Mothers and Daughters
 

My mother-in-law has just visited us and I used the opportunity to do a portrait of the three generations of women in my life. I have always wanted to do a large portrait with more than two people in it. This painting is 60 x 30 inches. I am also posting some details.

Wow, Clive, this is really something. It has a retro 60's kind of poster look to it. Is this oil? The scale must have been fun to work at. Quite ambitious and a nice job overall!

Thanks Michele, I have always been a great admirer of British figurative painters of the sixites, Graham Sutherland, David Hockney, Francis Bacon.....and I must confess to being a closet admirer of Lucien Freud. Even though I did not deliberately set out to emulate these painters in this piece, it is funny how the artists we admire have a way of stealing into our paintings. The painting by the way is oil on board.

Clive,
Well done! Working on that scale can be intimidating but you did it very well. The individual personalities shine through. The family must be overjoyed.

Hockney is exactly who I was thinking of when I first saw this.

Richard, I actually found the size of the painting to be quite liberating. I think that I am going to work on a larger scale in the future. While painting the figures one thing that struck me was that despite the genetic connection among all three women, each is physically (and psychologically) very different; different skin tones and different palette. Looking at them you would not believe that they are related.

Clive, I think you have a fabulous sense of design. I'm really impressed with this deceptively simple composition of three women. You've conveyed the message of their relatedness and their individuality equally well. I also love the empty space. The canvas is divided diagonally with the women taking up a little more than half the space, so they dominate rather than being squished into their "half."

Clive this is unmistakeble as your work. Maybe other artists influence you, but I recognize it as "you" right away. You have great props, or else your furniture is incredibly interesting! The women in your life must be very proud of you.

Jean

Clive,

I missed this one when I was away. What an original compostion. It is so refreshing to see something like this . You handled the various age differences with aplomb.

Each figure is so well designed. Well done!

Yes, Clive working large is very liberating until you have to cart the darn things around.