‘A Kind of Grief’ Oil and Cold Wax on 80 x 80 cm canvas
‘A Kind of Grief’ Oil and Cold Wax on 80 x 80 cm canvas (Detail)
This is a cold wax mixed media painting on a high quality canvas frame. It is based on my recent artist residency in the New Forest in Hampshire. I spent a number of days walking amongst the trees and gathering information for a series of paintings through drawing and photography; I wanted to absorb the sights and sounds of the trees in the forest and find a way to recreate something of that experience in paint.
I am interested in surfaces and textures and the way materials can be combined to create tactile qualities. Cold wax can be applied in thin layers or heavy impasto. It can be scored, scoured and burnished like a rich stoneware ceramic glaze; it can left dry, broken, fragmented and uneven.
The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said; The recent buds relax and spread, Their greenness is a kind of grief.
Is it that they are born again And we grow old? No, they die too, Their yearly trick of looking new Is written down in rings of grain.
Yet still the unresting castles thresh In fullgrown thickness every May. Last year is dead, they seem to say, Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
Philip Larkin
This painting is currentlyon show in Bury St Edmunds at the Art In East Anglia Gallery www.artineastanglia.com