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Originally Posted by Ilaria Rosselli Del Turco
we normally work in natural daylight.
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Good news Ilaria, just what I was hoping to hear. I've come accross Minna Stevens work before, I like it very much. Very loose but still with a strong sense of likeness.
Hi Sharon, thanks for the welcome. I'm glad you found the site interesting. The still lifes I've been keeping deliberately small so that I don't get caught up in trying to produce highly finished work before I've got the technical know-how to do so. I'm hoping that by producing a number of smaller pieces I'll progress more without my internal critic putting me down too much. I think it doesn't actually matter what you paint, the point for me at least is still the same - to study how light creates colour, and defines form. Much work still to be done there.
I must admit though, all I'm doing at the moment is drawing. I see it kind of like a musician practicing scales, learning the language of their instrument. Its interesting to me that painting appears to be one of the few crafts where its acceptable to be taken seriously without putting in any serious effort to learn the basic skills, in some circles at least.
Thanks for putting me on to Martin Johnson Heade, I'd never heard of him before, but he was a very individual artist from what I've seen this morning. HIs paintings have an almost dream-like quality to the light, very lovely. I'll be investigating his work more.
On the subject of small still lives and light, I've been following the daily paintings of
Julian Merrow-Smith for a while now, an English artist working in Provence. He has a very individual approach to light, too, very evocative. He's also a very accomplished portraitist, and has exhibited with the Royal Society of Portrait Painters.