Derval Freeman

Current times made me re-look at this painting that I painted a small few weeks back. Art and music are more than ever so important right now. I don’t want to mention the, what I think is now the new ‘C’ word. There is too much negativity out there right now and these times are really hard to comprehend for most. I’m an optimist and to push back anxieties and that, art and nature have always been the only way for me. So anyway..

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I still don’t know what to think of this painting.. I had this urge to paint something large scale one evening and I had no large canvases left in my studio. I wanted to paint something larger than me, so I stapled a canvas roll I had, to the highest reach of the studio wall. Then I began to paint with some very energetic music on in the background and up very loud. This is what I came up with.

Apologies for poor photo quality, its only done on my phone at this stage of the process.

A new delivery of R&F oil-sticks with new colours arrived that day and I fell in love with the phthalo pale green oil-stick! I loved how it worked with the cadmium orange and yellow oil-sticks. The whole painting is done in oil-sticks and it was a great way to paint freely and non objectively.

I might come back to this painting again at a later time to rework it and solve some of the chaos to pull some elements and aesthetic together. This is what I find myself doing in the beginning of most of my paintings when I start with the charcoal and pencil.