - acrylic on Linen Carol Lee Beckx

Some of these gave me a lamp post or a café chair; a tree lined street; a blackboard Menu handwritten in lovely French cursive; chimneys unique to Paris or the detail of a wrought iron balcony.

Thank you for the inspiration.

I thought you might enjoy a virtual tour of Paris, so here are some links:

Paris Breakfasts

Paris through my Lens

Little Brown Pen

The Paris Blog

French Essence

Haven in Paris 

Connecting with buyers

The artist painting in the studio is removed from life outside - we bring our external experiences back into the studio and translate these feelings into paint. Then we take our work outside again and exhibit it - either in a gallery or online on our blog, website or on social media platforms.

Then a work is sold and moves to the buyer’s home and the artist’s connection with the work is broken. The artist needs to sell work to survive, but it’s often hard to say goodbye to a special piece. If a work is specially commissioned then there's a close relationship between the artist and the buyer. I have been fortunate to have had inspiring and enjoyable commissions recently. The painting below was so difficult to photograph - the extreme light areas are silver leaf and proved beyond my photographic ability to capture exactly.

Grey, silver black -  Oil on canvas 1000mm x 1000mm ©2012 Carol Lee Beckx

Collection Transform Hair

When the painting is sold at an exhibition frequently the artist will not know who the buyer was. Sometimes the gallery wants to keep their client list private and won't disclose the buyer's name. If  it’s group show there would be too much admin for the organisers to let each artist know who bought what.

Sometimes you find out years later who bought the painting. Recently I received an email from someone I hadn’t heard from for more than ten years. He had been looking at my website, discovered I had moved to Australia and wanted to let me know that he owned three of my paintings. It was so good that he took the trouble to write to tell me and send images of the paintings. These two paintings are from the time when I did many miniature paintings, quite a change of scale compared to some of my recent work!

Waterfront Cape Town - watercolour on paper est. 50mm x 80mm ©2012 Carol Lee Beckx

Fishing Boats Cape Town - watercolour on paper - est. 50mm x 80m ©2012 Carol Lee Beckx 

Occasionally the artist has a chance to connect directly with the buyer of a painting. Recently I spent a morning painting in a gallery where my work was being exhibited. I had a chance to talk to someone who had bought a painting of mine. There was a wonderful opportunity to talk about the creative process and my inspiration for the painting.

Then this week I received this email:

                  Every day when I come into the office it's the first thing I see and it's the last thing I  see as I'm closing the door to leave. I can't think of a more wonderful way to start or finish my working day - a beautiful image to carry me through the day and one that reminds me that no matter how arduous my day has been there is always something good about it.

An artist can ask for no more than this.