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recent painting and sketching work and techniques by contemporary Norfolk artist Mari French

thunderheads and stubble …

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Stormy skies & stubble field

Stormy skies & stubble field � Mari French 2016

A few sketchbook spreads from a recent day sat at the edge of a local harvested barley field. I’d passed it earlier in the day on my way back from shopping, so when I got home I threw my sketch bag in the car and shot straight back (about 3 miles from home).

Dark impressive storm clouds were towering on the horizon. It was very humid, with bees buzzing, crows calling in a nearby field, warm wind, skylarks. Thunderheads massing but then dispersing away over the fields. Bronze stubble. 

Decided I’d try to be a bit looser than my usual watercolour sketches, so I used ink, gouache, posca paint pens and tried to evoke the movement of the wind and the birds and insects over the field.

Stormy skies & stubble field � Mari French 2016

Stormy skies & stubble field � Mari French 2016


Thunderheads over stubble field � Mari French 2016

Thunderheads over stubble field � Mari French 2016

 

 

 

emerging again …

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Emerging forms (ii), acrylic/mixed-media on canvas, 100x100cm. © Mari French 2016

Emerging forms (ii), acrylic/mixed-media on canvas, 100x100cm. © Mari French 2016

… and here’s the next one in my latest series. Lots of thick juicy acrylic paint contrasting with a variety of marks and thin veils of overlying colour. I love this palette just now.

Definitely a feel of the coast here, but something more that I haven’t pinned down yet. I’m enjoying the sense that these works seem perhaps (to me) to have further meaning, from my subconscious or from observation. Meanwhile I’m allowing things to emerge in their own time.

emerging blooms …

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Mixed-media on canvas, 100x100cm. © Mari French 2016

Mixed-media on canvas, 100x100cm. © Mari French 2016

After struggling with a couple of canvases this week, I was beginning to lose the plot with this one. Remembering what I’d recently been advised* – ‘Don’t let your painting know you’re scared of it’ – I threw caution to the wind and began editing the image by vigorously covering certain areas with paint, then adding a variety of marks with oil sticks, paint pens and ink pencils. 

Some marks were robust, some delicate and twirling or meandering. Several of the latter seem to be suggesting etoliated, wiry but fragile blooms? I love this colour palette, luminous, soft and atmospheric.

Standing back, I’m quietly excited by this one.

 

* Emily Ball, artist & tutor.