About

Well – I am back!

This blogging has taken me on a little journey from here to blogspot back to wordpress in a different name altogether because this blog was clashing with my consulting blog – AND – then to my own website gallery and blog.  But I really enjoy the community here at WordPress so I have imported most of my postings back here.  Phew!

So how will this fit in with my other site?  Well I don’t really know.   I have a feeling this will be my messy place while the other will present a more cleaned up view.  I really don’t know though.  What I do know is that I want to do a whole lot of new stuff this year.  I have bought a compressor for my airbrush and I have a technique for framing my large watercolours.  I have at least one restaurant in my home town who have agreed to hang my work for sale.  And I have a dream of decorating surfboards – sheesh – where is that going to go?

So if you are visiting here for the first time or you have graciously followed my wanderings and are back here with me, welcome to you.  Thank you for dropping in.  I cannot promise that this is where I will stay but this feels nice and comfy.  Who was the dude who sang ” I was bor-horn under a wandering star…  ”  heh heh – what can I say…

What is this passion for painting?  I am not certain why I am drawn to watercolour as I am.   All I know is that  when I sit in front of a clean sheet of paper all the cares of living melt away and I am absorbed by mixing colours, the shape of a brush, a bead of colour and the smell of wet watercolour paper (usually Arches).  And when I don’t paint for a short time I feel a sense of loss.   And sometimes I get to create really beautiful watercolours.

I largely ignored my gift for the first 30 years of my life.   I lived for a year with  a Dutch family in Fishhoek while I studied.  I remember a small watercolour hanging in a little used room that I loved to look at.  I once took a sketch book and paints to Cape Point where I created two little paintings.   I still remember the thrill of sitting and painting in that beautiful place.  And when The pressure of studying for a totally non-art related degree swamped out this part of me.  I  believe the greatest part of the gift is an overwhelming desire to paint.  When I had completed a degree I went to work in Swakopmund, Namibia.  There I decided to take classes with Nicholas Galloway.  I still remember riding through the dark misty streets of Swakop on a high after each art lesson, my work still taped to a bread-board.  I have been painting watercolours for 20 years which sounds like a such a long time.  Unfortunately this time has been punctuated with long periods when my brushes have lain dry and my paints have shrivelled in the pallette.

And so started an exhilarating and frustrating journey.  I have worked so hard.  But what joyful work!  And there have been real breakthroughs.  I have learnt to see the world in a whole new way and am still learning to paint what I want to show.  I have held one solo exhibition, in Swakopmund and an exhibition with a group of sculptors.

There have been long periods when I have not painted as I have focussed on my “work”.  Once I didn’t pick up a brush for five years.  This is just not acceptable to me.  Now I try, with some success, to balance my time between painting, a consulting business and family.

This blog is about presenting my work to the world.  I like to tell the story of the painting and sometimes a slice of my thoughts.

So welcome.  Please feel free to page around.  Download paintings for your own viewing but please don’t print or use them without contracting with me.

It is my intention to sell my work and am still figuring the best way to do this.  In the meantime I have agreed approaches with people on e-mail and have sent work to various places around the world.

In my other life I facilitate workshops and coach in the corporate environment.  If you like you can read about that on my website:  StrategyWorks.

Stephen