Sitting in the garden with Alfie Painting

This painting is a kind of exorcism of Matisse’s picture of his wife with a green stripe down her nose. The woman and the cat exist in that eternal now in which every painting defines its space as well. A strong diagonal from top right to bottom left, probably because I am left handed, establishes the pose, offset to lessen the obvious geometry. A second offset diagonal is the main axis of the second compositional element, the table. Everything is subsidiary to the face and hat which are centrally divided. I started with the green shadow and made one eye the same colour. I pillaged the real world garden for the chair, the little teak table and the olive tree. I wanted the picture to close out the top in an acid green but was not sure if a simple stripe would suffice. Not until I had those elements fixed that I introduced some more dark green plant shapes at the top of the picture. The hat is mine. I wanted the colours to separate dramatically as if in strong light and I repeated them in the hair, so the colours descend sideways left to right across the head. The green suggested that the flesh tones should be an unmodified pink. As I developed the face I introduced a second greenish shadow and that gave me the colour for the other eye. I added this green to discrete shadow points on the arms and legs. The woman’s right hand rests on the right knee hold inga glass to break up the diagonal. To simplify the shapes I propped her head on one fist, figuring that maybe she would put her fingers in her hair. The cat introduced himself as a collage element, neither resting on the table or putting his paws on the woman’s arms, yet throwing shadows on both. Oh, and I gave him a cerulean blue outline. No, he is not blind but showing his pupils I thought would have been too referential. I dry brushed in some colour over the base pink of the paving to suggest random square paving and put violet shadows under the table to contrast with the pinks and the ochreous table.

Painting:Oil on Canvas

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:40.2 W x 29.9 H x 0.8 D in

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