Time of Plenty

Throughout my life my emotional response to a subject has been central to my work. However, uncontrolled emotion needs to be managed under an umbrella of structure and balance of composition. Time of Plenty shows the emotional response of mother and child as it trustingly grasps her hand and the gathering of fruit. However the underlying construction was far more complicated as in this case I was drawing from my mind using my own form of geometry, a process of my own invention and difficult to put into words.

When looking at the figures, they form an overall rectangle whilst a rombus is created from the apple stalk across her eyes to the upright of the tree-trunk on the right-hand side, then down to the elbow and across the other arm and back up to the apple. I continued this train of thought throughout the painting. I was part of a series of paintings drawing from the mind. Up until then I had been mostly drawing directly from the object itself. Could I not see that subject in my brain and use the same principles of approach? I broke down Time of Plenty down into geometric shapes trying to simplify the painting so as to accentuate the structure. I then used a simplified warm/cool palette to help explain the structure further to the viewer. I believe that the brain is a complicated structure like a computer, but if I use a computer, I do not need to know how the computer was made, I just want it to work. Similarly too much analysis of how I get to the end product can bore the viewer,  I just want them to enjoy the outcome.

May I finally add that this drawing from the Mind approach used in Time of Plenty is not that dissimilar to how I approach other work such as the woodscapes etc taken from direct observation, sketchbooks and so on. They both share the basic principles of drawing, geometrical construction and a simple warm/cool palette.