Meet the Paintings - Pink Waterlilies in Sunlight

Here’s something a little different, a landscape that’s not really a landscape.  This is ‘Pink Waterlilies in Sunlight’ – it’s quite a large painting, 26 x 32, with a beautiful classic white gold frame.

Here's the photo that I used as the material for the painting.

I’ve been visiting glasshouses and exotic gardens for decades now, as there’s something really fascinating about the abstract shapes of plants – cacti, succulents, the shapes and reflections of leaves on water.  

I’ve painted in the cactus gardens in Barcelona, the glasshouses at Kew in London,  Duthie Park in Aberdeen, the Botanics in Glasgow (the orchid house was a particular favourite), the lilies in the ponds in Central Park in New York and the glasshouses at Edinburgh. Wherever I can find them, in fact.  When I was starting out painting, I used to go twice a week to the Botanics in Glasgow to study the plants and paint , and the rest of the time to Kelvingrove to draw the animal specimens, even being allowed access to the collection in the basement.

Painting plants is a discipline, as it is all about observation – something which was very much drummed into my biology science class at university.  You need to constantly look, and observe.  To understand the importance in art of knowing the basic principles of design in the natural world and botany, I’ll point you in the direction of fellow Glaswegian, Christopher Dresser .

Of course, it’s a bit of a cliché to paint waterlilies – Monet managed it so much bigger, more extravagantly, more audaciously than anyone else could possibly ever do.  Of course, he had the money, and the estate, and six gardeners, and a diverted river to feed his lily ponds, and exotic plants bought in, and vast canvasses and giant studios and good weather.  And the talent. No-one is ever going to top that.

But there is still something fascinating about watching the patterns changing on the surface of things, of the reflections and the light and the colours.  You are painting exactly what you see, but it is all about abstraction and pattern-making, as there are no longer the usual reference points for reading the painting, a lack of easy means of measuring distance and depth.  You are looking down at the sky.  It is a world of invertions, where nothing is quite as it seems.

In the photos, I have included at the end some of my paintings of waterlilies from 30 years ago, along with a sheet of botanical drawings.  I have few photos of early work, which, because they are studies, lie in piles in my studio, unphotographed.

Up for Auction

There's a couple of rather sweet lily paintings of mine coming up for auction online.

(I should point out that, as always, it's not me putting them up for sale - it's the owners who bought them originally from the galleries!)

They were painted back in 1994 and are of the lilies in the glasshouses at Kew Gardens.  Interestingly, I went back there to paint the waterlilies again for my show in London in February of this year.

Both are in their original gold frames, and are oil on prepared paper.  Looking good for 22 years old!  They were sold as a pair through the Bridge Gallery at Gartocharn in September 1995.

Here is Pond with Pink Lilies (not Pond with River as it states in the auction catalogue), and the image size is 5" x 7" (that's excluding the cream mount and the frame).

This is Lilies at Kew, and the image size is 10" x 8".

How cute is that?

The paintings are being sold as Lot 295 in the Scottish Contemporary Art Auction at McTear's on 10 July at 1pm, with an estimate of £100-150 for the pair - which is an absolute bargain for such lovely little pictures!  

I do hope they get snapped up by someone who appreciates them.

Here they are on the McTear's website here.

Sold Today in London

This dear little painting of waterlilies sold today from my solo show.  Somebody's got themselves a beautiful new picture.

Pink Waterlilies at Kew (Oil on linen, 16 x 16)

Next week is the last full week!  Can't believe it's gone so quickly.  The show closes on 8th March, but you can have a look at how things are going at the exhibition here...

"From City to Sea"

At the Printers

The new catalogue for my solo show 'From City to Sea' is at the printers at the moment, and should be arriving next week.  Very exciting!  Can't wait to see it.

If you'd like a copy, and an invite to the show at Duncan R Miller Fine Arts, St James's, London, then drop me a line with your postal address to judith@jibridgland.com

The preview is on Thursday 11th February from 5.30pm.  I'll be there, and it would be great to see you if you're able to come along!

This year, I will have around 35 brand new paintings in the show, with scenes of Scotland, Northern Ireland, Cornwall and London, and I have chosen to explore some very different and contrasting types of landscape – "from city to sea".

Autumn by the Eiffel Tower (Oil on linen, 24 x 26)

Grasses in the Sand, Gulf of Mexico (Oil on linen, 12 x 12)

Those of you familiar with my work will know how much I love painting the sea and the rugged coastlines of Scotland, Cornwall and Northern Ireland.  There’s something very exciting about the wildness of the wind and sea, and about land that has been weathered and buffeted by the elements.   

These landscapes have a real energy and timelessness about them, a beauty and a wild intensity.  So in this show there are once again plenty of paintings of these familiar places, along with the peaceful, broad expanses of beaches around the east coast at North Berwick, and the deserted white and pink sands of Morar.

                                Wide Sweep of the Sand, Camusdarach (Oil on  linen, 26 x 32)

Whilst I enjoy the continuity and familiarity of going back to the same places year after year, I also look wherever I can for new ideas.  I like my shows to read like a story, to have something a little bit unexpected, to be full of surprising contrasts.

So this year I have also explored the landscapes in cities.  I wanted to contrast the ordered, controlled landscapes within the heart of urban areas against the wild, untamed scenery from the very edges of the country.

To that end, I have visited many parks and gardens in a number of cities, exploring the shapes and patterns of man-made landscapes.  I took my cameras to locations such as Kew Gardens, Hyde Park, Green Park and Hampstead Heath, experiencing the parks at different times of year, especially as the leaves turned towards autumn.   

 Cherry Trees, Kew Gardens (Oil on linen, 12 x 12)

I also made visits to the glasshouses at both Kew and Edinburgh to study the waterlilies. Waterlilies are a theme that I explored many years ago, and it’s a pleasure to return to them afresh.  Here I can juxtapose the calm and intimate close-up experience of their beautiful, logical patterns, with the powerful, exciting, energetically abstract shapes of waves on the shore, or the wide, open expanses of empty beaches or huge skies.

Pink Waterlilies in Sunlight, Kew (Oil on linen, 26 x 32)

A good exhibition should take you on a journey, tell you a story.  My show is therefore the story of a year of travel, of observing, recording, note-taking, and remembering, and it is also a story about what it is to be a Scottish painter.

Do hope you can come to the gallery and see the show!   The exhibition runs until 9th March.

Hard at Work

I'm into my final stretch of work for my solo show coming up next year.  The theme is the contrast between gardens, parks and urban spaces, and the wild landscapes of the mountains and the coast.

Here is a collection of paintings based on studies of waterlilies in the glasshouses at Kew Gardens and Edinburgh Botanical Gardens, and also in Central Park in New York. 

The preview  at Duncan R Miller Fine Arts is on Thursday 11th February 2016, so put that in your diaries!  There will be a catalogue available, so if you'd like one or an invitation to the private view, drop me a line.