Friday, 12 August 2011

Burnt Umber

These small works on paper are loosely based on images from my local suburban Melbourne environment or near my family home in rural New Zealand.

I recently began producing water colour paintings in response to familiar, everyday settings chosen without too much deliberation in order to establish an ongoing, intuitive process.




While walking in my neighbourhood I am sometimes struck by the beauty of something quite ordinary - a patch of sky framed by architecture or a tangle of weeds in lane way for instance.
It's the feeling of that sort of brief momentary vision that I am trying to convey.






I am frequently attracted to certain things such as signs of aging or decay. Although I do not use burnt umber in every painting , since I am trying to keep things pared back in these works this pigment often seems to suffice. It has a lovely silty quality as does Payne's gray.




The landscapes are more about the memory of places I know well, where water, land and sky are the dominant features.