study of dreams 2/xii 15" x 20"

removed for rethinking

oils on canvas
FOR SALE
if you would like to purchase this painting, please send your bid to rahinaqh@gmail.com


a heatwave in Brooklyn
lunch....
the scene is set
won't you sit down?

2012

thank you everyone for giving me so much support throughout 2011: whether it was to visit and/or leave a comment or buy one of my paintings, i appreciate it so much.
i photographed this seagull yesterday and used this image as the painting i have been working on is still not cooperating;)
warmest wishes, rahina

study of dreams 2/xi 9" x 12.5"

oils on canvas
FOR SALE
If you would like to purchase this painting, please send your bid rahinaqh@gmail.com

there is a sadness about this face and i was intrigued how it became visible in different muscles on the face.

study of dreams 2/ x 9" x 7.5"

oils on canvas
FOR SALE
if interested please send your bid to rahinaqh@gmail.com
all bids considered:)

a small study that i have been working on over the past few days. rather tongue in cheek in every sense...

study of dreams 2/ ix 17" x 13"

oils on canvas
SOLD
If you would like to purchase this painting, please send your bid to rahinaqh@gmail.com

a small shop, full of the most unique handmade waistcoats, goatskin handbags as soft as soft can be, hats that seemed to have come from a century ago in enticing colours, bits of this and bits of that and gentle music ....and it was all because of her vision.... and down a narrow winding staircase, in the basement, she showed me her workshop, a low ceiling held up by beams hundreds of years old, a tiny Vemeer window, and silks, cottons and tweeds that could have been brought from travels around the world and stored in this Aladdin's cave.... and all this on a street near Micklegate in the old town of York, England.



for sale, 6" x 7" approx.

just a quick little study of a rugged face that caught my attention

study of dreams 2/viii 16" x 20"

oils on canvas
SOLD

it started snowing today... which should make this Wyoming cowboy feel right at home.
i have been working on this for over three weeks as well as another painting which is still not finished...
things seem to be happening to my way of seeing so i am taking a lot longer to complete each painting.
when is a painting done? i look at the number of paintings i produced in previous years and i promise you, i probably spend more hours at the easel now than i did in the past (average of 8 hours or more per day). i wonder where i am going with this new metamorphosis in sight...

study of dreams 2/vii 11" x 13"

oils on canvas
FOR SALE
If you would like to purchase this painting, please send your bid to rahinaqh@gmail.com

this is the previous painting that i posted over a month ago, now as complete as i can go with it. i have been working on this as well as another painting continuously starting early, finishing late... content;)

the colours in the painting are of a simple palette: such a palette allows me an uncluttered skin canvas on which to develop the theme of the face and the direction i want to take your gaze and then question who is watching who.... for me the older face is as beautiful to paint as autumn must be for a landscape painter...

underpainting

every now and then i have to go away for about a month at a time and the time has come to leave my easel for that period of time again. as i organised and packed i couldn't stay away from starting an underpainting... while doing this i managed to get the car washed, pruned a tree, planted some flowers for spring, cooked, cleaned and organised my books etc and yes, i still have a bag to pack!! so why start an underpainting? if you are familiar with the story of the elves and the shoemaker then i guess that is the only analogy i can find... when i get back, this painting will be waiting to be further developed as an underpainting as it is still incomplete at this stage.... and may be at the back of my mind i'm thinking some elves will come and finish it for me;)

study of dreams series 2/vi 12" x 16"

oils on canvas

FOR SALE
If you would like to purchase this painting, please send your bid rahinaqh@gmail.com

I recently watched a video by Scott Waddell and used his model (i mean the actual person frozen on computer screen) and his palette to paint this portrait. it was interesting to compare my choices with his ... an excellent learning experience. it was quite a challenge to work deprived of colours that i am instinctively drawn to but it makes one more creative to use what they have. Scott starts with a pencil sketch of the subject and then transfers that to canvas and outlines it with raw umber. he then works like an ant over the surface of the face moulding it with the paint.

my process is rather different: i start with my brush and raw umber diluted with a mix of turps and linseed and feel my way around the face... several hours and even a day later i am still fiddling around with the underpainting. then i move in with the other colours, developing form and sometimes i make major changes to my underpainting as i really get to know the face. i take short breaks as i become quite blind to the larger picture

perhaps this painting would not have been done if a portrait i had been working on for over two weeks had not been destroyed;)

Keith Proctor and Jack in Glasgow

i met Keith Proctor, his son Jack and his wife Debbie today at the exhibition of his paintings at Castle Galleries in Glasgow. It was great to see his paintings up close: the 'Jack' paintings are so much more full of energy in reality! Keith is a brilliant artist with a great eye for composition and play of light. and what i particularly liked about Mr Proctor was his generosity, humility and openness. Jack of course took the limelight: what we see in the painting, a child unpretentious and in his own world is what you see in reality.... this was a pleasure to see.

his paintings are well worth investing in: i watched two paintings (a print and an original) fly off the walls half an hour of each other! Check out his blog and see for yourselves: http://keithproctor.blogspot.com

L.A. Ring a Danish artist

i wanted to share some of these images of the work of artist L.A. Ring. I was recently sent a book from Norway (my sister and my beautiful nephews are always on the look out for books to help me improve;) with the work of Harald Sohlberg (a wonderful Norwegian artist) and Ring. I fell in love with Sohlberg's work when I visited Oslo earlier this year and to discover Ring's work is a delight. I photographed these images from my book as there are so few online... the man at the doorway is my favourite.. i use that as my desktop image;)

study of dreams series 2/v 10" x 14"

oils on canvas
FOR SALE
If you would like to purchase this painting, please send your bid rahinaqh@gmail.com

it's grown to this... worth knowing what my fellow artists think if you have time

listened to Chuck Close being interviewed by his biographer Christopher Finch. it is a wonderful enabling dialogue from Chuck and his perspective on art: honest, sincere and unpretentious... personally it gave me belief in being myself rather than trying to be Velezquez;)

if you have an hour and a half to spare or while you paint, go to this website and hope you see what i mean:

http://www.artbabble.org/video/aic/chuck-close-conversation-christopher-finch

study of dreams series 2/iv 10" x 14"

oils on canvas

for sale
If you would like to purchase this painting, please send your bid rahinaqh@gmail.com

apologises for posting this and then not posting it again for a few days.... a family crisis took up all my time. though i am still occupied with that, there is nothing better than the smell of linseed oil to repair one's focus;)
this painting has elements of where i am trying to get to....a direction! ok, a window;) the window is small and i had not noticed it before as being a useful light source.
if i were to name this i'd call it 'Velezquez's window' and hope to do more in this series if i don't get distracted by shoes etc.

study of dreams series 2/iii 12" x 16"

oils on canvas

FOR SALE
If you would like to purchase this painting, please send your bid rahinaqh@gmail.com

a painting based on a sculpture in the Glasgow Art Gallery... she seemed oblivious of her frozen beauty. i guess art of art is okay since all we paint has already been sculpted by nature or people.

study of dreams series 2/ii 12" x 16"

oils on canvas

FOR SALE
If you would like to purchase this painting, please send your bid rahinaqh@gmail.com


there might be different readings of this painting...
for me, it was the composition
of a guy playing a West African drum
with 'Dominican Republic' written across his t-shirt

study of dreams XII 22" x 18"

oils on classeans belgian linen canvas
SOLD

This is the painting that was recently sold to Karen Schmidt... to cut a long story short, the original painting had been mounted wrongly and i decided to repaint it while the framer sorted out the problem. By the time he had sorted it out, I was well on my way into this one and determined to make it better as I had already made Karen wait for the painting she originally wanted. It was an anxious two weeks as I had made many changes and she and her husband had liked the original. this evening i sighed with relief... they had finally got it and are delighted with it... what more can i ask for? they very kindly sent me a photo of it in their home:)
this brightened my evening as i have just had a wee operation on my right hand and won't be able to paint for a while... i shouldn't even be typing and i think my doc sometimes looks at my blog....

study of dreams series 2/i 16" x 20"

oils on canvas

FOR SALE
If you would like to purchase this painting, please send your bid rahinaqh@gmail.com


this has been on the easel forever and a day...
i wanted to capture the stage of life of this woman... that precarious mid-twenties stage leaving behind a childhood and facing adulthood.... of course it is my interpretation of a precious moment:) r.

on another note i recently sold study of dreams xii (man wearing hat and trench coat) to a brilliant artist and fellow blogger Karen Mathison Schmidt Check out her paintings: the energy and effective use of colour is sublime!

three old works

16" x 12"

10" x 10"

24" x 36"


these are three paintings (a copy after Van Gogh, an original tree from me, and a copy after Picasso) i did a few years back and which, for one reason or another, i did not post on the blog...
they all still carry a lot of meaning for me and none bar the copy of Picasso's work do i still have (for some reason i am quite attached to this terrible replication).
the interesting thing is that although i know more about painting in oils now than when i did these, i like them because they were spontaneous, from the heart, a totally absorbed passion without inhibition....
I hope to be back in my painting saddle next week some time and hope i haven't regressed too much after 8 weeks of not painting... but i have lots of observation and thoughts which i hope will hold me in good stead;)

African art and Picasso

it is fascinating when i find a jewel of personal significance and in this case it was in the African civilisation collection on loan to SIngapore Asian Civilizations Museum. Picasso was influenced by the masks made by African tribes and the resemblance in some of his paintings (i wasn't allowed to photograph them) is uncanny... anyway he says something...
"who sees the human face correctly the photographer, the mirror, the painter?"
nice, eh?

unfinished study 20" x 16"

oils on canvas

why put an unfinished study on the blog? i didn't have time to complete it and hope to do that in a few weeks when i return to my easel. i hope to post some sketches during my time away... and all you who have access to an easel and your paints... enjoy;)

study of statue 16" x 20"

oils on canvas
for sale
If you would like to purchase this painting, please send your bid rahinaqh@gmail.com

statues are timeless... as i painted this i thought wouldn't it be wonderful if time could stop still while i caught up on all the time i lost not painting?
imagine after 200 years i might just be able to wink at Vermeer like a fellow artist... nice dream, eh?

decommissioned 16" x 20"

SOLD
If you would like to purchase this painting, please send your bid rahinaqh@gmail.com


a pair of boots, hanging in an attic in Oslo, used during compulsory military service. the mud and scuff of many years ago.... so significant now.

oils on canvas

mind the gap

i will post a new piece soon but meanwhile i wanted to share this:

if any of you are in Glasgow, why not pop into Mind the Gap: it's a new art shop and it has 7 of my works hanging up for sale for a few weeks:) Ann and David, who run Mind the Gap, are both artists themselves and do special deals for artists on art material and support local artists... now doesn't all that sound good:)



De Courcys Arcade
5/21 Cresswell Lane
Glasgow
G12 8AA
Tel: 0141 3342144

study of dreams XVIIII 16" x 20"

oils on canvas

FOR SALE
If you would like to purchase this painting, please send your bid rahinaqh@gmail.com


spent a few days in Oslo visiting galleries and meeting other artists. this painting is not how i had intended but i guess it is what it is.

study of dreams XVIII 16" x 12"

oils on canvas

FOR SALE
If you would like to purchase this painting, please send your bid rahinaqh@gmail.com


there is a eucalyptus tree in my garden. it was slightly taller than me a few years ago. now it has outgrown me five times over and its new heights are beyond my reach... it is an evergreen and so a source of colour and hope through the winter months. the leaves have become a raw umber muddied with white (or vise versa)... i wonder if it has survived the well-below-freezing temperatures we have been having lately... i hope so

study of dreams XVII 16" x 12"

oils on canvas

FOR SALE
If you would like to purchase this painting, please send your bid rahinaqh@gmail.com


a slightly different style... hmmm...

study of dreams XV 8" x 10"

oils on canvas
FOR SALE
If you would like to purchase this painting, please send your bid rahinaqh@gmail.com

i hope my fellow bloggers have had their fill of the festivities and 2011 is a productive year for us all. here is my opening to 2011, something i have never tried before: an animal!!
i do love the idea of having a dog... you know, company while you paint rather like Don Gray's Winslow but a recent experience with a rather depressed anxious guinea pig has put that idea on hold;)

study of dreams XIV 12" x 16"

oils on canvas
SOLD

i posted this and took it off; readjusted it and re-posted it; stayed there for about a couple of hours and then took it off; now i've had the thumbs up from the buyer and all's well so here it is again... it's a daft life;)

study of dreams XIII 14" x 17"

oils on canvas
SOLD

just want to share some of my understanding in art whch may be useful/useless;)
i have often been told that it is important to keep painting no matter what. it is not enough to keep painting without vision. if i don't really know what i am challenging myself to do, then i'll just keep doing the same stuff and development won't take place. from my own experience when i have a clear goal eg turn from shadow to light on different areas of the face or balancing values etc, the first thing i have to do is to really understand the concept. for me that means studying and copying the old masters so that it is not just a cerebral exercise but a physical one in which i can feel and almost taste what the experienced artist acheived and it is easier to critique myself as i stand back and compare both versions.... rant over and out;)

study of dreams XII 18" x 24"

oils on canvas
FOR SALE
If you would like to purchase this painting, please send your bid rahinaqh@gmail.com

this series has been going a long time and will continue til i feel i have made a turn... hopefully it won't be back the way;)