Original oil painting – Oil on Linen – unframed – 66cm x 117cm 4cm deep £2500
‘Thunder in a Sea of Pink’ was inspired by the incredible light as a distant storm threatened.
Sometimes the sky, whilst full of light and vibrancy, holds the threat of something more menacing, and this can come totally ‘out of the blue’, just as we sometimes experience in life. Things hit us, and we have to face them. But there is always the delight of pink – those little rays of hope and light.
The Unpredictable Landscape
I had been working on a canvas for a few weeks using mainly blues. My was focus had been on the sea of glass talked about in the book of Revelation in the Bible.
But as I was walking along the coast, before me was this incredible scene of blues with soft pink. The pink was almost indiscernible to the human eye, but there it was non-the-less. And, of course a dramatic thing was going on in the sky above!
I returned to the studio and rather boldly lathered my blue canvas with pinks and grey. Leaving the underpinning of blue in place, I wove in the green that I had seen in the seaweed and with a touch of thunder thrown in it was there. Unpredictable indeed. But what a joy the whole experience has been. Too often we traumatise over our work, when what is required can simply be some inspiration with a touch spontaneity.
The next day after sitting on my hands refusing to adjust anything. I returned to the studio and brought some gentle balance into things. I added a line of magenta to pop the blue, brought warmer shades of pink into the peachy tones and applied a gentle pink wash over the bright green in the foreground. It was a delight and I am well happy with the outcome.
This painting is on exhibition in Studio42 Port St Mary, Isle of Man
