Hotter inspiration

Its cold, drizzly and very dark in the mornings, so my mind is wandering to far away places. I do have a bit of a Bali obsession, and in particular Bali in the 30's/40's so I was excited to come across these great photos which I think are fabulously atmospheric and inspiring...they are certainly succeeding in taking me to somewhere that isn't a grey Camberwell!

 

All photos by Paul Spies and are from the Tropenmuseum in the Netherlands. you can see them here

Bali paintings

So as well as gardening I have aspirations around painting, and this year I have deemed to be an 'art' year and are currently taking Fridays off to focus in on this (and help remain sane with gardening and bees). This builds on a portrait painting class I have been doing on Monday evenings forever....whilst I love the class portraiture isn't really what I want to focus on, however it has been helping me get a grounding in oil painting and the more traditional side of things (my teacher was taught by someone who was taught by Millais so is very old school)

So I am trying to do my own paintings at the moment and these are two of the early ones springing from my Bali obsession, its culture, temples, carvings, people and plantlife.... as a side a good blog if you want a taste of what is going on is Stranger in Paradise

Both are temple gates...