Camping Under The Stars Painting

My current work includes night landscapes. These works extend my fascination with colour and composition. The repeated motif of the night sky facilitates my exploration of colour value. Mixing colour with a minimal palette I paint from observation, in darkness with a small headlamp, placing myself in an uncomfortable viewing position. I impose limitations like these in order to generate creative problem solving utilising memory, recall and intuition. There can be a sense of urgency in painting this way, an attempt to capture in paint momentary glimpses of shapes like distant light in a neighbours window, dark shadows forming unusual shapes. The resulting paintings can be naive and only vaguely recognisable, ideally though the paintings are a nostalgic and atmospheric scene that invites the viewer to recall familiar night landscapes from their own experiences.