Yesterday, (28th Feb.) I did my first ever oil painting🎨🖼🖌 - see above! Why? I have some oil painting paper and oil paints I hadn't used yet. I tend to reach for my trusty acrylic! So when Sothebys' #sotherbyssundaysketch chose a George Leslie Hunter's (1877-1931) oil painting I thought it was a good opportunity to crack open my new oil paints, give them a try and see what happens. I didn't know what to expect. I thought the oil paint would be incredibly thick, opaque and not as easy to work with as acrylic. But then I thought watercolour would be difficult to work with. I assumed they would be very runny, watery and hard to control because all the colours would bleed into each other randomly. However, neither oils nor watercolour were that different from acrylic.
I'd never heard of G. L. Hunter so I decided to look into him as an artist because history is my thing, whether it is history of philosophy, history of feminism, history of art, history of fashion, history of music, history of dance, history of women's sports, history of science, basically, history and the history of anything I'm interested in! 👍
I discovered that he was born in 19th century Scotland, grew up in America and was a self-taught artist who was later classified as a Scottish colourist. What does this mean? As the name suggests, colourists in art are mainly interested in the effect of light and use of colour. They particularly like vibrant colours which set a mood. Scotland didn't do it for them in terms of light and they wanted to loosen up their style and be exposed to different forms of art and expand their horizons, ideas and explore natural light so they went to France since France is sunnier 🌞.
I was inspired to track down some of Hunter's paintings to see how this looked in practice and found quite a few examples of his paintings. They tend to have the same themes and motifs. His paintings were mainly of still life which have flowers, fruit and the occasional book as constant motifs. Quite often, he'd have a door panel on the left hand side of the background, or a curtain/drape on the right hand side as a background. Sometimes, he would replace a curtain drape with cloth draped on a table as part of the still life.
I selected some of his motifs in various paintings and put them together to find objects around my home to create my own original still life oil painting, in the spirit of Hunter.
This is the painting where I used the idea of incorporating a book with fruit on it:
I took the angle of the table in this painting and used this idea for my table as well as for the large format book I chose:
http://www.artnet.com/artists/george-leslie-hunter/stocks-in-a-white-vase-S2yw0tCNvw6lnPQ1h3SnpQ2
And here, I liked the combination of orange and lemon with a glass, so I took that and turned the wine glass into my cocktail glass I bought with my drink at the Hard Rock Cafe in London. 🙂
And here's a good example of how Hunter makes a study of citrus fruit:
I chose not to have a door panel as a background but instead to have a picture window looking out onto my back garden with a view of a tree and long leafy plants. I used loose bold lines in pencil for the plants to gesture towards Fauvism which was a movement that influenced colourists. I employed bold, strong colours for the flowers which are reflected in the fruit. The children on the book cover also reflect these strong, vibrant colours. I restricted my palette to yellow, vermilion red, green, white, mixed the colours to produce orange, peach and light brown for the tree. The predominant colours in my painting are vibrant orange, yellow and green to give a zesty mood.
Hunter used ink with his oils whereas I've combined the oil paints with pencil for the original sketch and during the painting process. I used pencil for a sgraffito effect. Sgraffito is when you scratch wet paint to reveal the colour underneath. However, I didn't scratch the wet paint to reveal a different colour. I used sgraffiti to give definition and expressive marks, precise lettering as well as to make certain lines stand out against the paint. I thought it gave strength of line and definite shape to objects.
I find his still life oil paintings appealing. Nevertheless, unlike Hunter I incorporated autobiographical aspects into my painting as well as a social commentary on life in 2021.
Autobiographically, the Hard Rock Cafe cocktail glass symbolises that I'm a singer/musician born and bred in London. The citrus fruit and the view of the garden shows my love of nature and eating healthy food. My passion for books is represented by the book on the table and symbolises my identity as an academic. It's also a beautifully illustrated book for children. I was surrounded by such beautiful books growing up. The love of illustrated books reflects my life as an artist and it's a poetry book written in Czech to reflect my Czech identity which is an important part of who I am despite being a Londoner all my life and identifying as one.
Currently, life is asocial, unlike in the recent past, when you were free to come and go, travel, go to the shops, cafes, bars, restaurants, concerts, cinemas, and meet people from all walks of life. The freedom of the past is seen in the carefree children as they run together holding hands. The importance of human contact and touch is expressed by this girl and boy on the book cover. The hard rock cafe glass reflects the adult desire for and importance of social contact. It represents going out, as do the running children, which juxtaposes with the indoor domestic still life. 'Still' being an important word here. The 'still' non-active scene indoors is compared with the bustling, active outdoors which the children are enjoying in nature and the adults by going to a bar. This is why I chose to have a garden as a background because it serves to illustrate the indoor/outdoor contrast in lifestyle. Even so, the outdoor spaces are layered. The garden is a home garden, whereas the children are outdoors in a public space ie a local park while the adults have travelled further afield to a different type of public space ie to a London (city) bar.
See a full length photo of my painting, as well as several close-ups, on my Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/libakaucky/
Materials I used: oil paints (Daler-Rowney); paint brushes (Daler-Rowney); pencils (9B; F; Derwent Graphic); oil painting paper, Georgian (Daler-Rowney)
Size: 406 × 305mm
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