oil on canvas 61x51cm
This is sourced from yet another google streetview trawl through Russia, this time from outside Litovsk, a village not far from the Belarus and Ukrainian borders. The late afternoon light was very important, but also the way the central tree masses recede in a line along the direction of light. There’s been a little editing of the shadow line at the left and right edges, and I’ve got rid of the small stream between the front bushes, but otherwise the main elements of the source image remain unchanged.
Very early on I found some mood-setter music for this - ‘He shall feed his flock like a shepherd’, from Handel’s Messiah. I was just at the organizing stage, and we were watching the film ‘Manchester by the Sea’ on the telly, when this music came on. I glanced across at the painting on the easel - and it just fitted. It’s possibly more suited to pastoral rolling grassland and big skies, but - what can I say – it just felt right. There’s no link to the film soundtrack’s recording by Musica Sacra, but the one above will certainly do (nicely paced, and sung by a countertenor and very nice soprano voice).
There is a figure here, in the shadow, who could be sleeping. But it’s from a sequence of photographs taken during and after a reprisal massacre by Czech partisans in May 1945. There was going to be a whole row of them, but I decided against it.
I started work on this last May, but was interrupted by the necessity to finish ‘Ghosts’, the Open Eye set, and family events. I took an awfully long time to establish all the elements – even for me – and got very bogged down (especially in the front right bushes). Having said that, I’m sure that the painting has benefited from being put by, as I think I had lost sight of what I was trying to do. Resuming after New Year, I came to it with a fresh eye, and was able to see that the colour needed a boost, which I did fairly simply with glazing and thin transparent yellows. I did use more thick Stand Oil in these latter mixes, but I pulled back from the amounts I was using for the last small landscapes.
For these last top yellows I used a colour I’d picked up a couple of years ago for some reason, but had never used - ‘Stil de Grain’, from Talens. It used to be made from buckthorn berries (under various names including Dutch and English Pink) but the modern version is pure Isoindoline. It resembles Raw Sienna straight from the tube, but when thinned it’s a surprisingly warm, very transparent yellow, not quite as fiery as Indian Yellow.
Again, it’s nice to say where work is on public view, and I’ve got two pieces selected for this year’s SSA Open exhibition. It’s on at the RSA building at Princes Street/The Mound, and will run from 29th January until 8th March. It’s free to go in, so if you find yourself in Edinburgh with some time to spare, you could do a lot worse than wandering through the SSA/VAS show and seeing what’s going on in Scottish Art just now.
And the bit of painting I like most in this piece? – The front-lit ground and trees on the right, from behind the dry brown foliage in the foreground to the skyline. As usual, I did the most effective painting without really thinking about it and with not a lot of subsequent correction.
I really do wish that didn’t keep happening…
