blog #1

Welcome to my first blog post on my new website. The purpose of my blogs will be to air and give some insight into the internal machinations of my working processes; the influences, the ideas and the muses. As well as the trials and nuisances (I’ll try to be brief with these).
As you may know, my work is mainly landscape based. However, I do have the occasional foray into other areas, one of which recently was Still Life.
I’d been learning the Spanish guitar for a while, and decided to make it the subject of a new painting. (I do spend more time painting the guitar than playing it these days).
I picked some of my favourite objects for the guitar to pose with: a Mexican chair, a Killim rug, and in the background, a curtain of Conran fabric, circa 1984.
After a short time working on the painting, the work of the Cubists Picasso, Braque and Gris, kept coming to mind, as the guitar was frequently a feature of their paintings. It began to seem necessary to give the painting some homage to these guitar painting Cubists. I studied their work for a while, noting their use of repeated shapes, in particular. Another feature of Cubism is the use of multiple perspectives, and the breaking up of the picture plane with shading and line, giving a fragmented effect. (I used neither of these techniques, but aim to give them a try in future.)
This is the result… three guitars, or one guitar cubed?

Still Life with Spanish guitar on Mexican chair
acrylic on canvas
70 x 50cm
c. Liz Allen 2020
sold