Tag: emma cownie

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Up Landeilo Way

Oil painting on linen canvas – I use a linen canvas with a white covering for certain types of painting such as landscapes set in Wales as there is a particular type of “Welsh light” that can be captured accurately on this type of canvas. It is extraordinary how a canvas is so conducive to a certain “national light” but all light is different depending on where one is located in the world. My husband hails for the north of Ireland where the light is brighter and more shrill, high pitched, more crisply blue white, whereas in Wales, it is often slightly or noticeably softer and in certain places tinged with warmer yellowy white. Although in this painting which is heading towards West Wales, and towards the Irish Sea the light has become more crisp and slightly tinged with blue. One can almost feel the lung filling fresh air in the blowing clouds and nasal tinging blue sky.

llandeilo way
Llandeilo Way (SOLD)
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Sapling Wood

This is another refractionist painting – I was drawn to this painting because I love the colours that come alive not only in misty backgrounds but in backgrounds in the sun, viewed from the more darkened interiors of the wood as in this painting. I love the cool blue of the distance trees and the purple mingling with the ground and the purples there sliding across the ground, following the sun’s light into the dark of the wood. I love the spectrum of colours in the light and how the light is refracted by the tips of the trees, the last burnished leaves and the spindly branches. It produces a kaleidoscopic effect of colour.

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Sapling Wood (SOLD)

Buy large limited edition mounted prints here 

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Inner Light

“This is another ‘refractionist’ painting and is almost an inverse of ‘Up Cwmdonkin’. Instead of the refracted light creating a stain glass effect falling on the outside fringes of a wood, here it illuminates within the hidden chamber of a forest, which gives it a heightened, magical or enchanted feel. It feels like a secret wood of childhood fantasy and imagination. I like how the brilliant rainbow colours contrast with the jet black and how the inner sanctum of light is framed naturally by the surrounding trees, inviting one into the shower of light and colour.

But is this scene too good to be true? Is there a Brothers Grimm malevolence here, in this painting? Do the black trees signal a menace, a foreboding or do these encircling trees call one into a place of wonder and a child-like joy, where the light and colour, silence and peace rain down and let the soul rejoice? Or is it a broody chimera? Depends on your own imagination, I suppose!”

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Brandy Cove Stile

This oil painting is of a lovely country walk down Gower Peninsula, outside Swansea. Over the stile and down to Brandy Cove where brandy and other illegal booty was smuggled to shore by the frequently visiting smugglers that dropped their ill gotten gain here and in various other coves littered around the Gower coastline. I like the way the sunlight catches the tips of the tree leaves, like a translucent membrane between the brillant bright summer light beyond the stile and the darkened wood behind it.

 

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Brandy Cove Stile (SOLD)

 

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Tenby Tide

This is quite an unusual painting of Tenby into that the tide is fully in, and the boats bob on the lapping multi coloured strips of water, which add a crispness to the West Walian light and a rich vibrancy to the coloured Tenby terraced houses, which cwtch the Harbour and lighten the spirit with a sea-salted breathiness.

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Tenby Tide

Buy mounted limited edition print here (free UK postage)

(29 x 20 cm print only) with mount 40 x 30 cm

[wpecpp name=”Tenby Tide A4 print” price=”30.00″]

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The Inspiration of Maples at Cuckfield

I saw this painting in The National  Museum in Cardiff and it inspired me to start painting after a long period of inactivity – thank you Robert Bevan – after yet another period of inactivity my husband brought me the same painting on a postcard, even I could see the serendipity in that!! I haven’t stopped painting since and have no plans to ever again if I can help it! We need to be inspired by other’s work also, another’s expression of beauty helps inspire one’s own humble attempts at expressing the beauty all around – “Maples at Cuckfield” – a wonderful painter. Image

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Psalm Singing with and without words: Caldey Abbey

This painting is of the back of the beautiful gardens lying behind the Caldey Island Monastery on the holy Island of Caldey Island, off Tenby in West Wales, UK. Caldey Island is a veritable ‘Eden’ when the sun illuminates this tree bunched island, the only Welsh island to have trees planted, and so many of them and in such rich variety, each speckling and sculpting shadows in their own way.

The atmosphere on this Holy Island is so relaxing, while peculiarly uplifting at the same time. There are seals frolicking around in the salt-watered topaz and jade, rich turquoises and biro blues which lap on to the gorgeous rough and ragged coastlined ridges which strain and arch to keep this island out of the Bristol Channel.

Peacocks honk and ponies bellow, all meshed in a pot pouri of sound with a medley of birdsong and the plaintive sound of the Cistercian monks singing Divine Office drifting from the Chapel to intermingle as it does with this natural orchestra of the island. The all rejoice in this Creation, give thanks for this plenty. Psalm singing with and without words. It is a very special place to be particularly when God showers the island in sunshine and His glad tidings.Image,