Cooking on gas or rather, painting on canvas!

Well, what a whirlwind few months it's been for me!

I haven't posted on here in so long and, I can't offer much in the way of an explanation other than I've been trying to 'find myself' and truly understand what it is that I have to offer with my minuscule presence in this world #cliché. 

I've been in a bit of a funny space for a while now, I don't know why, there's no discernible reason. I have a loving wife who is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G and, a lovely home and good friends but, I just couldn't get past this feeling that I wasn't  put on this earth simply to be a Bank Manager or a Project/Change Manager. I mean, there really has to be more to life than this, right?. Until fairly recently I thought that I was the only person in the world who didn't really know what they wanted to do when they 'grew up' but, and I've come to realise that, there's actually a lot of us out there, if not most of us. A bit of a scary thought.

Anyway, after some considerable soul searching *yawn* and, a little bit of putting myself out there, I think I might have found something that I really love to do. Painting. Mostly with oils on canvas using a pallet knife. I've had some amazing feedback from people, but, as a friend of mine recently so rightly pointed out to me, 'none of that matters so long as it means something to you' and, it does! I love it, I find myself getting completely immersed in what I'm doing. Forgetting everything that's going on around me, sometimes at the very detriment of my incredibly patient and supportive wife's evening meal, sorry about that! But I really do love it. I love that I can somehow (and, not even I'm entirely sure how), manage to turn a relatively mundane piece of white canvas into something spectacular (to me at least) and, into something that other people can recognise. It really is quite amazing to me.

I'm still relatively new to this painting lark. I always loved art at school but for a variety of reasons, over the years I've stopped doing anything creative. I've become a little, no, a lot, lazy and fallen into some bad habits of either staring at a TV screen and switching off or sleeping. I do love to sleep, it's now my second favourite thing to do! 

I've never painted with oils until about 6 months ago and I've never painted on canvas and I'd certainly never done anything that required me to use a pallet knife, actually, that's a lie, I do like to bake and I sometimes use a pallet knife for this but that's a whole other story! 
I just decided I'd give it a go and I bought myself some cheap oil paints, a couple of pallet knives and a canvas. I already had a picture in my mind that I wanted to create and I thought I'm going to try and relate that to this big white space. And, so my first painting was born.

It's not great I know and, I'm sure some of you will be looking at it and wondering what the... But, I was really proud of it. I am really proud of it. It's my first attempt at doing anything arty with oil paints and canvas and pallet knives. My first bit of art in many, many years.

After I finished this that was it, I'd got the bug. I wanted to do more.  I decided that my next project was going to bigger and better. I had a memory that I wanted to preserve and I was going to do it in style! I went shopping and bought a HUGE canvas and put it on to the easel in my dining room (which, incidentally, has become my new studio, sorry Kat!).

I guess everyone works in different ways but, for me, I like to painting things that have relevance to me. You might recall, a couple of years ago, Kat and I got married in New York and, as you can probably imagine, it's a very special place to both of us. I wanted to paint something that we could hang on our wall and every time we looked at it we'd remember the awesome adventures that we've had there. 

This project was major. Like nothing I had ever done before. A painfully long, slow process of layering paint in stages. Waiting for a section to dry and adding a little bit more. I might not have mentioned already but, patience, well, it's not really my friend! For this reason, oils are probably not the best medium for me to be using as they take so long to harden before you can move on to the next stage of the painting! This meant that for months my painting looked like nothing more than some messy lines and a mucky mishmash where different colours met and mixed together. At times it was frustratingly slow and my lack of patience and desire for perfection has cost me dearly during this project, in time at least and, taught me some very valuable lessons!

Anyway, It has taken me almost 5 months of painstakingly slow touch ups, several new, more expensive purchases of oils and this is what I finally achieved...

My wife is so happy it's finished. She said it was so she could hang it but I think it was so she could have the dining room back! Sadly, I've just started my next project and bought another easel so I can work on more than one painting at a time, so, I'm not sure that's ever going to happen, unless I get my own little studio someday, you never know, normality might just resume, one day!

So, that's what's been going on with me. I have been doing some other little crafty pieces of work too, in between coats and layers of oil paint, but mostly I'm just loving my new adventure with oils on canvas. I'm still not entirely convinced that this is my only true calling in life but, for now at least, I'm cooking on gas or rather, painting on canvas and, who knew you could have quite so much fun with a pallet knife?!