2 first paintings

So, Ive been working away and struggling to paint vast landscapes on boards of 10 by 12 inches and less. Ive been trying to avoid the obvious which is hard with the beauty of the nature here. I think I am interested in painting without painting, so to speak, using brush marks rather than brush strokes. I want to rely on intuition rather than true reproduction.
What I would like to achieve eventually is translating visual items by brush marks, so that the way the mark feels translates as what it should represent. Something like that. Painting as problem solving. To be honest it has been such a long time since I last painted that Im doing the thinking retrospectively. Nuff said.
Apologies for the bad image quality, Ive been reduced to cropping etc with iphoto as I dont have photoshop on my laptop. We are planning on having an open studio on Friday 26th of September for the village of Skagastrond, so Id better get moving and make some good work. It feels so great to get up in the morning and only have painting to do. What a luxury!
Other than that, Ive made the discovery of lamp oil. As there is no white spirit of linseed oil available around here, Hrafnhildur (the woman in charge of the residency) tipped me on using lamp oil. Her mother has been using it for years and apparently its great. Its what Ive used for these two oil paintings, and so far its pretty cool. It makes oil painting as easy as water colour. Basically you dont need to mix it with white spirit, you just use it on its own, and then you also use it to clean the brushes. I was very sceptical, but its great! It dries the same as usual, and there are no fumes. I dare not look at the contents, my work will probably fall to pieces in two days... If it works out though, I definitely will not go back to white spirit. Long live painting without headaches....
Thats it for today. xxxx