LEMONS

russelldorey • Oct 18, 2020

I like painting lemons and the best ones are the big lumpy lemons that you don’t find in supermarkets (a friend went to Brighton to buy lemons for me a month ago). Painting yellow is unlike painting anything else. I can’t build the forms methodically and analytically. The only way that I can finish paintings of lemons is to get lost in them and muddle through to a resolution that I don’t understand how I achieved.

A few years ago I made three paintings of the same simple Still Life; lemons in a wooden bowl with a couple of books.

( Lemons and Books I. oil on canvas. 20″ x20″ Cat 427 )

This first painting had the objects in the centre of the canvas. After that I pushed everything against the left side of the composition so I had a lot of empty space. I like empty space in paintings.

( Lemons and Books II. oil on canvas. 16″ x 16″ cat 429 )

I sold two of those paintings and gave one to my girlfriend. Some time later she saw sense and she left me. A couple of years later she sent me an email saying that she didn’t want my paintings any more, would I like them back? I replied immediately that even though we weren’t together I had thought that she would always like the paintings but yes, if she didn’t want them I would like them back. Within minutes I got another email “Sorry they went to someone else”. That has always seemed like a really shitty thing to do.

( Lemons and Books III. oil on canvas. 14″ x18″ )

Someone contacted me recently asking if I still had the same painting of lemons, the one I gave away. She had found it on Instagram. I said that I didn’t and I told her the story. I happened to be painting another composition with lemons but she said that it was on that original painting that she had set her heart… so, I tracked down one of the other paintings, one that I had sold, and I went to London to borrow it back for a few weeks and I am making, not exactly a copy, but another version.

( unresolved. Lemons and Books. oil on canvas. 18″ x 20″ )

This is my new version as it looked a few days ago. I’m still talking to the Instagram woman and I am hoping that she’ll be interested if and when I get it finished.  

HOW MUCH DOES SIZE MATTER ?

by russelldorey • 19 Oct, 2020
In response to a recent post on my Facebook Group (‘Russell Dorey’s Studio’) about my imminent exhibition (at THE CROWN, All Saints Street, Hastings Old Town, East Sussex, TN34 3BN. From 17th NOvember to the 31st December 2020) my friend Gill commented that she loved the little painting of a single pear. She’s right; it’s […]

BEING BORING

by russelldorey • 17 Aug, 2019
Every week I cycle to Rye, up through Ore, down Battery Hill to Pett Level and then along the coast and through the bird sanctuary to Rye Harbour. It’s a fabulous ride and most of it is downhill or on the flat. I meet my Friday lunch buddy and then I peddle home, inland through […]

AFTER POUSSIN

by russelldorey • 04 Feb, 2019
( My Massacre of the Innocents.  Oil on canvas.  34” x 29” ) Over a year ago I began working on my own version of a painting by Nicholas Poussin, the Massacre of the Innocents which he painted between 1625 and 1631. It is a complex painting, a riot of shapes and of colours and it […]

TROUBLE

by russelldorey • 05 Dec, 2018
My father wrote a lot of letters to politicians and to the press. In these letters he would rant about a number of diverse issues, so his letters were not always succinct. I think that he wrote so many letters about the many subjects that exercised him that he may have relied upon the text […]

GLASSES

by russelldorey • 25 Nov, 2018
Someone wrote in my Facebook group (Russell dorey’s studio): “I’ve seen somewhere a piece of your work including a pair of spectacles. Would you ever use the same ‘prop’ twice?” ( Only a heap of broken images. 32″ x 38″ cay 569 ) Yes. I would and I do. I’m like a dog with a […]

DOUBT

by russelldorey • 19 Nov, 2018
When I was younger, so much younger than today I never needed anybody’s help in any way. But now these days are gone and I’m not so self assured… I’ve been looking at this painting. I wrote a post about it when it was finished some months ago, but I’ve already finished it so many […]

NONSENSE

by russelldorey • 07 Nov, 2018
It’s still the afternoon of day one and I’m still in Cezanne’s beautiful studio at Les Lauves. I am jealous of that studio. A little French woman insisted on breaking into my reverie giving a terrible talk in not very good English. There were some interesting facts and some of it was rubbish but some […]

L’ATELIER LES LAUVES

by russelldorey • 07 Nov, 2018
Ten minutes before Cezanne’s Studio reopened after lunch I was waiting on the road outside. Cezanne had his studio built on the hill, LES LAUVES, north of the town in 1901. The studio was then the only building beside the track that is now a busy road with houses and flats along it as Aix […]

A PILGRIMAGE TO AIX-EN-PROVENCE

by russelldorey • 07 Nov, 2018
One month ago I left my house obscenely early one morning in the pitch black and plodded down to Hastings station to catch the first train of the day to Gatwick airport. I didn’t see anyone or a single car moving and I didn’t really believe that the 5.08 train would run. There were however […]

SOUVENIR DE PARIS.

by russelldorey • 03 Aug, 2018
(SOUVENIR DE PARIS oil on canvas. 24″ x 28″) Eight years ago I was in Paris sleeping in Patti Smith’s bed (she wasn’t in it and anyway that’s another story). In the Musee Rodin I used my phone to take a photo of this female torso, a Greek or Roman sculpture. When I had the photograph […]
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