Nocturne #7 Painting

This painting is the view from the footpath between my former studio and the nearest town late at night when the mist was rising off the river. The lights from a warehouse spilled over onto the meadow and stained the sky. My studio was between the ancient meadows of Runnymede and the River Thames. I was making a set of work about how the meadows change at different times of day when I realised how spectacular a location it is at night. Even when I was a student more than 20 years ago I painted darkness from time to time, so it was inevitable that sooner or later I would start painting Runnymede at midnight. The resulting body of work is a set of remarkable little paintings which try to articulate mood, space, weather and the disorientation of walking across fields in the dark. There is a real sense across them all that Runnymede does not belong to humans late at night. It would have been impossible to make this painting twenty years ago because you simply cannot paint in the dark. To have enough light on the palette and the canvas means having enough light to destroy one's night vision. Until very recently that meant nocturnes were painted from memory or imagination, leading to heightened colours and distortions. Modern digital cameras however provide an opportunity: for these paintings I photographed the scene, comparing the preview screen with what was in front of me before tweaking the settings and re-shooting endlessly to make sure the only things recorded were the things I could actually see and that the overall light levels were accurate. Then it was a race through the dark to the studio to get the image on the laptop and colour correct it while the scene was still fresh in my mind. Then I could take as long as needed to paint using daylight sketches as additional references. This painting is on deep canvas. The edges are painted black. It is mostly thinly painted and the weave of the canvas is quite prominent. As with all my work it is made entirely with artist grade materials. It is unvarnished because subtle variations in sheen are one of the ways I have manipulated space in the painting.

Painting:Oil on Canvas

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:16 W x 12 H x 1.8 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.