Blog

In January 2021 lockdown was creating havoc with my schedule and I would find that I wouldn’t leave the house for 3-4 days and be constantly glued to my computer screen. I decided I needed another project which would give me some structure and this coincided with the start of the 100 day project which was running on Instagram.

Lockdown for me meant very little painting... in fact almost no painting at all for 3 months. So when I eventually got round to thinking about doing something this painting literally fell out of my head!

I am always looking for bold splashes of colour to help make a painting pop. I can do this by either using bold colours as base layers, adding splashes of paint as a highlight, and also by adding powdered pigments. 

There are all sorts of things that influence me when I'm choosing the colours I am going to work with. The influence behind this painting was the planning for one of my workshops where I was wanting to use some contrasting / warm / cold colours for people to experiment with. I was drawn to a number of already mixed greys which is quite unusual for me as I do tend to want to mix my own greys generally but these lilac / blue / greys in this painting really got my attention and have worked so well with the Senellier Chinese Orange.

I originally approached this painting with a God's own type image in mind - think more brilliant summery greens.... Well... that didn't quite go to plan but I am really pleased with the results and the colours are a change for me and I love them.

I have been using Arches Huille paper since I first started using oil and cold wax and I love it!  But I really wanted to scale up and see what could be achieved on a larger scale using the paper and oil and cold wax.  The valley trembles is my first large scale painting using oil and cold wax on paper.