My artistic approach is wholly self-taught though incorporating inspiration resulting from detailed studies of artistic styles and associated artists from European art over the last 250 years.
The artistic discipline and understanding the quality of the line has been acquired from many a long hour spent on the drawing board in the architect’s office The company artist taught me over many years, the skills of drawing, sketching and in particular the 3 dimensional approach to architectural design-the axonometric sketches.
Together with this discipline came the understanding of colour. It’s subtlety it’s usage, the contrasts and the combinations. This is so crucial to capture and display in the compositions, the overall positiveness and contribution that the considered implementation of colour can bring.
The medium for my art varies greatly from charcoal and pastel compositions through to collages, where the vitality of colour and the simplicity of the form is everything.
My latest set of four collages is a mini series of vibrant colour capturing the dynamism and energy of nature in differing context.
‘Central Park’ is a piece of work inspired by the combination of the summer plants in Central Park and the architectural hierarchy of the buildings that give New York its iconic skyline. Both plants and buildings strive, amidst their immediate surroundings and relentless competition, to rise upwards towards the sky.
Equally however, irrespective of this ultimate goal, there is still so much colour, life and vitality at all levels of this rising natural mass.
This composition attempts to capture in nature the vibrancy of colour and movement as each plant attempts to surge upwards, which is so evident, and in such a simple form, dramatic. In truth it is really not too dissimilar from the aspirations of the architect and his client behind the iconic built landscape at the other end of Fifth Avenue,…. to be seen.
‘On the Edge of the Meadow’ This picture captures the growth, striving and the energy of the plants as they steer their way through the natural chaos of such a location. The vitality of plant life in its own setting, context and hierarchy can be sometimes overlooked when presented in a more formal setting. What I have tried to capture is the spontaneity of nature and the variety of colour it achieves collectively within what is often described as ‘organised chaos’. There is movement and interest at every corner of the picture but it still manages to knit together reflecting the powerful natural mood of summer growth.
In the picture Mediterranean Sun the light is captured, as it floods the plant in differing degrees giving each leaf a feeling of movement and a sense of energy’ as the plant reaches upwards and outwards into its space. The simplicity of the composition has been a key and it helps greatly to give the picture a warmth and energy that holds the eye of the onlooker. Crucially within the immediate stretching and twisting of each and every leaf to grow and extend from its starting point, there is an overall shape of a shrub that looks balanced, healthy and beautiful.
The terracotta background gives the picture a feeling of the summer heat and the definition of the horizontal plane from the vertical is defined simply by a thin silent line.
The composition ‘From Summer to Autumn’ has attempted to capture both the abundance of colour, which is so evident at that time of the year and a depth of composition, which draws you into the picture giving an impression of movement and light.
There can be no symmetry to such a picture. In some instances the colour change is singular, spread out across the picture. Elsewhere, the colour change is in groupings, some vertical but predominantly horizontal, along the line of the tree branch, its lifeline throughout the summer months.
The colours throughout have a vibrancy that is dynamic and alive, yet in part dying, the strongest colour being produced by the leaf so close to its ultimate fall.
I hope you enjoy them.
The titles are:
In the Mediterranean Sun
Central Park
On the Edge of the Meadow
From Summer to Autumn.
Stuart Forrester
Autumn 2007
