Sunday 11 September 2011

A little secret garden of my own

Preparations. I had something in mind, with lots of texture. The result turned out completely different than what I had in mind. But there's still lots of texture.


Adding texture, and layers and layers of colour. Again it's the greens that dominate. One of my favourite colours, and a very favourite painting colour at the moment.


Inspired by Andrew Marvell's poem The Garden, the texture and greens began to turn into a little garden of my own.


Adding lines of the second stanza of the poem, which I liked especially:

Fair Quiet, have I found thee here,
And Innocence, thy sister dear!
Mistaken long, I sought you then
In busy companies of men.
Your sacred plants, if here below,
Only among the plants will grow.
Society is all but rude,
To this delicious solitude.

You can find the full text of the poem here.


I love texture and colour. My "garden" isn't so obvious, it's an abstract garden, but it's all there, the textures of the grass and flowers, the greens of the grass and foliage, the reds, pinks, blues and whites of the flowers, and eve nsome golden sun beames shining through the leaves.


My own secret little garden, all overgrown, full of flowers, and with lots of shadowy corner and sunny places.


I found it really difficult to process the images. It looks all a bit messy and somewhat yellowy here, but it does actually look a lot better in reality. I'm really quite of my little secret garden.

2 comments:

  1. Love it! Love it! I'd happily have this on my wall, but large. How did you create that terrific texture? At first I thought you had scraped through some thick paint, but it seems like natural fibre (or maybe grass?) now that I see the last photo (a great one.) As usual, even if you say it's not as good as the real thing, I think your photos have captured the process really well, and the colours are wonderful together.

    I'm happy with a green theme!

    btw, it seems you are responsible for some pretty rough weather heading our way...
    (Hurricane Katia)

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  2. What a nice way to start the first day of a busy week with finding a comment from you, Nigel. Thank you! :) Yes, I think I should try something similar on a bigger canvas, this is only 30x30cm. But it fits quite well into my bookcase :).

    I usually use modelling or molding paste (or whatever it's called) to create textures, but this time I just used a very thick layer of gesso. I'm really pleased at how it worked.

    I'm sorry about my namesake hurricane, hope she won't be too rough! Have a great Monday, despite naughty Katia.

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