A Magnificent Obsession – Pamela Kay NEAC
Tuesday January 24, 2023
Private View: Sunday 5th February 2023 11.00am – 4.00pm
The Exhibition continues until: Saturday 25th February 2023
Painting has always been for me, a lifelong obsession.
To get your teeth into a subject or theme then gradually realise IT has its’ teeth into YOU. This collection of paintings is a series of themes that I have worked on, obsessively, tirelessly, all my painting life. My favourite themes are the study of flowers; flowers in still life, gardens full of flowers and landscapes, full of light and colour.
I grew a collection of unusual and interesting tulips to paint and combined them with still life in oils. I find the flowers animate still life and give it sparkle.
I also decided to change medium and painted glasses of tulips and spring flowers in gouache and watercolour.
Throughout the year, there is a steady progression of flowers in season from white anemones, early primroses, buttercups, roses and marigolds through to micklemas daises.
I have painted on a smaller scale, a similar progression in the series with the blue Spode jug. This jug is one of my favourite pieces to paint and I used the same still life arrangement but changed the flowers. A wonderfully obsessive theme.
The natural progression from painting studies of flowers and still life is to take a larger view – gardens. My favourite by far is Monet’s garden in Giverny. Monet understood the importance of massed colour in planting and the effects of vast swathes of irises or poppies, rather than the isolation of individual plants and species. It is a painters garden, rather than a plantsman’s. The theme here is colour, light and the intensity of both: flowers en-masse. Again I have painted a few small watercolours of the garden in late June and the light in the more intimate interiors – a conversation piece by the window and Monet’s bedroom.
The natural progression from the garden is to the wider perspective of landscape. After drawing in the garden in Giverny I travelled further south to the Limousin and painted landscapes. Looking for subtle changes in colour and in the variety of greens has to be an obsessional past time of quite a high order!
This series, painted in June before the drought, is full of bright light which gives a strong shadow and soft colour.
The themes of Flowers, Still Life, Gardens and Landscapes move from the closely observed, intimate study to the wider horizon and larger view.
The problem of painting it all remains the same, which is why it is such a magnificent obsession.