A return to the Black Mountains of Mid Wales for inspiration and an oil painting of a mountain top, wreathed in red-mauve heather and yellow gorse. This contrasts with the descending fields of “Welsh green”.
Mauve Heathered Mountain
Category: Wales
That Moment of Indecision
A new oil painting, “That Moment of Indecision”
This is an oil painting capturing that should I/shouldn’t I? moment of indecision.
The decision here is whether to have a delicious pie from this excellent PIES shop or to walk on virtuously having not added any more to one’s waistline!
A decision made all the more difficult by the fact it was a chilly crisp winter’s day and the PIES sign was so warm and alluring, almost visually replicating the heat of the freshly warmed pies inside.
The painting’s setting is the exterior of the same PIES shop on St Mary Street in Cardiff which had it’s interior painted in the painting “Before the Rush” which sold a few months back –https://www.artfinder.com/product/before-the-rush-b42b/
The Shadows We Cast
A new oil painting “The Shadows We Cast” this oil painting is inspired by watching three people waiting, on a brilliant sunny day, on the High Street for their loved ones inside the shop.
“Although the old man who was waiting for his wife and daughter, he is not with the man who is protectively looking on as his son plays with the shadow cast on the pavement. They both wait for their wife and mum.
However, they all seemed connected, and this is heightened by them by being male and in the act of waiting.
I was going to call the painting “The Three Ages…” (of man) as we can see Bampi (grandfather), father and son but then thought the “Shadows We Cast” more lyrical as it not only describes literally the shadows cast, by the sun on the hard street and equally by the old man and boy, both “playing” in the contrasting darkness as they wait, which is in contrast to Dad’s watchful eye but also lyrically the protective loving effect others have on other lives and they have on other’s lives.
The casting shadows are their consideration of others and their consideration of them.
The old man is connected to the the two others in that he is waiting for the legacy he has in this wife and daughter and the man look on at his legacy in his son, a sense of now and the future in his facial expression, a wondering of the shadow he is casting in his son.
The father is a great juxtaposition here as he is seriously intent and firmly in the present reality of the moment whereas the son is in a fantastical revere of play and the oldman deep in the imaginary of a fondly remembered past.
The past can also cast a shadow on this sunny moment just as the child’s playful musing?
Only the father is resolutely here in the sunny present, perhaps allowing the other two their play?
Perhaps that is the shadow we cast, the protection that allows others to be happy and secure in their play, in themselves?”
Autumn Beckoned – a Brecon Beacons painting
Delighted to say I have just SOLD “Autumn Beacons” via Artfinder – now off to live in Worcestershire!
“Oil painting of mountains in the Brecon Beacons Bannau Brycheiniog , autumn-coloured purple by the weather-coarsed heather”.
Farm under the Velvet Mountain – a Brecon Beacons Painting
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This is an oil painting of the Table Mountain in Mid Wales (Bannau Brycheiniog – Brecon Beacons). I painted this because I loved the colours of blues, turquoise and purple which blend pleasingly with the blue-greens and terracottas of the trees and land.
Nature unearths such lovely rich colours and casts them wide in lovely complementary chromatic patchworks. I would say this painting is inspired like so many of my mid-Wales landscapes by one of my favourite painters, Robert Bevan, whose landscapes have influenced how I paint this type of hilly upland landscape as opposed to the landscape I paint of Gower Peninsula which is usually in my own unique refractionist style which in itself influenced by expressionism.
I love the idea that colour expresses emotion, transports and alleviates the self and a creates an emotional response to a place depicted in a painting. Ideally I like to transport the viewer to the place so that the viewer somehow feels they are there or have been there in some sense. That is somehow familiar to them. In this painting I hoped to transport one to soft lazy warmnesss of summer in the fields of Mid Wales. The velvety feel of the Table Mountain helps heighten this feeling of softness. The warm summer breeze can often give this sense of snoozy softness and I hope some of this is conveyed in this painting with the manicure trees like hairdryed Bouffants and the dusty dryness of the terracotta.
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See available paintings of the area here
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The Cloud Remains
“This painting is of the straggling wisps of cloud left on the hills in the Black Mountains after a passing storm. It was an amazing scene, this steam-like vapour rising out of the backs and humps of the hills. It looked as if the hills had just had a shower and the appearing sun was drying them off. I loved how the low lying clouds combed the trees and hedges as they floated past. The sun, shining through to illuminate this effect, seemed also to grow patchworks of colours from the fields around the surrounding landscape, as it the light was a nurturing spectral beam. The colours in the Black Mountains after the weather breaks on the hills are heavenly and this is what I hoped to convey. ”
The Long Way Home Got A Whole Lot Shorter
Delighted to say I have just SOLD this oil painting “The Long Way Home” via Artfinder – now on it’s way to Ontario, Canada!
This people portrait is intentionally quite poignant as it features an elderly man who seems to be carrying some of his belongings in a plastic shopping bag. It is not clear if he is unkempt in his crumpled rain coat because he i s homeless or has gone beyond caring too much about his appearance. Either way, he looks sad and almost life-beaten.
I wanted to contrast his sad, beaten, forlorn facial expression, and drooped shoulders and shuffling gait with the excitement of others striding off into the distance, either shoppers hurriedly returning home after a successful day’s shopping or employees from these shops doing the same after a hard day’s work.
There is also a frission or juxtaposition between the elderly man’s crumpled slightly smudged coat and dishevelled appearance and the gleaming reflection-clean floor of the shopping mall and the tidy, orderly professional look of the shops.
The elderly man looks like he doesn’t fit in here or even maybe he has no where to go, unlike the others, where he can fit in. It is as if society has locked him out of what others have and perhaps even take for granted.
He seems lonely, and forlorn on his way to wherever he is going, to wherever he calls home?
Grey Clouds over Black Mountain – a Brecon Beacons painting
This oil painting is of an area that inspires many of my landscapes, the Brecon Beacons in Mid Wales.
Unlike most of my other landscape paintings of the Beacons which paint areas of the Black Mountains, this painting is on the opposite side of the central Brecon Beacons from the Black Mountains, in an area called, somewhat confusingly, the Black Mountain.
The Black Mountains are more rural and more farmland dotted whereas parts of the Black Mountain are quite desolate and coarse in their moorland bleakness. One area seems generally more cultivated compared to the wildness of the other. This is why I love both in different ways. I love the Carmarthen Fan as this is more wild and unkempt although this soon gives way to the farm lands and patchworked fields like the other side of the central Beacons, as the earthy colours of agricultural Carmarthenshire also slide down the sides of these great glaciated monuments and into the the dim distance as they do on the other side too.
I love to convey some of this “giving way” to this naturally quilted farm land from these hard glaciated rocks of the Black Mountain in this painting. From the sandy fair illusion of softness in the far heights to the lush fruity colours in the near distance. I have also attempted to show the wondrous movement of clouds one experiences throughout the Brecon Beacons too, rolling their awesome way like herds of fluffy sky giants, tickling the tips of hills and caressing scarred ridges as they go. The movement of these ever-changing clouds over hills and mountains produces this amazing silverly grey light that when illuminated by the peeping, fleeting sun makes everything more more clear and the depth of perception much deeper.
It appears to hold everything in is wrapped clear focus. Almost magnifies the clarity of our onlooking vision. This makes the foreground colours deepen and seem more rich. It is a particular feature of upland Welsh areas, this brilliant luminescent light. Always changing and bestowing it’s chromatic good fortune on whatever it traverses.
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The Long Way home
This people portrait is intentionally quite poignant as it features an elderly man who seems to be carrying some of his belongings in a plastic shopping bag. It is not clear if he is unkempt in his crumpled rain coat because he is homeless or has gone beyond caring too much about his appearance.Either way, he looks sad and almost life-beaten.
I wanted to contrast his sad, beaten, forlorn facial expression, and drooped shoulders and shuffling gait with the excitement of others striding off into the distance, either shoppers hurriedly returning home after a successful day’s shopping or employees from these shops doing the same after a hard day’s work. There is also a frission or juxtaposition between the elderly man’s crumpled slightly smudged coat and dishevelled appearance and the gleaming reflection-clean floor of the shopping mall and the tidy, orderly professional look of the shops.
The elderly man looks like he doesn’t fit in here or even maybe he has no where to go, unlike the others, where he can fit in. It is as if society has locked him out of what others have and perhaps even take for granted.
He seems lonely, and forlorn on his way to wherever he is going, to wherever he calls home?
Moving Mountains – a Brecon Beacons Painting
Delighted to say I have just SOLD “Sugar Loaf and Table Mountain”” via Artfinder – now off to live in Surrey!
https://www.artfinder.com/product/sugar-loaf-and-table-mountain/
“Returning again to paint one of my favourite views and areas of Mid Wales, that of The Black Mountains in the Brecon Beacons National Park.
This is a scene of the fleeting sun light through the clouds, brushed by the evening’s sunsetting colours of pinky oranges, purply pinks, turquoise, steely blues and mauve, as we look at evening light as it catches the Sugar Loaf and Table Mountain in the distance.”