Dear friends,
It's been a busier than usual six months! By January this year, my partner Marian and I had already been tentatively browsing the market for a house on a couple of occasions prior to Christmas, and once the holidays ended, we took up the search in earnest. After carefully viewing 2 or 3 dozen properties, we'd narrowed it down to a short list, and then one in particular had hit us in just that certain way... Then, nervously, came the offer, but which was duly accepted, opening up the joyful but harrowing OMG process of preparing for the transition and getting a mortgage.
After the ensuing scramble to work out the details of combining our two households, plus a studio, we are now, at last 'gathered in', and slowly managing the business of determining where all the stuff should go. This is a lot harder than it might otherwise be (or have been years ago), since both of us are/were parents (she of four, I of three), which tends to mean you function to a degree as warehouses for the things said offspring don't want/need, but which cannot in good conscience be discarded, or is of sentimental value, etc, etc.
At any rate, the worst is over, and we are now enjoying our first spring and summer in the new house, located in an older part of this community. The town of Bradford is about 75 minutes north of Toronto's downtown, and about 40 minutes northwest of Markham, my former community. Inspired by and newly appreciating Upper York Region (as it's known) in the two years plus I've known Marian, and recognizing that her roster of clientele requires proximity to the immediate district, it didn't take much to persuade me to move this further distance out of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), serene as it is with rolling hills, valleys, towns, villages, and farms.
I think for a long time I felt drawn to such surroundings, and to a degree Markham provided that with its open country to the immediate east. Now I've taken it the final step, and I'm hopeful that the change will be therapeutic without inadvertently signaling any less of a commitment to continuing my level of productivity. Much the opposite, this is consciously intended to reinvigorate my creative energies, refresh my spirits, and provide a more integrated creative base for the future.
Continued Output
Despite the demands of moving, for the past six months my output of artwork has not slowed down much, although the recession has been felt, and some projects were self-assigned. Within the framework of freelance work, the constant dilemma is that despite the relative freedom to follow one's own muse, the pressure to stay engaged with the continuum of commissioned work is very strong, and we artists typically have difficulty with something as benign as a proper vacation! So despite the constant attention to the house sale and the logistics of the three stage move, I kept to a timetable of painting and drawing to prepare work for the exhibition in April titled Lands of Enchantment, held as our other exhibitions have been, in Moreton in Marsh, Gloucestershire, then on to other projects afterwards.
Prior to the exhibition, which again I attended and enjoyed thoroughly, I was able to finish the demanding private commission called Thus Came Aragorn, depicting the difficult subject of the arrival of Aragorn as he lands at The Harlond in the Black Ships of the Corsairs. This was quickly followed (in the nick of time) by The Glittering Caves, a fresh take on the work I did in the 90s titled The Glittering Caves of Aglarond. Both works had pride of place at the exhibition, along with the new version, painted late last year, of the iconic scene The Fair Valley of Rivendell.
Sketching The Hobbit
In September of last year, I was in a position to paint a new Hobbit scene derived from a piece of decorative landscape I did some years ago for The Hobbit board game. It is titled Eagles to the Carrock. Incorporating aerial landscape and featuring the Company riding the eagles to the great rock beyond the Misty Mountains, it added a dramatic new scene to my output. This spring, Sophisticated Games, makers of The Hobbit game, expressed interest in using the illustration for a new box cover, but unfortunately it is/was the wrong shape. I suggested creating a whole new cover piece, and produced a series of thumbnails of various Hobbit scenes in the process.
One requirement was that this new scene not feature the dragon Smaug, in order to emphasize the more benign image the book evokes. After considering a number of possibilities, we agreed it should be a more tailored verson of the eagles scene so favoured, this time set above the Misty Mountains just after the Company are borne aloft. We're calling it simply Bilbo and the Eagles, and it was completed in May.
Taking the set of Hobbit sketches a little further, I worked a small number of them up into colour sketches, revisiting scenes I've tried in the past such as The Riddle Game, Conversation with Smaug, or Bilbo and the Trolls. Others were developed into pencil sketches of varying degrees of sophistication, and I hope in the months ahead to return to them.
Finally, last year I painted a series of small, sketchy works under the theme of Tolkien's Dwarves for a colleague and friend. Four colour works and two in pencil were done celebrating the theme of Dwarf history, and that first series featured scenes from the pre-history of The Hobbit, such as Thrain Discovers the Arkenstone or Thorin and Gandalf at Bree. I am now continuing that series with another set of artworks in the same vein, having completed Durin I Discovers The Three Peaks.That brings us to the present time.
In closing, I should add that within the past couple of summers, along with Marian, I've returned to sporadic plein air sketching sessions. I feel I want to develop that side of my output, and the surrounding rural splendour should provide ample inspiration. Just to the south at the edge of town there is a sprawling geographical feature known as The Holland Marsh, a large wetland drained and cultivated by (mainly) Dutch and Portuguese settlers in the early 20th century (their descendants are still the backbone of the community). Besides having been for a long time a favourite place for me, it is now close enough to enjoy routinely, filled as it is with hundreds of vegetable farms stretching into the distance, bounded by wooded hills. The old workers' shacks and farm buildings, and discarded equipment, plus the system of irrigation canals green with duckweed under changing skies, offer an abundance of picturesque inspiration. I am looking forward to exploring some of these possibilities as I continue to express my Tolkienian and other themes alongside.
Posted by Ted on July 10, 2009
