Each Spring, the Cistus Ladanifer (rockrose, gumrose, labdanum) takes over the landscape of the Algarve with abundant white flowers. It is a rather invasive plant which overgrows all the abandoned farmland. But in Spring you forgive this plant that bad habit. It is so beautiful to see them in the morning sun, opening their flowers towards the sun and gently waving in the wind. April is the month with the most flowers and every year again I have to take photos of it. So why not paint them? I did already an early one in 2018, which is sold. So […]
2021
3 posts
A heavy thunderstorm in November that kept me awake for a night, inspired me to paint these 2 paintings. They belong together (diptych) and are for sale. It reminded me of the Doors song, “Riders on the Storm” (June 1971). Although Morrison must have given it a more existential meaning than the one I give it here. To me they are (Ghost) Riders in the sky (A North American cowboy legend, see Wikipedia or the Northern European version: Wild Hunt (also called Wilde Heir) see this Wikipedia page. Since then I can’t get the song out of my head.
It’s a long time ago that I wrote about my painting process. This time I wanted to give attention to the highlights and darks in a painting. A good amount of highlights and darks can give a dramatic effect on a painting. The old masters and especially Caravaggio, often used this technique to create more drama. And drama was an important thing in paintings and fresco’s when you imagine that paintings hung in areas where the light was not often good or the distance from the viewer to the painting was huge. Preparation For this painting I used an Artists […]