New Paintings

I've begun work on a couple of new paintings. The larger of the two is a 70cm square canvas and it's to be an alpine mountain painting of the Barre des Ecrins, a mountain I climbed on last summer. I was talking to Catia about the square format, which is slightly unusual (rectangles which are wider than they are high are 'landscape format' and they are the norm for landscape painting).

I said to her that my mountain paintings often seem to fit more easily in a square. Unlike flatter landscapes that seem to recede from the viewer in progressively thinner and more horizontal bands, the space in a mountain landscape is interrupted by the vertical wall of the mountain. The mountain face looms more claustrophobically to block the space to fill the square view and the eye is drawn up in a series of diagonals. For me as a mountaineer the 'normal' (easiest) routes to climb these mountains often follow a sequence of zig-zagging lines from the broad base to the summit. I hope that the viewers eyes follow the painted planes on the snow as they follow one of the many possible climbing lines.
In this painting the summit catches the morning sunrise; a golden goal that draws you upwards. The morning after I watched this sunrise and photographed it for my painting I was on the mountain, crossing the boundary from the cold nightshade into the golden sunshine after several hours of walking up the steepening glaciers.
I thought I'd give you a look at the painting in progress and I'll show it again when I think it may be finished.

Summer evenings on Stanage Edge

Managed to get out onto Stanage last night. However many times I go out in the evenings to climb after work I never get tired of it or take it for granted. To live just a few miles from the best climbing crag in Britain is a privilege. Tim, Fidel and I drove out and were joined by Vic who brought Allessandro (sic) who's staying with Vic in order to be tortured on just such an occasion. We were after a few photographs of Allessandro climbing for him to take back to Italy as a warning reminder of how dangerous it can be to holiday in Sheffield.
Here he is climbing Leaning Buttress Indirect.
For more photos click here.

Catching up with last week's climbing

Played truant last Thursday heading off to North Wales with Tim for the day, starting early at 6:00am from Sheffield. We were hoping to go up to Dinas Mot in the Llanberis pass to climb 'Nexus' there but arrived to threatening weather. A breakfast conference at Pete's Eats seemed the best idea. An hour later, loaded down with a good breakfast we headed off to Gogarth, on Anglesey for some proper sea cliff climbing.
I always forget how intimidating it is taking the amusingly named 'easy way down' to the main cliff. We were heading to 'Cordon Bleu' which climbs across the southern part of the crag.
Although it starts easily enough (as vertical grass climbing goes) it does begin downwards, without much protection and a bit of loose rock here and there, so I found the first pitch quite tense. The climbing after that is wonderful, poised on positive holds high above the blue sea.
Tim got to lead the hard pitch (which wasn't as hard as it's grade suggested) before I wandered off onto a Maltese variation on the next pitch, having lost my way in a wide groove. Here's Tim weeding his way across ledges on the first pitch. (Click https://picasaweb.google.com/joemallia6/CordonBleuHVS5b for more pictures)

Art Exhibition

Had a busy weekend down at Melbourne, near Derby, helping at the launch of a new art gallery (http://www.mycapturedimages.co.uk/index.asp). Debra organised a private view of the first exhibition on Friday night so I went down to help hang the show on Friday. Given that the place was a building site just a few days ago she'd worked wonders to get it ready and the gallery, with its new exhibition, really looked good by the evening. Several of my paintings are showing, including this large acrylic of Stanage Edge, everyone's favourite climbing crag.

I'm also going to be teaching some courses in photography and painting at The Gallery starting in July and September respectively. Do call in to have a look at the show if you're anywhere near Derby in the coming weeks.