It ‘s the 30th of December and like lots of other people I am considering how this last year has gone.

I remember , near the beginning I came up with a new year’s resolution – to love, sing and dance.

I meant to apply that to all my life including my painting.

It sounded like fun , unlike  -get more exercise-sort out your relationships-work more hours- practice drawing more- try 100 new ways of making money-keep your studio tidy-learn italian for an hour every day- spend less- etc -etc. (I could carry on and on and…….)

I think I have followed my resolution – more or less.

It helped that I began the year by painting musicians and dancers in the street. But it got more complicated as I tried to apply these three words to other paintings.

I did it though, by writing what I wanted to achieve in each painting before I started and including  LOVE – needed to love what I was doing , even if it meant in a commission finding something loveable. SING I usually applied to the colours and have deliberately tried to make the colours sing by various means. Sometimes by being brighter and other times by using a limited palette so that its more  er- harmonious. And DANCE is what I did to relax so that my style became a little freer or when I thought I couldn’t do it and especially when I sold another painting.

This theme has transformed my life this year.

It is also the first year that I have mostly only painted or drew  subjects I wanted to- which is mainly people.  I am half way through drawing 50 people from Pisticci   http://studiobasilicata.wordpress.com and the  main reason I haven’t finished yet is that I have been so busy painting commissioned portraits.

I recently finished my biggest family portrait so far – where I took the reference photos, chose the arrangement, experimented with a new smoother canvas and tested myself by making hands really important in it. It was a mammoth effort and I wondered if I would ever get it finished.

But I love it (the family love it), the colours  sing  and you should have seen me dance the day it was finally finished.

These are some of the portraits I have painted this year.