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“Many people browsing on artgallery.co.uk, are probably thinking about a
particular wall in their house and how a painting might look if placed there.
What size would work best? Do I want colours that are similar to my décor or a
bolder statement? What style should I go for?
I can't help with those, I'm
afraid. (I don't know your wall.) But as a painter, I use a wall next to our
dining room table to help me judge work in progress - sometimes deciding, on a
good day, that it's moved from 'in progress' to 'finally finished.'
I paint
trees in acrylics, and like to build up the paint in layers. I start with a
strong base colour to avoid those pinpricks of white showing through that
distract from the colour. My aim is to capture all the different shapes and
character that trees can have, but also to keep the abstract elements (strong
colour, texture, mark-making) to the fore.
My working method involves re-drawing
with paint and allowing previous colours to show through, giving a certain
charge. I paint outside, working quickly in any one session. I have to avoid
working too much into wet paint or the colours will turn muddy.
The end of a
session is where the wall comes in. I will often bring in a current canvas to
hang on a couple of expectant nails, evicting the more permanent painting for a
while. By bringing it inside and on the wall, I find it helps me to judge what
to do next for two reasons.
Firstly, it gives a painting a proper focus. Having
white space around it means that I can judge its edges, and see the colours more
clearly than when it's on a paint-splattered table or propped against a tree.
Conversely, it's when you're not concentrating on the painting at all that you
can judge it. When you see it unawares out of the corner of your eye, or first
thing in the morning in a different type of light.
My favourite is late at night
with a glass of wine. Sometimes you can suddenly see its merits, even when the
painting that day has been a struggle. Other times, you realise one area isn't
working, or a pair of colours jar. Perhaps a bold colour just needs a little
softening.
The best feeling is when a painting suddenly works; you see different colour
combinations, textures, your eyes keep getting drawn back to it, all the
decisions you took along the way seem irrelevant because the painting just seems
as if it couldn't have been any other way. And you think: I might just leave
that one on the wall.
Richard Hearn's art gallery »
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