An unusually quick update.  I realise I hadn’t even uploaded this new painting to my website gallery although it’s visible hanging in the sitting-room on the header picture showing our Open House in May

This painting is actually in Lincoln at the lovely Harding House Gallery on Steep Hill.  (Which is indeed very very steep.)  However it’s shortly coming south because it’s been shortlisted for the National Open Art Competition.   Friends and readers of my blog and Facebook postings know I have mixed feelings about entering these competitions. It costs in time and money and it ties up work, sometimes for months. Especially as you want to show your newest and best, But this is one I really rate, and I haven’t succeeded before.

 

 

 

 

 

Detail, Murmuration, Before the Storm

 

 

I love watching the endless sweeping and swirling of the starlings as they move in and out of complex geometrical  formations.  Brighton Pier, near where I live, is one place to see them. I have just sold an earlier ‘Murmuration’ (which you can see on the right-hand picture above) which used some decriptive jottings from Coleridge’s diary.  There’s even a wonderful Facebook page where people post their own photos and videos of the birds.

The painting is of a particular moment when there was a storm brewing and it felt as if the air was charged and something was going to happen.  There was a sulphurous tinge to the sea – I used a yellow underpainting among the many washes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you do like the painting I’d be very pleased if you’d vote for it here on the NOA website:

Murmurations Vote

in the  unlikely event it wins it’ll save it going through the next stage of selections.  Here it is  as it looks on the wall.