I am a colourist who is inspired by flower gardens, especially English cottage gardens in early summer. I have spent successive summers painting in Monet’s garden at Giverny, Northern France.
Most of my work is in oils and is built up in successive layers over a period of days/weeks. I dislike using photographs and prefer to base my colour compositions on direct observations sitting in flower beds or on drawings I’ve made previously in these places.
Exhibitions
The bottom line is that I’ve always loved colour, whether it be badly tuned video screens, flower gardens or atmospheric effects like sunsets. My recent paintings are of Totnes, Devon where I now live; often painting very early morning frosts, sunrises and the like.
I always stand to paint, often just at the side of the road and I suppose that makes me one of the ‘old school’ open ait artists.
Recently the gas mains in Totnes High Street have been replaced, I painted this event.
My paintings are usually acrylics for practical reasons; they dry much quicker, I also use MDF boards as they don’t warp or twist.
My next subject will be atmospheric sunrises in the Totnes backstreets on crisp brilliant mornings.
At night I plan to paint atmospheric dimly lit townscapes.
My instinct is for messiness, so my brushes are old favorites with few hairs remaining; ancient paint rags and pallettes, some retrieved from skips – Stephen Bower 2013