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Lone Beach Hut

Lone Beach Hut 2014 (Oil on Canvas - 240cm by 120cm) 

 

When I made the stretcher for The Merging Of Water & Land piece I decided to make another the same size, I believed that at some stage one of the onsite pieces would appear to suit another canvas that scale, though it might take time to realise which would be better acquainted.

 

When I had thought it through, I realised that the onsite piece titled ‘Lone Beach Hut’ would appeal to the proportions of the stretcher. The piece itself was particularly intriguing with the beach hut (Lifeguard Station) to the left, the pier in the middle framing the sky, sand and grassy verge and the sea to the right, so there was a lot crammed into this small piece and so expanding it, elongating it, would perhaps, allow the space for each area to truly express itself.

 

The progression of the painting opened up numerous elements to ponder, for example the sky in the original is so subtle and unfussy, so I had to try and tone this area down and use a very delicate colour palette and marks to try and represent this accurately. The beach hut itself, I wasn’t too sure what technique would work best, I decided upon a palette knife effect, similar to that used upon the railings in The Blue Elephant piece, and it actually works quite well, keeping the subtle shades of white, though adding a bit of texture to break it up further.

 

The pier and rocks in the centre of the piece posed quite an issue, initially this started off being very linear, lots of lines made with the brush, layered on top of one another, in differing directions. However this appeared to become too overworked, so I left this time to breath for a while, allowed it time to dry slightly, so that I could scrape into it later on, not only revealing some interesting detail beneath, though also creating texture, through the folding up of the scraped away paint, it made this area more diverse in the visual intensity of it, and created more of a balance through the central section of the piece.

 

The sea, originally I was going to scrape into slightly after it had dried, however now that I have toned down and worked into other area of the piece, the busyness of the sea seems to create some drama and offset the subtlety of the contrasting elements within the rest of the piece.

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