With Daises (Original, Signed and Framed)

Painting Size: 90cm x 60cm

Mixed Media: Windsor and Newton Watercolours | Schmincke Horadam Watercolours | Windsor and Newton Designers Gouache

I am beginning to feel as though I want to paint people, something I have  rarely done.  I want to find a way that grips something important about the subject. 

Contemporary artists like Cecily Brown, Peter Doig and Angie Kang really inspire me, as do artists like Egon Schiele, Emil Nolde and Amedeo Modigliani.  They seem to capture something sensitive and visceral in their subjects.  If I can somehow capture how both subject and landscape (combined together) move me in some way, that is something I'd like to explore. This is my first attempt at that. 

Whilst walking from Arundel to Amberley my companion and I came across a field of daisies, big, tall and waving in a strong breeze.  The light of the late afternoon was very warm coloured, dappled and golden. The sound of the branches moving and leaves rustling was somehow refreshing, like listening to waves at the beach. 

There were poplar trees on one side and those wonderful full crowned, summertime trees arcing along the other side of the field; which I've tried to capture here, skirting the edge towards us, creating shadow, cut only with a long slice of bright light falling all the way across the back edge. 

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It's very important to me to talk about my feelings towards things, whether that's something those who might stumble upon my artwork like or dislike, that in itself is irrelevant to me. 

Art and writing about my work is a personal therapy of sorts.  I've spoken many times about how in childhood we are simply more immersed in life, and that my painting and reason for doing it, is to try and return and restore that state back inside of me.  A writer I like very much, Karl Ove Knausgaard, puts it like this:

'This is because children don’t see the world, don’t observe the world, don’t contemplate the world, but are so deeply immersed in the world that they don’t distinguish between it and their own selves. Not until that happens, until a distance appears between what they are and what the world is, does the question arise: what makes life worth living?'

Noticing when your heart is lifted, and allowing yourself just momentarily to be immersed in that gratefulness, to allow a little magic to kindle - that is what makes life worth living.  This painting is one of those precious moments for all those reasons, my only hope is that I've managed to capture just a speck of that. 

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I provide framing consultation for each original painting, the cost includes that bespoke service.  This can be done in person at my gallery or remotely if that isn't possible.  I ship original paintings (all with art glass) throughout the UK and internationally. If you have any questions please fee free to contact me.