On the 28th December I went to a place close to the Wakefield Boundary, near Methley, to experiment with three panels and painting quickly. The site was St Aidan’s Nature Reserve, created from an open cast coal mining site.
It was my first painting with acrylics since leaving Bretton Hall some 30 years earlier. I usually prefer oils (impractical for the proposed Boundary No Boundary project as I would get covered in the stuff as I walked) and watercolours (I wanted something with more solidity).
I painted very quickly…it was so cold the water in the paint pot started to freeze. I painted each panel in approximately 15 minutes and independent of each other. I picked a point on the horizon where I wanted each panel to start and end. I didn’t put them together until I’d completed all three. The paintings depict a 160 degree stretch of the horizon and consisted mainly of reed beds.
I liked the solidity of the panels but feel they are a little deep at 40mm so will try again with 20mm. I liked the acrylics and wondered why I stopped using them in the first place.
tony wade 