"Blazin' Rehearsal" start-to-finish reveal of oil painting by Paul Taggart

"Blazin Rehearsal"
from Paul Taggarts Heritage Collection

Original Oil Painting on Gesso Panel
also available as a Limited Edition Print

Image Size 7 inch x 9 inch [178mm x 228mm]



It is now well over two years since we first saw Blazin Fiddles in concert at the Carnegie Hall in Clashmore (a tiny hamlet neighbouring Carnegies beloved Highland home Skibo).

As happened with David Johnson at Oldham Theatre Workshop all those years ago, we once again instinctively felt drawn to explore the chance of chronicling the work of Bruce MacGregor and Blazin Fiddles as well as their love for traditional Highland music in general.

Little did we realise that this first and brief hello would lead to the many projects on which we are working in collaboration with Bruce and his fellow musicians.

However, a further year passed before we found ourselves making arrangements to meet up with a friend for lunch at Bogbain Farm, not only the MacGregor family home, but site of Bruces business venture, Bogbain Adventure & Heritage Farm and the chance to say hello properly to Bruce. This in turn led to our enjoying his first ever Open Session a few weeks later and the rest, as they say, is history kicking off with the miniature oil painting Their Musical Heritage Shared (now in a private collection in Moscow) - the first in the Paul Taggart Heritage Collection of paintings, chronicling the heritage of life in the Highlands of Scotland.

We had to wait even further still to finally get the first Blazin Fiddles subject and then it was only a chance remark by Bruce that led to it. For as far as Bruce was concerned, how could their casual band rehearsal in one of the rooms at Hootenannys in Inverness be of possible charm for the Heritage collection but we did pop along to the July afternoon rehearsal and
Blazin Rehearsal is the result. For it is times like these that represent the heritage and culture of a place and its people.

Here we see the band with its newly welcomed member Anna Massie, seated beside Andy Thorburn on keyboard. To her left is Allan Henderson and to his Bruce MacGregor, with Catriona Macdonald and Iain MacFarlane completing the arc of this composition. Each a renowned musician in their own right; banded as Blazin Fiddles, a tour de force. The rehearsal pulling together the finishing touches before they started their tenth anniversary UK tour an anniversary that had never been envisaged.

For as Bruce will tell you The band came together not as a band, but as a one-off project for the Highland festival. It was an attempt to showcase the particular styles and voices of the Highlands and Islands fiddle. There was only meant to be a couple of tunes to be played together at the end of the night, but it all went mad and were still on tour nearly twelve years down the line.

The two greatest challenges of this painting were first its light and then its perspective. Backlit subjects have always excited me. To outline a figure in sharp light is dramatic, but it does then throw the masses of the subject into deep shadow. Within the shadow there is a limited range of values (darks and lights) and they are usually soft and difficult to define. But the resultant glow of light in the air, when it finally works, is worth all of the intensive effort devoted to achieving this.

The perspective of the room, along with the chairs, tables, floorboards and windows, form a grid on which all the figures must sit comfortably. Andys keyboard and the tables produce very powerful diagonals, which sweep the eye up into the corners of the painting. To pull the viewers attention back, the windows, bar and background were kept perfectly horizontal, to create a stable platform on which the figures could be fixed.

I treated the tables in the centre as a miniature still-life in its own right and as such transformed them to engage the eye. The confusion of four tables was reduced to two on which I could carefully place fiddles not in use.

The most difficult areas of all were the shadows at the base of the table and beneath the keyboard. Essential as contrasts to the light they had not to attract the eye and required glaze after glaze of colour to achieve their correct depth.

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[artistpaultaggart]

Greetings Stushie,

You could be featured in a live, on-the-spot painting by Paul. Come along to Bogbain Farm (Bruce MacGregor's place, as in Blazin' Fiddles).

See our channels A Brush With Music and Art Workshop With Paul to see 2videos from one of the Open Sessions at Bogbain, where Paul is at his easel capturing the afternoon as it happens.

See the paintings produced to date on our A Brush With Music group on FaceBook.

Best wishes,

Eileen Tunnell

Paul Taggart's Life and Business Partner

[N8wood1]

hey everyone!

i just uploaded a video of an oil painting that took me 5 months to finish.

i would like to get some feedback on it. so if everyone that reads this could check it out and let me know what you think it would help me out! the video is called -- monumental oil painting- from start to finish. thanks everyone!

[MrMrshero]

Wonderful!

[stushiearefab]

That is just amazing. I would love this guy to do a painting of my band =) You have a special talent.