Saturday 10 April 2010

Happy Days and Holidays

Happy days and Holidays


Not being a person like so many on here, that I admire greatly, who can do a painting a day I have sometimes used the same painting more than once. This one I again think I used way back when I started blogging. I like this painting even though it was met with very mixed reactions when I showed it at first. I had all the expected quips, “That the Monday morning washing you got hanging there?” or “What were you on when you painted that one Ralph?” or “Ah I see it if you close one eye it comes into focus, are you sure it is the right way up?” I had them all and yet I liked it.

Yesterday I booked my holiday and it reminded me of this painting. I am returning to the place where this painting was inspired. I love all those little continental alleyways that you come onto when you least expect it. Where you get glimpse a snatch of everyday life. When I remember Arthur, who I speak of in my other blog, I have warm happy feelings of what we achieved together. Memories are so often the happy spurs to the creation of further memories. This painting does that for me. I admit it is not the most wonderful representation of what it is I am trying to depict, but I was not really trying to capture the reality but the mood and the feeling. The warmth and the sense of adventure that new places create.

It was painted on a box canvas painted using acrylic and with palette knives and fingers. I hung it in one of the inns where it was sold fairly quickly. I was also asked to paint another similar one on a very large canvas which now hangs on a wall on a stairway seen by all who go upstairs in the home. The owner says it makes him smile so that makes it all worthwhile.

This blog is linked to my other:- Aurthur Not of the Round Table

3 comments:

  1. Another wonderful painting. Wish that I could capture mood and feeling like you do in your artwork Ralph. Congratulations.

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  2. I really like this painting too, Ralph. I love the colors, the feel of the place...there too is a sense of history. Knowing the story of Arthur now, that makes me like it even more!

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  3. You say you have never had any art training - I am amazed! You have certainly pulled off a very evocative sense of place.

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