I'm excited to present six new acrylic paintings which I've been working on throughout the last month. All depict in painterly detail the macrocosmic world of the ground-down stones on Upgang Beach, Whitby.
As colourful multi-faceted subjects they need little explanation of their obvious appeal to a painter and I've enjoyed expanding my palette towards unfamiliar pigments and learning how to model those across light and shade, wet and dry, transparent and reflective. It's an absorbing practise and I've been happy in my studio exploring these fleeting landmarks and make paintings on this intersection of landscape and still life.
There's no other way to work on this apart from using reference photographs. When conditions are right I crawl around looking for compositions and colours whilst documenting as much as I can before the light changes or I become knee-deep in sea.
As the painting emerges I find myself subconsciously transported back to the location and a glimpse of childhood when encounters with these watery spaces were for myself routine. The compositions of un-named, un-owned, randomly arranged objects also become vehicles for imagination, suggestive of other forms and relationships.
The titles come to me as I'm deep in the introspection of painting, I note them down for later. Obviously these paintings reference The Stones and from there I played with titles and lyrics from there and elsewhere. 'Sympathy for the pebble' is both a riff on that and also a recognition of a strange identification I found with these ordinary bits of old rock. Within hours they'll be caught in the tumult of the North Sea and swept away.
Auctions for these paintings begin on ebay at 8pm GMT. on Thursday 2nd of March. All the paintings are in acrylic on canvas-board and measure 7x5 inches.
Opening bids of £75 or over would be very welcome.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/malconius65