Harlech Sunset

The painting above is one I did last week. I have done a larger painting of the same subject previously. In the previous painting the sun was actually coming through the gap in the hills on the peninsula (which is the Llyn Peninsula from Harlech Beach).


I unknowingly started singing the other morning and I got the usual response from Alex and it wasn’t pleasant. I am apparently tone deaf. I don’t know this for sure but everyone else assures me it is true. My singing and whistling sounds fine to me but I guess the response says it all. I like music, well most music. When I was young my mother used to take me to concerts in the park at the bandstand and even in the town hall. I believe this early exposure to classical music may have had a big influence on me because it’s the one form of music I don’t like. Even back then I would become bored and restless. Don’t get me wrong I can manage easy listening, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, or the Pastoral, but I am not into long, deep, and heavy works. I like music with a tune I can follow. At school I joined the choir to get out of French but I was thrown out after the choirmaster asked, “What is that terrible noise?”

Anyway where am I going with this? I have no ear for anything really. I can’t tell the difference between an Australian accent and a Scots accent. I do however have good visual recall. When I used to do exams I would remember definitions and such by recalling them written on the page. I could even remember whereabouts on the page they were. I don’t have a photographic memory. If I did I would have done better in my exams. I do remember most things visually, which obviously helps me to paint. This is even more ironic when I note that my grandfather went blind and my father had glaucoma when he died at a relatively early age.

I did a painting of a dockyard in Corfu today for a change. I can still visualise looking at the dockyard from the jetty in the hot sun. I did take some photographs of it, which I also used as a reference.