Cafe Society

An other beautiful painting from you. The colours are so beautiful.

Your portfolio is really lovely Caroline and I particularly admire this painting. The colours sit so well together and I like the balance of the composition too. I would love to create something like this, but I wouldn't know where to begin.

Thanks for the encouraging comments! Julie, I consciously avail myself of a number of influences, many of whom have been featured in The Artist magazine. I know that Virginia Cobb - an American painter- has been a significant influence on my more abstracted work, and Laura Reiter. Victoria Crow and Barbara Rae also, amongst others. The inclusion of the newspaper text was as a result of putting the picture forward for a themed exhibition at Southport Flower Show a few years ago (we were invited to choose an 'ism') and my chosen 'ism' was Cubism for how the picture was developing. When you work in acrylic, it's possible to layer and work over areas that are not working. The use of collage can dramatically shift the picture in another direction as well. To prevent the thing becoming too chaotic, it's advisable to use unifying colour and tone at certain points. It is built on the still life but there is a high degree of invention as you'd probably guess. If it's any help, Virginia Cobb's (And Laura Reiter come to think of it) idea of an underlying structure may be useful, dividing the space up with broad strokes in a conscious decision about the composition to begin. Then work in with other shapes and motifs. Not being a slave to 'reality' is actually inherently difficult to me, I love nothing more than to be quite literal (The Downton pictures I've recently done illustrate this!) breaking out of that is good to do whether or not you stick to the abstracted or go back to the 'realistic' as it all helps with mark making and paint handling.

Love the placement of shapes and the palette. You have an interesting and thought provoking gallery.