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the cathedral | Scottish Landscape Art - Scottish Landscape Paintings

Posts Tagged ‘the cathedral’

Almost finished

wall-painting-the-cathedral-speyer-acrylic-pastel-2010-100-x-140-cm-2

'Wall painting, the cathedral, Speyer'

It’s been a week of painting and rain. The days of painting outside in the shade of the courtyard have passed it seems and instead it’s been a case of working in the studios and trying to get as much artificial light as possible. It’s been very dark much of the time with big heavy showers that beat down on the leaves of the vine and make a real din. The vine apart, it feels a little more like home and certainly the temperature has been more Irvine like. Now of course, having typed this, the sun is coming out …..so perhaps this will be the start of another warm spell.

Anyway, enough of the weather and on to the painting I think. I’ve been working on several pieces this week and have had a mixture of success and failure …so about par for the course I guess. Last week, I received an email from Scotlandart.com inviting me to take part in their ‘New Gallery Artists’ exhibition to be held in late September. They’ve asked for six pieces which with the other commitments I have this autumn isn’t going to be easy. But, of course this is an excellent opportunity and it’s a great set up they have at Scotlandart.com. So then, after thinking about this for two days I decided I really couldn’t miss this chance and therefore have agreed to take part. It’ll mean a few extra shifts and I’m going to start a few Scotland based paintings in the next few weeks so that I don’t have a mad rush on my return to Irvine at the start of September.

The main achievement this week though has been getting my big ‘wall’ based painting near completion. There’s still a little bit of work to be done I think but in general it’s about there. As I said in the blog a couple of weeks ago, the painting is a view of a section of the cathedral wall here in Speyer. But I’ve over-laid the view with a more close up view of the stones. It’s quite a vague image of subtle lines and colours put down in layers of paint and pastel. I’m finding it quite difficult to assess as most of the painting is made of these very fine scribbled marks …and so when I stand back I lose all this and am left with a very vague structure. This though is rather what I wanted to create –somewhat of a ghostly image of this ancient building with all its layers of structure and history.

As anyone who paints will know, it sometimes takes a good while to decide about a piece of work once it reaches this stage. I think this painting is just going to have to sit and stew for a while as I get on with other work. I moved my bed into the studio a few weeks ago at the height of the hot weather (it’s much cooler than my room upstairs) so I’m kind of living with the work! Anyway, I’m putting a photo of this piece up on this blog but even though it’s signed ….it may still change.