Of Everything That Stands, The End Painting

One evening I saw an epic sunset and was determined to try and paint the peachy reflections on the pale turquoise sea. I had also been inspired to paint some bathers, after seeing a painting of a female bather from the 1950’s, in a gallery in Malaga. I had already located an old photo of some good women friends, that I took on a beach a few years ago. The reason I took the photo is that I liked their strong stance. I used a limited palette of oil paints – black, white, cobalt blue, cadmium lemon yellow, cadmium yellow medium, light gold, transparent green-yellow, orange and a rose red. After a few painting sessions, I came to the conclusion that I’m not a painter – I was crying out in frustration like a child who wants something different from what they’ve got. In my eyes, I just couldn’t do this painting any justice though. I just couldn’t paint it in the style of the art I like. I had to break my original idea up and stitch it back together another way – by drawing upon what has worked before, by breaking some of my self inflicted rules, by admitting I’m rubbish and I can’t paint and yet keeping at it anyway. I had to let go completely and just value my style that comes out on its own. I hadn’t realised that I hadn’t been valuing my own style up to that point. Then I just went for it. The painting also has a more sinister overtone, as the painting’s lettering was inspired by working towards an exhibition about climate change, about the possibility of human extinction. At first, I thought The End would make a good title for the piece, then I decided it would be even better to embed the title directly into the painting. It took some confidence to commit to taking the painting in a whole new direction, by adding the words. They immediately opened the painting up to be a story, The End of something, but we don’t know what though.