Looking outside your space…

‘This Way Out’

You’ve probably had the experience of viewing artwork in a gallery or museum room, when you glance through the doorway and a distant picture strikes you regardless of the lack of detail you can detect, or that it may be partially blocked. You just can’t wait to leave your less interesting room to get close to it. That picture will be impressive of course, but there was something about that glimpse, through that framing of ordinary from which you were drawn.

That magnificent subject you would like to render–shall it be full on and dominate the canvas?

‘Breakfast on the Boulevard’

If it’s that glimpse, then it works well for the subject to be a glimpse on the canvas, rather than being a glimpse in a room in the house. You are in the canvas, looking at something further in the canvas.

In ‘Breakfast on the Boulevard’ the viewer exists in a plain room viewing a scene that their abode presents. There is color out there. Noise – perhaps. Fresh air – maybe.

The shadowy areas of the immediate foreground we are viewing from is a mix of umbers, mixes of blues, reds, greens. Illumination is from the doorway or window, influenced by the hue of the sky.

What’s beyond, that gets it’s own special treatment.