While I have been away I produced some small 10″ x 7″ watercolour sketches based on my location drawings. I used russian watercolours which are really excellent in quality and have an amazing intensity of colour. I find working with watercolour immensely satisfying and enjoyable.
When I look back on them I feel they have an uplifting liveliness to them that surprised me as my sketches often have a moody sombre quality. The paintings remind me a little of Raoul Dufy‘s painting of the Mediterranean.
Raul Dufy
I am hoping that the MA group exhibition is now up at the art school and looking good. Below is the abstract that I put with my piece as a reminder of what my practice is about.
Genius Loci: Spirit of Place:
I am stimulated initially by landscape. I concentrate purely on one view across the River Humber this gives me the freedom to focus intensely on my main concerns: atmosphere, light, the elements and scale of nature. The huge, panoramic yet minimal quality of this landscape exaggerates these components leaving only the thin and distant horizon line to focus on.
I work in an immediate and spontaneous way to capture fleeting atmospheric changes in the landscape surrounding me. I prefer to sketch on location as it translates and records my direct emotional response in a more fluid way. Later I take the drawings into the studio and react to them impulsively through a variety of media on different surfaces.
The pure joy of the creative process is my primary inspiration. I let the processes and media lead me as I enjoy the unpredictability of the media and my impulsive response to it.
I came across these by chance following the “watercolour” tag. I like the simplicity and sparing nature of these sketches.