Cold Front

oil on panel 81x56cm

There is a music track I listened to in order centre myself when working on this – it's Radiohead's 'Motion Picture Soundtrack' from Kid A. 

The source images for this painting are my own; the clouds are a photoshopped composite from a group snapped out of the kitchen window, but the landscape was photographed from a bus – front seat at the top of course – approaching Perth on the A85, just past the Jet petrol station east of Lochty. I originally had a fully worked-out composition combining this sky with a view across Strathearn, but I had severe doubts about it. I'm glad I ditched that one, this 'second thought' has been much more adaptable and rewarding. I have certainly taken liberties with it - I magicked up quite a lot of depth by breaking-up the hedge and tree line, and re-working distances – but that's made the landscape so much more interesting.

There's an obvious rhyme (and visual cliché to be honest) between the piling cumulus clouds and the full summer trees, but there is also another, less prettily innocent theme running through this. If you look intently at the lower right corner you'll see what could be a paint smudge in the wheat. It's not of course, it's a prone figure. He could be sleeping, or drunk, but I think he's in trouble, and may very well be dead. This figure is the sharp little splinter that catches the viewer unawares. It's there to remind him or her that awful, sad, and tragic events can and have occurred, and will continue to occur, in the most beautiful and peaceful of settings - Et in Arcadia Ego.

Technical-wise, there's a lot of the usual soft and blended stuff going on in the sky, but there's more textured work in the earth-bound areas, a lot of it left unsoftened. Close up, the 'tree' layers are quite fractured, and in some places the acrylic under-drawing texture still shows through the glazed and semi-opaque layers. The even nature of the wheatfield made it very difficult to disguise the figure, and I'm a little unsure how successful that has been. It's much easier to hide an object or figure in a 'busy' patch of bushes or whatever, than in a soft and fairly homogeneous area. All I could really do was make the lush and dynamic clouds on the left the initial point of interest, while compressing the tones of figure to make it less obvious. I hope it works, but once you've seen it you can't really un-see it. I'd also wanted to show the wave effect of wind on the crop (I watched video loops of breezy fields till I was almost catatonic), and a change of wind direction - associated with a cold front - turning around the central trees. That was really ambitious, and while I'm not entirely convinced, Madam felt that that the music made the wheat and clouds seem to swirl with movement – which was very flattering. For me - the light works well, and I do like the difference in paint treatment between the sky and landscape.

There's been some weather technicals mentioned here, so I should maybe explain the title. A cold front – the term was coined in 1919 by a Norwegian meteorologist - is a where a cold, or cooler, air mass meets a warmer one, and this can produce large rising cumulus clouds, as in the painting. It's clearly explained in this video.

And finally, some news! I've been admitted as a Professional Member by the Society of Scottish Artists, which entitles me to use the letters SSA after my name. Which is a lot of consecutive S's, but still very nice.

And I'm quite chuffed actually...