Wednesday, July 12, 2017

On the easel | Irish landscapes







The first land-(and sea-)scape is a recent commission, which prompted me to paint another one in the same format. I look at the first one, and certain elements and colours make me think of the writer Ali Smith, whose Desert Island Discs I was listening to while working on the painting and whose book How to be Both I read a few weeks ago.

These formed associations can be strong and lasting - the painting or drawing will bring back memories of whatever I was listening to at the time, down to flashes of sentences. That's why I am selective in what I listen to in the studio (no radio apart from Lyric FM) or work in silence.

Which makes me think, my students have no choice - I can only hope that my playlists of 'mellow music for the art classes' (the general consensus seems to be that background music is desired) do not offend anybody's audio/visual synthesising.


2 comments:

  1. I love the top painting! So gorgeous. The colours are beautiful in both. Excellent work! x

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    1. Thank you so much for the nice feedback, Holly! And apologies for the late reply - I hadn't seen this, as the e-mail notifications sometimes go into a separate folder, and the last two weeks seem to have evaporated... Hope you are well x

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