In a summer field, 30" x 62", October 2004, Acrylic on canvas, £2,500This one's a biggie at five foot tall but it's a picture I keep coming back to both to look at and as a reference for my other landscape paintings. The detail of the brushstrokes adds something to the image overall as the eye looks for the green it expects to see.
All my paintings are created using no more than 7 colours and white (a tone). In a summer field was created with just five colours: Pyrrole Red, Pthalo Blue, Burnt Sienna, Raw Umber and Copper (which is not really a colour but being a metal, acts more like a tone).
There is a line of trees near the beach at Aberdeen, Scotland that seem immensely large when you walk under them and in the impossibly intense summer light, rich green. It was a challenge therefore to describe the scene without a single drop of green while keeping the dramatic feeling that is produced in the presence of these trees.
Physically, this picture is almost door-sized and refuses to be ignored.
