New Year, new work

We are back living on Crossfields estate in Deptford. We managed to move in before Christmas after a few days staying at my parents where we enjoyed a bit of heavy snow!

The flat is small but tidy and suits us fine for the time being. The one thing that is hard to get used to is the sound of traffic 24/7. Maya nearly getting hit by a car running a red light and witnessing a phone mugging brings you down to earth with a bump! It has been great seeing loads of friends and going out. London has changed a lot in a short time.

The photos above and below are showing the progression of my latest painting featuring the lightning-struck eagle I saw before leaving Portugal. It was such a powerfully metaphorical image that I had to capture it visually. It took time finding the right eagle image (I will also be using images of it from memory). It is a collage of 4-6 different landscape photos from around where we were living at Moses. On the 3rd photo you can see the lightning cutting across the composition, opposing the diagonal of the treeline. The borders will have a dark, circular telescopic effect: really hard to paint! This will need a lot more work. I should add in the drawings and watercoulor studies too.

It has been a good first couple of weeks back at Welling school. I feel lucky to have got straight back into a job (albeit slightly different) at a funny time of year. The welcome from staff and students has verged on overwhelming! It feels wierd teaching in a media room (Nina's old room) but it has actually taken that long to adjust. Teaching film studies is great, though preparation and planning needs more work. The current unit is British film from a macro perspective and I've selected Clockwork Orange and Harry Brown. Taken a trip to the BFI on the south bank for a seminar on the evolution of Hollywood and the studio system. Fairly basic, but still really informative with clips from Dark Knight, Memento and the full viewing of Sherlock Holmes. The latter was surprisingly good. Took some getting used to seeing Holmes portrayed by RDJ on a occasions like a cross between Charlie Chaplain and Jackie Chan!