Oil Painting 33 - Fisherman on the Tame Valley Canal

We had left the Birmingham Main Line to explore the Tame Valley canal as we had friends in Perry Barr and wanted to experience travelling underneath Spaghetti Junction and travelling over the M5/M6 interchange. Big motorways contrasting with slow canals has a lot of appeal for me, the different heights, speeds and aesthetics, the fact that I only ever see these motorways from a cars view, usually annoyed, means I was keen to experience them from a completely different vantage point, gliding past them like some kind of existential being with a glass of wine.

I am well aware this is not everybody's cup of tea, which is probably why the canal was so empty, except for high numbers of fishermen. I guess less boats means more peace for the fish and the men trying to escape their families. One such bloke got featured in this study on a blazing hot day. I don't know much about him because we only exchanged a sentence in the 2 hours I was staring at him and he was staring at the water.

Again it was the human element that was the appeal, but visually the scene was striking with the blazing sun gleaming off his light clothing and cap spotlighting him against the dark background.

Oil Paintings 15 and 16 - Water study at Etruria Industrial Museum

These paintings were produced at the same time, flitting between the two small studies whilst both on the same easel. I was at Etruria Industrial Museum leading a workshop with the Orme Group of Artists, a group of artists who meet from Staffordshire and Cheshire. This is the second workshop I have ran with them, last year I met with about 12 of the artists and we painted on the platform at Crewe Railway Station, after I had given a small talk on the themes of movement and transport in my work.

Crewe Station 2011

This year Etruria Industrial Museum was chosen as it offered various subjects which I have explored and could encourage with confidence, the obvious being the canals and this current Year of the Boat project. The museum sits on the junction between The Cauldon Canal and the Trent and Mersey, it is a British Waterways office, hosts a fantastic canal festival and is surrounded by deep dramatic locks and some beautiful victorian Industrial architecture. I painted this subject when I had first started self employment as an artist -

Etruria Industrial Museum 2007

The other exciting subject at this location was the opportunity to paint a female blacksmith, a good friend Charis Jones, at work in her atmospheric Victorian forge. Charis is more an artist working with the medium of steel rather than a commercial blacksmith producing horeshoes and swords etc. You can see her website 'Sculpted Steel' here.

Last October I exhibited a body of work of small local North Staffordshire creative industries, painted at work, entitled 'Vis Unita Fortior' the motto of the city of Stoke on Trent. This included a painting of Charis. You can see all the work from the show here

The Female Blacksmith 2011

After a brief introduction talk about these bodies of work I left half the group with Charis pelting metal and ventured outside for some more water study in the sunshine. I knew I would be limited on time to produce refined oil paintings but fancied attempting bashing out some expressive studies. I am pleased with the results and the comparison with the work painted from exactly the same location nearly 5 years previously (see Etruria Industrial Museum 2007 above). When we all met at the end of the day,the Orme Group had produced some startling results, the entire group seems to flit between different mediums easily, rapidly exploring all forms of representing the canals and the moving subject of Charis.