No. 102. The Difficult One Hundred and Second Painting [Jasmine]

This has been delicately scenting my studio for the past several weeks. In fact, our jasmine plant had been in flower throughout the summer, much to our surprise. We have two -one is thriving and the other sits there like the spindly runt of the litter, not giving much back.

I mean, you feed them, look after them when they fall and scrape their tendrils, you wait up for them, worried, when they're out till all hours at illegal flower shows and what do they do? Give you the silent treatment with their sullen and droopy fronds and treat the place like a bloody garden centre.

Well not any more. No more choices for lunch; 'Would you like compost or manure, dear?' I even found traces of rooting powder in the bathroom, for crying out loud. Things are going to change around here.

Oils on 8"x10" gessoed panel.

No. 101. Strawberries Loose

Summer is ancient history and autumn is just about over too, depending on your calendar. What am I supposed to paint? Sweet Chestnuts? Turnips? Seasonal vegetables -seasonal studies.

I stood in the garden, darkness all around and gazed back into the kitchen where my eldest girl was washing up the supper things, bathed in warm light. The whole scene was a nocturne, with the contrast between the warm interior and the cool darkened exterior, with the silhouette of the house against the Prussian blue night. So will this be my next large composition?

Nothing at all to do with this little study -but perhaps it'll feed into the doing of my next big painting.

Oils on 6"x 6" gessoed board.Costs €135 including frame [postage, packing included for customers in Ireland]

No. 100. The Four Courts

Ta-daaaahh...my hundredth daily painting! And what else should it be but a painting vastly different from my usual style -and not even in oils. Well; this is supposed to be a 'studies' journal and I am trying on new clothes all the time.

This particular raiment, I started last night while the telly was blaring away its usual nightly dollop of tish [that's an anagram]. I had intended to paint very loosely and also to play around with perspective. I found an old photograph I had taken back in the late eighties and worked from it. However, any resemblance to the photo ended there, my intention being to imbue my work with whatever intuition decides.

I also allowed myself a very varied palette. For example, instead of white, I used a colour called 'parchment' [how appropriate! It's a grey area...] in the Liquitex range. I've used Liquitex ever since calling into Kennedy's with the excellent English artist and illustrator, Paul Slater. Their paint does have a nice body and a broad range of colours unique to themselves. In there are: Brilliant Yellow Green; Light Green; Brilliant Blue, Cadmium Red Light and Cadmium Orange -neat from the tube.

I've always like to see pointillist work and it's a very pleasurable, forgiving technique too. It gives a romantic sun-drenched sheen which probably would be lost on many of those passing though its forbidding portals. If you don't like it, well...sue me.

Acrylics on 7"x 5" panel. Costs €135 including frame [postage, packing included for customers in Ireland]

99. Sweet Pepper Jar

What a day -trying to tie down all the students old and new for my art classes which start again next Tuesday. There has been little time to devote to my daily studies -this one is from a few weeks ago and I'm damned if I can remember what was going through my head during the painting of it. Perhaps, 'How can I stop myself from over-working it?' or, 'I could murder a cup of tea'.

On a positive note, I received a letter from someone in Worthing, Sussex about a sketchbook that I'd left behind me in an internet café about a year ago. I had been over in Blighty to see my Godmother as she was ailing. They'd tracked me down on t'internet [naturally] and I phoned them. What lovely people. They assumed that the sketchbook may be valuable to me and they were right. It's often that my sketchbooks contain pencil-work descriptions of my raw ideas and musings, before they get worked up into paintings or illustrations. They're where the fun is and I'm often proud of them -as long as they don't contain too many advertising sketches!

Thank you Lorraine and Josh of Carewise.

Painted on 7"x 5" panel. Costs €135 including frame [postage, packing included for customers in Ireland]

98. Three Amigos

Sometimes, in the evening when the house is quiet and when my beloved is working evenings, I can get a burst of energy and complete a quick study. Must be all the fructose I'm ingesting. Well; you can't wait too long with strawberries, can you? Especially if they've already been transported halfway around the globe before arriving chez MacSearraigh. Summer fruits indeed. Summer where? Mexico maybe. Or a plastic tunnel in Wexford. These ones even tasted of strawberry, which is good going compared to some of them.

Acrylic on 6" x 6" gessoed board. Costs €135 including frame [postage, packing included for customers in Ireland]

97. Cracked Jug

An acrylic moment. I did this specifically in acrylic so that I could use a special 'craquelure' varnish. Groovy.

Acrylic on 6" x 6" gessoed board. Costs €135 including frame [postage, packing included for customers in Ireland]

96. Formal Figs

This summer, we took our holidays in les Cevennes, a region of France noted for its ceramics [and for being the epicentre of the Huguenots and French Protestantism]. It''s a beautiful region equal to anything I've seen around Provençe and has a proud history of being non-conformist stretching back to the heretical Cathars. There happened to be a pottery festival in the village of Anduze where our campsite was and that's where we bought this deep, heavily glazed dish. The glaze is so dark it's almost black but as the pot is turned it reflects hues of alizarin crimson, sap green and ultramarine blue. To be honest, I could have filled a crate with desirable ceramic wares if I had the money and Michael O'Leary would let me on one of his planes, the brute.

Oils on 8" x 10" gessoed panel. Costs €320 including frame [postage, packing included for customers in Ireland]

95. Tomatoes Reflection

Loose tomatoes.

Oils on 6" x 6" gessoed board.Costs €190 including frame [postage, packing included for customers in Ireland]

94. Last of the Summer Fruits

God I miss the summer. Although we've been very luck recently with many fine days for this late in the season, winter is looming over us like a dismal economic future. Anyway; this study has been done for a while and was hanging around in my studio waiting for a frame. I'll be putting it [and many other daily paintings] into my stand in the RDS Art Fair. The Fair runs from the 13th -15th November. Hope to see you there...

Oils on 8" x 10" gessoed panel. Costs €240 including frame [postage, packing included for customers in Ireland]

93. Tropical Cocktail

Another vase bought from the local charity shop. I'll be able to open up my own one soon. I had my students painting lemons and limes all week and felt it was time to shake together my own cocktail instead of watching. I sat the objects on a silver platter, to get the reflections. As you can see, I've kept this one loose.

Oils on 8" x 10" gessoed panel. Costs €240 including frame [postage, packing included for customers in Ireland]