rainbow wood Archives – Emma Cownie

This is the last of the summer wine of a substantial series of oil paintings of a woodland area in Gower Pensinsula between Ilston and Parkmill, which the locals call Cannisland Woods.

It is amazingly beautiful at any time of the year but the light is rarely better than in Winter when it is glassy clear and this helps create a riot of colours and hues in this most dank time, in the mulched leave-layered ground, in the trickling everchanging brook of the Killy Willy, in the distant haze behind the barren trees and in the wonderfully green-mossy trees and shiney, slippery brown barks of the twisted trees by the Killy Willy.

This is another “refractionist” (expressionist) style painting which is similar to Sapling Wood and Rainbow Wood in it’s sweeping streaks of colour but much more grand in it’s ambition and luxuriant in its detail. This will probably be the last of this series of paintings for some time so enjoy.

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

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.