Six Geese – Krasny

oil on panel 91x61cm

There is most definitely music to go with this - a short but exquisite little piano prelude by Scriabin.

The location of the source image for the painting is a small village strung-out over a mile or so called Krasny, about 35 miles south-west of Rostov-on-Don, in Southern Russia. It's a calm and serene evening in September, and the geese are wandering back in from the fields. The main village is further along the road towards the sun, where other flocks of geese have gathered and some family's cow is wandering about. It's quite the Arcadian rural idyll. The painting is, of course, about the contrast between a beautiful setting and a nastiness within it.

Compositionally, it's fairly simple, and is little changed from the source image. I've replaced the telephone pole with a figure, and have juggled the geese a bit (one was a hen facing the wrong way, and that would never do!). Otherwise it's a straight transcription of the source. The light was a big attraction: the low sunlight is just catching the trees, and the geese are walking directly into it. It's a very useful device to channel the eye's sweep across the picture, and I quite like the geese being at the intersection of the crop marks and the direction of light.

Hopefully the eye explores the landscape and birds before it settles on the figure. I've tried to blurr him a bit into the grass and shadow, except where he has a hard edge against some lighter grass beyond. The figure is based on a posed photo I took of myself. I'm getting increasingly uncomfortable conducting google image searches for bodies - it's a miserable thing to be doing. The human elements are very important when I include them in a painting, and if it's possible for me to model them myself, I'd much prefer to do that where I can.

As usual this piece was built up with oil layers – mostly fairly transparent – over thin monochrome acrylic drawing, so the final tones were 'arrived at' rather than fixed at the beginning. Apart from in the sky, any paleness in colour is most likely due to the white primer shining through the paint, as in watercolour. The sky fades were done with several wet-on-dry layers, as opposed to a single blended wet-into-wet layer. The pale yellow and pink layers being applied in turn onto the blue with a wide mottler brush, then beaten and faded upwards with my 75mm Big Badger Blender Brush. I have my eye on an even bigger 100mm one, which should make larger and softer fades like these a lot easier and smoother.

Apart from a bad lapse of judgement with a furious orange glaze (Indian Yellow and Transparent Oxide Red) over the central field which caused severe palpitations when I saw it the next morning, the painting of this piece went fairly smoothly.

Despite the composition being relatively simple, there are some bits of painting that I'm quite chuffed with – the sky transitions, the light through the near edge of the wood and the landscape beyond, and the controlled curve of the wood coming over and down the left ridge. There are some effective bits of transparent paint where the grass is backlit – notably just above and to the left of the figure. They are a nice contrast to the more opaque bits of paint on the left where the Sun catches the slope, and the crops around the geese.

Returning, finally, to the village, and its name. Krasny красный – is a very interesting word in the Russian language. It means 'red', but has other very positive associations. It is the root of красивый 'beautiful', and прекрасный – 'wonderful'. A beautiful girl is a красавица. It's also used in describing the special corner – krasny ugol красный угол – where holy icons are traditionally placed. Not that much of a surprise, then, that the 1917 Revolution became so deeply rooted in Russia when its imagery was all about 'Red'.

I noted earlier how quiet and idyllic the scene is. Now, if you go back to the source image in streetview, and turn your viewpoint around to look behind you, you can meet some of the villagers...