There is a joyous feel to this painting where the artist has painted himself walking towards the blue garden seat. It’s a sunny day and the garden has lots of pretty, smiling flowers.
The artist composed the painting using the ‘rule of thirds’ laterally. The roof top, mountain and sky are in the top third and the artist placed himself just off centre in the mid-section. The garden takes up the lower section.
Though the style of the painting is relaxed, a controlled hand has applied paint using varying sized brushes. The soft dabs of paint and ‘stippling’ in the foreground give the painting a ‘musical’ effect. One happy, outstanding, yellow flower takes pride of place. The artist often used yellow-green colours in his palette and here it is used for the lawn. The violet-red colour is in contrast to the yellow colours and they interact favourably.
The yellow and reddish coloured, vertical brushstrokes used to portray individual sheets of iron on the roof, have been offset by parallel ones on the house and the slats of the blue garden chair.
The eyes in the trees behind the chair, have been placed either side of one of the four ‘eyes’ of the canvas. The artist placed ‘eyes’ in many of his paintings and they add a surreal touch.
The larger flower in the foreground seems quite close to the viewer whilst the cool yellow-green lawn, because of its colour, appears further away. In this painting the artist has concentrated less than he normally would when graduating colours and blurring edges of elements in the composition.
The bird in the sky adds value to the painting, and the cool blues and greens create harmony.
Acrylic on Masonite, date unknown. (Cleaned and framed.)
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