A couple of paintings past have found new homes! I’ve had these on my studio wall for some time now and have enjoyed them immensely so now they’ve got new walls to adorn and the love is shared!
FLOWN THE COOP!
Tag Acrylic Painting
BLUE BEACH HOUSE
A favourite topic of mine, beach side huts and houses. I’ve started formally with some loose perspective guidelines and added some acrylic spray can paint to remove some of the initial white of the gesso! Acrylic on hand made canvas panel, 13 x 24″ in old money!
The second in a year and hopefully the end to my lull. This painting is of The Tarka Trail, in North Devon, as it passes through Instow. It was a humid sunny day when I sketched this and was taken by the blue beach house and the red poppies. When ever I see red poppies it always reminds me of childhood memories at Instow. As usual I will sit on this painting for a while then make the final corrective adjustments! Al
TO START ON A FAMILIAR SUBJECT
We’ll at least a canvas is up now for the first session in SIX months! I haven’t even picked up a brush since January so this one should be an interesting return!
Latest update this morning I decided enough is enough and decided to paint no matter what happens. I’ve chosen a familiar subject of the now removed board walk at crow point and will be adding the final flight of a Hercules C-130 which have now been taken out of commission. This painting is now complete and hopefully I will be back to more original paintwork soon! Al
KYNANCE COLOURS
The start of 2023. The completed acrylic painting 820 x 400mm above is of Kynance Cove from a sketch made in November 2022. My wife and I were staying in Mullion Cove for my Birthday weekend and made our way here. There were no tourists as the weather was very changeable but once we go down to the beach we were surprised to see that the tearooms were open. We sat on the benches and this is the view we enjoyed for an hour or so with it’s incredible light illuminating the sea.
I’ve tried to keep this painting looser than normal as it was just an exercise in removing the white of the canvas gesso and promoting some sense of light to dark contrasts. From the beginning I reference the original sketch and start to make sense of the correct sky tones and highlights on the sea. I must say there is a certain honesty to my original sketches perhaps my plain air sketch books should be shown.
Now finished I leave it on an easel for a week or so and make final adjustments. As usual the Titanium White appears bolder that it actually is when photographed. Al
LEE BAY
A smaller composition 10 x 20″ just to keep my motivation going whilst I plan my latest large scale project! Image painted from a recent visit to Lee Bay with my wife for a glass hunting forage. My wife Donna makes sea glass jewellery under the name Flotsam & Then Some! We had the usual beer and lunch at The Grampus pub then ventured onto Sandy Cove, for a rare afternoon we had the beach to ourselves and we felt like we were on a deserted island.
WHITE DATSUN.
I came across this painting of mine from a few years ago on another website and got to look at it through fresh eyes. The sentiment of it’s original concept still moves me today!
Acrylic on 36 x 36″ canvas.
Adela Legarreta Rivas 1979.
Original image by Enrique Metinides.
The tragic scene in my painting was originally captured by photographer Metinides and is of Adela Legarreta Rivas, a Mexican journalist. Rivas had visited a beauty parlour where she had her hair and nails done in preparation for a press conference later that day. On her way to meet her sister she was hit and killed by a white Datsun on Avenida Chapultepec in Mexico City. In the scene her perfectly manicured nails, expensive jewellery, makeup and hair look almost flawless was it not for a single line of blood running across her nose and face.
In painting this scene I explored my own ideas of death and often use circles seen in the background to represent reincarnation. We hang onto material things and ego to boost our self esteem then suddenly a scan or an x ray can change all of our preconceptions of life in a second. A quote I heard sums this up quite eloquently, ‘Death is not the greatest loss in life, the greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live!‘
WESTWARD HO!
Westward Ho! 24 x 30″ acrylic on canvas. A painting of this North Devon beach, sunset at low tide. Often during strong tides old timbers from ship wrecks and pebbles become exposed, now and again land mines laid down during WW2 appear too. This painting isn’t quite what I imagined it would look like when finished, I lost heart with it during the second sitting but decided to see it through for a learning experience. So this is it you win some you lose some! Al
In a place called Douma.
A painting entitled In a place called Douma, 500 x 350mm acrylic on paper. Painted from an image from the Free Syria Media Hub on Twitter. The title of the picture post was “Real Rivers of blood do flow deep and fast in a place called Douma”. I would photo credit this but sadly couldn’t read the lettering.
Ghosts from photographs past
Remind us of times that couldn’t last
They’re reflections of our golden years
Our hopes, aspirations and growing fears
Housel Bay Beach.
A painting inspired by The Lizard Peninsula. This is of the secret beach at Housel Bay a perfect place to go swimming. In fact I’ll be walking there later this week, don’t forget to say hi!
Bucks Mills.
To get off my usual way of working today I’ve decided to be a little more spontaneous and place a time limit on my work. This is the result an acrylic on gesso panel of Bucks Mills in North Devon at almost low tide. What a great morning spent there in the Spring sunshine watching the surfers off The Gore. I remember at the Bideford School of Art one of my teachers called Jimmy or James Patterson painted a wonderful watercolour of Bucks Mills now at the Burton Gallery in Bideford. Must go back and do some plein air! Below is a pen and ink of mine of Bucks with a nod to Jimmy. Al
Al Brown Artist. 