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paintingkenilworth

The wow moment


Like all children I drew and painted at school. Some teachers were great - others didn't care. A couple really concentrated on the basics of draughtsmanship and gave me a confidence that I could capture what I saw, eventually, on paper.


Our family holidays were in the UK - typically touring an area and any cathedral, museum, stately home or art gallery was visited. Like most young children I found them boring with the exception of the ones where there was a degree of interaction; buttons to press or stuffed animals to see. In the 1970s there weren't many of those in Britain.


There was a Venn diagram of interests - the walls of stately homes and museums are studded with 'Old Masters' of varying quality. There were no explanatory notes - a painting, a name, a date. A study of a bowl of fruit, noblemen and women, religious stories and an occasional nude to liven the visit - William Etty you are obsessed! None of this seemed to link with my experience of drawing and painting though.


My road to Damascus happened in the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle, County Durham now infamous for a dodgy sight test. The Bowes Museum is a large stately home full of all sorts of beautiful objects. Immediately on entry is an exquisite large silver mechanical swan that springs to life to a packed crowd. The painting which made me look differently at Art Galleries was the Regatta on the Grand Canal by Antonio Canaletto. The first thing that struck me was it's size - its 2.5m wide and 1.8m high. Then the light - its a bright summery picture with beautiful eggshell water, with reds and golds everywhere. Although it is huge it is full of little vignettes - the closer you get the more you see. I was amazed at the level of detail and character to that capture the hustle and bustle of the event. Maybe, because the painting needs you to lean in to see everything that is going on, I noticed some of the little details. Little brush strokes that you read as a figure from a long way away is just a suggestion when you get in close. The treatment of the water is beautiful. From a distance it looks very natural but up close there are some quite naive little brush strokes that, multiplied thousands of times, make for a convincing canal. I like the perspective, I like the deep shade in the bottom left hand corner which suggest you are looking out from somewhere to see this... I could go on. The first impression was everything. I'd not seen anything like it - an artist in the 1730s capturing a scene on this scale. thinking about it now - how did any of the Masters create what they did without the benefit of a camera?


From that moment on though I really began looking at paintings and appreciating them in a completely different way. I began to look more at how they achieved the effects that drew me to the painting rather than just the image itself. I learned more about Canaletto and saw his paintings of Warwick Castle and London. I learned more about the different schools of Art and began to be able to recognise them from a distance. I bought the postcards of the images I liked in the museum shops and created my own little art gallery. The link was established between what I saw on the walls and the paintings that I was creating in school. They were the same thing but the artists were just way better than I was.


I've loved visiting Art Galleries ever since and it fuelled commitment to a hobby that I am lucky enough to be able to devote time to now.

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