Where did the inspiration come from for this piece?
Colour is king and queen to me when I make a painting. I exaggerate its use to express my feelings about given situations, places, events and pure decoration. I do like colour to be bold and strong enough to make a statement on its own.
I am affected by the changing seasons in much of my painting; none more so than landscape.
I tend to base the composition of my work on photographs that I have taken myself or image libraries. The chosen photographs are used only as a starting point and not copied slavishly; where would be the fun in that?
What is the creative process when creating your vibrant colourful art?
Generally, I use my source material as a structured layout. In the case of the “Bright Leaves of Autumn“, I manipulated the colour rendering of photographs that I used to create an exaggerated effect of the dramatic change autumn gives to plants.
I then scaled up my source material onto the canvas using time honoured scaling techniques of squaring up the source material onto a squared up canvas.
Using acrylic paint I tend to work alla prima ( thick opaque paint ) directly onto the canvas using brushes, sponges, rags and even twigs from the garden.
How long would this work have taken you?
I tend to work in one or two hour shifts on a painting, giving me time to reflect on its progress. This process usually spreads over a two or three week period.
I then leave the painting hanging on a wall for a week or two. During this time period, many glaring anomalies come to light. These I rectify until I am satisfied that the painting is ready to be displayed for sale.
View Stuart’s gallery.
