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Enchanted Wood – a Gower painting

Delighted to say I have just SOLD “Enchanted Wood” direct via my website http://emmacownie.artweb.com – now off to live in Derby, UK!

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Enchanted Wood

“This is a painting of a most enchanted wood, halfway between Ilston and the Gower Inn in the Parkmill area of Gower peninsula in Wales. These woody areas, as many artlovers will have realised by now, are a constant source of inspiration for much of my refractionist and post-refractionist work. This pine wood lies on one side of a bridge with ancient woodland on the other, the contrast between the knarled, mossy twisted ancient branches of the ancient wood across the bridge in clear contrast to the straight, textured, orderly pine trees this side of the bridge. In fact, crossing this bridge gives one a heightened sense of having moved from one region or realm to another, adds to the feeling of having been transported somewhere different.

This is the inspiration for this painting, this feeling as we view the clear late October light falling across this woodland path. I tried to catch the fact that the path is covered in layers of pine needles, mulched to make the most soft and slightly bouncy carpet of needles. It is these needles, layers heaped and heaped on each other that softens the light and gives it texture, catches the light in its soft grasp, making it almost fluffy. The carpet of pine needles fall to create a complete deadening of noise in this wood which is quite a beautiful affect, this complete silence. This adds to the wood’s sense of enchantment. The silence makes this almost a world apart, a secret quiet place to escape to and roam and explore and enjoy as a child. It is a great escape to somewhere unusual and oddly mystical. Enchanted even…”

The painting has sold but you can buy a large limited edition mounted print here

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Farm under the Velvet Mountain – a Brecon Beacons Painting

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Farm under Velvet Mountain (SOLD)

This is an oil painting of the Table Mountain in Mid Wales. 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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Down by Killy Willy

Down By Killy Willy

“Down by Killy Willy” – A return to the scene of much of my recent inspirations for painting landscapes.
I just love how the light is caught and moulded around the tree trunks by the bright silver sunlight, bleaching out the barren, branched trees.
I love how the warm jacket of greeny moss blends and is balanced by the muddy browns under the water surface, visible through the dark shards of tree shadow falling on the still water.
It is so pleasingly rustic and complementary in it’s colours as sometimes nature only can be.
The name Killy Willy refers to name given ;locally for this brook or pill, by the local people around Ilston in the Gower Peninsuala, near Swansea, in South West Wales.

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Down by Killy Willy (SOLD)
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No Longer Still

Delighted to say I have just SOLD “The Still Killy Willy” via Artfinder !
https://www.artfinder.com/product/still-killy-willy/

“This is another oil painting of the stream in Ilston Cwm, in Gower. The stream painted here is sometimes known as the Killy Willy, which runs to sea as Pennard Pill, at Three Cliffs Bay.”

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Windswept Inspiration

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Every weekend my husband and I explore and almost mine the beauty of Gower peninsula with its amazing variety of beaches, woods, hills and valleys for inspiration for my next paintings. Increasingly I have used this peninsula to keep my artistic juices flowing. It is almost as if we are harvesting the beauty of Gower in some way and using it to create art before sharing this bounty with art lovers throughout the world.

Different paintings of Gower adorn walls in the homes of art lovers on various continents. Our weekend walks are not just for our aesthetic enrichment but for others too it would seem. What a joy to share the beauty of this stunning peninsula designated Britain’s first Area of Outstanding Beauty.

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Rainbow Wood

Painting of Trees

Delighted to say I have just SOLD this golden oldie “Rainbow Wood” via artgallery.co.uk!

 

 

This is another refractionist/cloissionist painting where I attempt to break down the light streaming through the leaves of the trees in to blocks of colours. My painting has two prominent motifs which are to 1. create or animate light via my use of colour or 2. conversely, to break down light into component colours, in order to show light being ‘refracted’ through different materials, such as the leaves of the trees in this painting. The wood floor is illuminated by the light and I wanted to create an effect of movement of colour sliding along the ground and also sweeping, almost windswept across the trees like colour on the wind.

I like that pre-perceptual fleeting moment before our brains ‘construct’ images before colours and light are burnt into conscious representation. I love woods and trees because they capture the light in many ways and translate this light into numerous colours, too many to paint. I attempt to catch that fleeting fluidity, that becoming an image, not fully formed, more sensation than perception. I hope this vibrancy recreates that feeling of awe we feel in nature’s beauty, before our brains explain it away. To return to the fluent, heart-filled child-like wonder that sometimes ossifies with age.