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Guitars, quinces and fans
Upcoming exhibition at Galeria de Santo António, Monchique, and a new painting
“Paintings by Liz Allen” runs from 7 March to 6 April 2023 Hello! I was excited to find out that the Câmera municipal / town council of Monchique had offered me an exhibition at the municipal gallery. I’d always hoped for an exhibition there before my time is up in Monchique, as the place has…
First painting of 2023
My first painting completed this year is a large version of my drawings of the view from Monchique´s health centre. I´d been working on this painting on and off for a few months, and it was left standing on my easel over Christmas when I was in the UK. If you recognise this view, maybe…
New Year’s greetings and last work of 2022
Hello everyone! I hope you have had a good, peaceful and restorative Christmas and festive season. As I was travelling to the UK to spend two weeks with my elderly mother, I left this last painting of 2022 to show you on my return. It’s the neighbour’s farm again, inspired by a scene when the…
Full moon over Peso
Welcome to my latest painting. A scene set at night, though well-lit by the silvery light of the full moon. The tree in the foreground is the Cork Oak (the tree from which Portugal´s cork is harvested) and I find it´s always an interesting subject to study due to its often contorted shape and the…
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Guitars, quinces and fans
For this painting I decided to continue with the Cubist theme, inasmuch as using the repeated motifs of the guitars and fans. The quinces weren’t repeated, they were real! Well most of them were.
The painting began by laying the guitar onto an octagonal table top, and looking at how I’d like to arrange the painting. An internal frame was inserted, and the guitars repeated. The fans were placed, and the quinces drawn in. I started painting began in Veridian green and pink… which changed to red, then yellow and green, dark blue. I paint a lot of layers when using acrylic, to produce a flat even surface. Sometimes it takes quite a while to work out the colours so the layers will most likely consist of a variety of colours until I feel the painting ‘works’. This took a long time. I used different types of shading, linea ‘hatching’, vertical and diagonal, brushy shading and bubble dots.
It became a complex image, as I worked to resolve the balance between the guitars. I also used stencils for the floral pattern which overflows from the yellow central fan into the larger guitar.
Despite all this, the octagonal angles are still visible in parts and repeated lower down on the body of the central guitar.
About Me
Hello, it’s Liz here, of lizallenart.com. I’m pleased to announce that I’ve just made this new website to show my paintings to the world at large.
Since 2005, I’ve been living near Monchique in Portugal’s Algarve region, but am originally from the U.K. Since living in Portugal, I’ve found plenty of inspiration for painting, particularly in the landscape. I hope you’ll have a look around my new website and enjoy what you see.
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Still life with Guitars, Quinces and Fans
acrylic on canvas
54 x 54cm
available
Paintings by Liz Allen 