|
q Stora Salvhallen, Göteborg, Pen and wash 420 mm x 300 mm This sketch was done on a double A4 page in my sketch book while seated outside a café. I fell in love with this fabulous turn of the century architectural masterpiece and wanted to show the towering domed copper roof and the jewel like iron window frames. In this instance, perspective is used to give the impression of scale and depth while accuracy and detail is implied in the windows and the brain is left to fill in the rest. The figures are essential to give vitality to an otherwise lifeless scene and were taken either |
|
“ I always take a sketch book with me” |
|
|
|
p Boardwalk. Soft Pastel. 200mm x 270 mm A fast site sketch done during a delivery cruise out of Ellös. Smögen has a gorgeous harbour which is summed up for me by the boardwalk on either side where it clings to the glaciated granite land, the sea slurping between the piles and the rough sawn wooden buildings paint soaked in traditional Swedish colours ( Farrow and Ball now think them trendy! ) I used soft pastel for this sketch to remind me of the |
|
s we sailed up the Morbihan’s winding channel towards Vannes for the first time this summer, I was surprised to find that a large white water tower looked |
|
familiar. I soon remembered sketching it over forty years earlier while on a camping holiday with my parents. What really surprised me was that even then my inter |
|
est in art was there under the surface and even more fascinated when we got home to find I still had the sketch in the back of a drawer. |
|
I am often asked “how long did this or that painting take you?” I suppose the answer is forty years preparation and a few hours painting but the learning process never stops and takes in every stimulus we experience throughout our lives, that brilliant golden light at the end of the day, the colours of a stone just under the water, the shock of the unexpected or the fascination of an unanswered question. |
|
|
|
Why I paint |
|
I have to paint for the buzz. For me it is a bit like magic the way an image comes out of the page and I get very excited when it works well, also there is enormous pleasure in going back to the work for a renewed “Wow” weeks or years later. But why does it work, how can a sketch or a painting do something for the viewer – how can it press the button as they say? I believe the only way is for the artist to say something special about the scene, to capture a single moment, catch the atmosphere, the heightened senses and connect with the specta |