Boy with Knee Up
 

This is quick one I did to accompany the others to the Blackheath Gallery. It is 20" x 16", oil on canvas.

I like this very much Thomasin. His face just pops out of the canvas. Has the same sculptural quality I admire in your other paintings.

Thank-you, Debra!

That is really nice, I love the palette you've used, it really glows. Another of your angelic son?
Does he sit for you? My eight year old is becoming phobic of cameras and pastels, now refuses to cooperate. Money may have to change hands....

I don't have anyone around to bribe. My models cost me bucks. Drat!

Lovely painting. I love the somewhat gritty background with the smoothness of the skin.

Thanks Margaret. Yes, it is my son. He didn't sit this time (I don't think he can sit still!). It was from a photo.

Thank-you Sharon. I like to brush the texture of the canvas and under-painting as though I were feeling it with a finger - it makes for a lightness and freshness. It's the unfinished stage that keeps the painting breathing.

Oh my gosh, Thomasin, this is wonderful! I'm running out of adjectives. This is such a textural, tactile painting. The way you have contrasted the fresh, alive, smooth, even glossy skin (kneecap included) with the rough background is uniquely your way, and i love it. I also love the way his knee "holds up" the right side of the composition whch would otherwise be dragged down by the sharp diagonal. Where would the composition be without that diagonal stroke that creates movement and spatial depth? The knee makes it work. I really feel the concept behind this.

Thanks so much. Alex!

Thomasin,
Have been away for a while and am just now getting updated on what

Thomasin--

Really fine! Love the atmosphere of it...

Is your technique more additive (piling on) or subtractive (scraping off)? These remind me of abstracts a local guy here paints, with a beautifully pearly and dense surface. When he's done with a piece, there's more paint on the floor than the painting, the surface having been heavily scraped between each layer. Each painting looks as if it weighs a ton, but there's no other way for him to get that accumulated result. Your (oil) paintings have a similar feeling of material "weight."

Can you describe?