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Posts tagged ‘Painting’

Aug 28

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Autobiographical Mobile: My painting diary – Day 1: Mallorca

Since I started The Daily Norm last year, in those unenriched days when my interaction with the abundant world of the blogosphere was only just beginning, I have featured a fair number of my own paintings on my blog, attempting, as I have posted their photos, to explain some of the meaning behind what are often quite complex painted images. For my latest painting, I am changing tack.

In my current  work, which has now been sitting upon my easel for some weeks, I am exploring an autobiographical subject matter on a grand scale (the canvas is 120cm x 120 cm, so a fair size for my lounge-come-studio to take when you consider that when I paint, I basically take over my kitchen – leading to some interesting food results when the paint gets too close to the oven top). Because the work is essentially a self-portrait albeit explored through a catalogue of symbols on a large Mediterranean background, I anticipate working on the canvas for some time before it is finished, particularly as painting is not my day job. Since that will mean a sparsity of artwork available for Daily Norm consumption in the foreseeable future, and because I plan to paint a plethora of details, I thought it would be equally relevant to blog about the painting as it progresses, rather than ramble at length when it is eventually finished.

First layer done – the Mallorcan inspired background

You join me then in what is the first post of my painting diary, a set of hopefully regular accounts cataloguing my progress on the work. In my first instalment, I present the background of my work. I decided to set the piece on a quiet, rocky beach, somewhere on the island of Mallorca. The background is far from finished – this is just a sketch of where the finished scenery will be set, but it provides enough structure, allowing me to build the details of the painting on top of it, layer by layer.

The background is loosely based on Torrent de Pareis, a beach in Northern Mallorca which provides stunning natural scenery but which, for the purposes of my painting, provides the right balance of solitary surrealism to cast the perfect backdrop to my self-analysing piece.

The Torrent de Pareis in reality

And its crystal clear waters

Since the painting will be a take on my story, it’s only appropriate that I should set it in the Mediterranean and on Spanish soil since Spain has, for most of my life, proved to be a consistent inspiration in my art and in my aspirations for life. While I have spent the majority of my time in Andalucia, my trip to the island of Mallorca this time last year inspired me more than any other. Expecting an island full of package holiday tourists and English menus, I was surprised, if not stunned by the incredible coastal scenery to be found around the island (once we fled from the ugly shadows cast by Magaluf and other tourist dystopias). The waters are such an incredible shade of blue, and the rocky covey beaches so idyllic and colourful, that seeing is believing. I accordingly enclose just a few of the shots I took of Mallorca’s incredible coastal scenery last summer – the colours alone are an art form in themselves. I just hope that my painting does Mallorca justice, even as just a background to a far deeper work.

See you for the next instalment of my painting diary.

© Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm, 2001-2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of the material, whether written work, photography or artwork, included within The Daily Norm without express and written permission from The Daily Norm’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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Aug 19

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Sunday Supplement – Cityscape I: London

London is the word on everyone’s lips right now. Yes, the olympic games are over, but the paralympics will start in just under a week, and the buzz around them continues to grow. For the influx of visitors descending upon our currently hot and humid jam-packed olympian city, the river will be a highlight of their sightseeing tour, the huge central artery which snakes through the crowded metropolis, marking the physical divide between the characteristically different North and South, providing grand vistas aplenty from the many elegant wide bridges, and, on the South Bank, playing host to the rejuvenated cultural heartbeat of the city.  On the river too stand some of London’s most prominent sights: the Tower of London, Tower Bridge, the London Assembly Building, the London Eye, and this one: The iconic Houses of Parliament.

What the Eiffel Tower is to Paris, Big Ben is to London. Strangely enough, Big Ben is the bell in the tower rather than the tower itself, but it’s this high-gothic, grand and decadent campanile which gets the tourists excited and marks the beginning of each new year with such ceremony and aplomb, surrounded by fireworks, the iconic spectacle marking the passage of every significant moment in the city’s history. The view of Big Ben and the House of Parliament to its side have understandably inspired photographers and artists throughout the ages. Monet was fascinated by the effect of light in the dense fog surrounding the looming silhouette of Parliament, while Turner painted the fiery ravage of Parliament’s predecessor repeatedly.

This is my take on Parliament. It’s part of my cityscape collection, a small group of city views which I painted back in 2007 when I was trying to get the hang of oil paints after a long period of painting in acrylics. So it’s more of a study piece really, but still one of my favourite pieces of London.

Oh, and if you like it and fancy my painting hanging in your home, you can get limited edition prints of the work on my main website here.

Cityscape I: London (2012 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, oil on canvas)

Have a great Sunday.

© Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm, 2001-2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of the material, whether written work, photography or artwork, included within The Daily Norm without express and written permission from The Daily Norm’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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Jul 15

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Sunday Supplement ITALIA – Cityscape IV: Rome

It’s ITALIA Season on the Daily Norm, and after a week of Norms’ adventures down the boot of Italy, and a showcase of my photos of the glorious country, it’s time to feature another of my paintings. I haven’t devoted nearly as much canvas space to Italy as I have to Spain or Paris for example. And now I come to think about it, that really should change. There is frankly so much beauty to inspire me that I could paint Italy for the rest of my life. Perhaps that’s why I have never really begun.

However one work which I did paint in homage to Italy was a simple reflection of Rome’s Forum Romano, against a rich orange and pink sunset. You can just about see St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican in the background. The painting formed part of my “Cityscape” series which I painted back in 2007 when I was trying to teach myself how to master oil paints, having been painting for so many years in acrylics. Despite being only “studies”, the resulting collection was so popular that I transformed part of it into limited edition prints back in 2008.

Anyway, without further ado I give you Rome, in sultry silhouette.

Cityscape IV: Rome (2007 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, Oil on canvas)

© Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm, 2001-2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of the material, whether written work, photography or artwork, included within The Daily Norm without express and written permission from The Daily Norm’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Jul 8

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Sunday Supplement ITALIA – Tuscany Wharf: 15km to San Gimignano

It’s ITALIA Season on the Daily Norm, celebrating, for at least two weeks, everything that’s fantastic about Italy. And to kick of the season, here on the Sunday Supplement, the weekly showcase of my art, I am featuring my 2010 painting, Tuscany Wharf: 15 km to San Gimignano. 

I was inspired to paint the scene when my Partner’s family and I were driving through the incredibly beautiful green and golden rolling hills of the Tuscan countryside. The journey, from Donoratico down on the coast up through the hills, past Volterra and on to San Gimignano involved so many curves and bends and meanders through the Tuscan countryside that when we reached a road sign advising us that after around 90 minutes of said meandering, we were finally within 15 km reach of our final destination, my Partner, whose face was very green by that point, breathed a huge sigh of relief, or as much of a sigh as could be mustered after a double dose of very soporific travel sickness tablets.

As we approached San Gimignano, a UNESCO world-heritage protected town, famous for its collection of medieval towers which grew taller with each new construction as rich merchant families sought to compete with one another, the view was better than ever. Approaching the town from some distance, seeing the iconic towers gradually emerging from behind the brow of a set of undulating hills, was quite a sight, and one which I have attempted to capture in my painting, which celebrates all the beauty of the Tuscan countryside from rows of perfectly lined up vineyards and golden fields with rolled up hay, to the curly-wurly road itself, rising and falling over and around the crests of hills, lined by cypress trees and Italian pines.

However what makes this representation of Tuscany different is that sliced through one part of the landscape is a vertical insight into another world. It’s industrial Northern England, a scene with such industrialised toxicity that the smoke bellowing out from the factory chimneys pour into the Tuscan scene, filling turquoise skies with a decided collection of clouds. The English scene, which was inspired by the works of L. S. Lowry, was inserted by way of marked contrast to the beauty of the Tuscan scenery. However both scenes appear to be in sync, as if they represent the same geography in a parallel universe. Where the tuscan hills roll upwards, the english scene follows the same trajectory, with a row of cramped terraced houses following the same incline of the Tuscan hill. Where in tuscany there is a round bail of hay, in the English scene, the bail of hay is replaced with a cylindrical oil container. Similarly the roses, planted next to a vineyard so the grape grower can detect disease early, is replaced by the barbed wire keeping trespassers off the industrial site. Thus it is that the two landscapes appear inescapably conflicting, and yet coexisting in perfect union.

Tuscany Wharf (15km to San Gimignano) (oil on canvas, 2010 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown)

© Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm, 2001-2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of the material, whether written work, photography or artwork, included within The Daily Norm without express and written permission from The Daily Norm’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

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Jun 17

Sunday Supplement: St Ives

We Brits are so accustomed to heading down to Gatwick and jetting out to the Mediterranean, the French Countryside or the Aegean Sea for our summer holidays that we forget what we have on our doorstep. It’s not that we can be blamed – look at us now. Mid-June, almost the longest day, and last week we had temperatures in the region of 12 degrees. Last Monday in fact that skies were so dark as they spouted out a continuous torrent of abusively heavy rain that I felt as though apocalypse had fallen. However on the rare occasion that the weather actually behaves in correlation with the seasons, England can do summer holiday like each of its European neighbours.

I love my photo of old women on a bench – so marvellously English

There’s nothing quite like an English summer – Pimms in the garden on a setting sun, when the grass goes slightly dewey and the sunlight dapples on the dinner jackets and ballgowns of attendees to Glyndebourne Opera, or open-air Shakespeare in Regent’s Park; picnics under willow trees, next to ponds quietly humming with the sounds of multi-coloured dragonflies dancing across the surface of lily-pads; and the coast. The English coast is emblematic of old-school summer holidays, as men took out their handkerchiefs and tied knots in the corners to make a hat providing scant protection of their bald-batches, children risked breaking their teeth on a lump of sticky-sweet “rock” complete with writing running through the middle, and others took up exploring in rock-pools searching for crabs and shrimps and other creepy crawlies which lurk in amongst the rocks and seaweed when our extreme tidal system takes the sea way out beyond the beach.

Yes, this IS English sea!

Together with this tradition, you expect to find plenty of seaweed, lots of rocks and stones and a slightly dull tinge to the seawater, making it altogether a more English, slightly less comfortable affair. But last year when I headed down to Cornwall, right at the bottom of our fair nation, I was flabbergasted by the site of such a stunning coastline, with such sapphire-sparkling crystal-clear turquoise waters that I could have been in the Caribbean. No wonder then that the little harbour town of St Ives has proved such an inspiration to generations of artists (Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson being two foremost examples of modern times) that the world-famous Tate Gallery has set up an outpost there.

Well when I stayed last year, I too became inspired by the burst of very mediterranean colours that were all around me and, when I was, ironically, sat in the garden of my family home in Spain on the Mediterranean itself, I took to my canvas and recollected the beauty of what I had seen in Cornwall a few weeks before.

St Ives (Cornwall) (2012 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, acrylic on canvas, 60 cm x 50 cm)

My painting of Cornwall uses a simple colour palate with fresh oranges, greens and purples, while the turquoise qualities of the sea are reflected in all their beauty. I’ve introduced something of a cubism element when tackling the many rocks which frame the coast and most unusually of all, I’ve actually painted an impression of how the light dappled upon the canvas when I sat painting it in my parents’ garden, with the light cast through the intricate mesh of the jasmine tree. In this way I have forever captured a St Ives imbued with the light of the Med where I was inspired to paint it.

Detail of the harbour (© Nicholas de Lacy-Brown)

Detail of the town and lifeboat pier (© Nicholas de Lacy-Brown)

In addition, take a look at this little gallery of some of my photos from St Ives so you can see what inspired it.

Have an amazing Sunday.

© Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm, 2001-2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of the material, whether written work or artwork, included within The Daily Norm without express and written permission from The Daily Norm’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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Jun 12

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Salamanca: My Painting – Homage to a sandstone city in oil on canvas

It’s been two months since I returned from the golden glowing sandstone Spanish city of Salamanca. There was so much to inspire me when I walked those elegant historical streets. When I gazed, mesmerised through my hotel window onto the stunning baroque Cathedral, the sun setting upon its orange stonework, and cypress trees gently waving from side to side in the evening breeze before it, a painting came to my mind. I rushed to make a quick sketch which I still have on the back of a reservation print out for the restaurant we were dining at that night. My painting of Salamanca was to contain what to my mind was the essence of the city – a kaleidoscope of dappled, marbled oranges and golds in a landscape uniquely built from the local Villamayor sandstone, a city bursting with historical artefacts flowing from the dual powerhouses of church and university. It is a city which is elegant in its antiquity, and yet bursting with fresh new life from its greenery, its strong local life, the pull of tourism and the thriving university population which resides there. This was my inspiration and shortly after returning from Spain I set to work on a large 105 cm x 90 cm canvas. I finally finished  the work over the long Jubilee Weekend. And here, exclusively, is the result, as I present my first (non-Norm) painting of 2012…

Salamanca (2012 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, oil on canvas, 105 cm x 90 cm)

Dominating the centre of the canvas is a silhouetted skyline of the city, recognisable by the Cathedral spires and the intricate turrets, domes and baroque roofing of the nearby University. Rather than paint the detail of the buildings, I constructed the skyline out of a wall of villamayor sandstone bricks, in the same way that each building of the city is constructed. Those individual bricks act as a window onto different features of the city. On one brick you see the conch shells of the famous Casa de las Conchas, while on others, parts of the hand painted street letterings are featured, infamous for their historical use of pigs blood and olive oil.

In the meantime, out of the Cathedral and the university, the ironwork crosses become large mobile-like structures, inspired by the great maker of mobile art, Alexander Calder. On these mobiles hang various symbols of the city. The astronaut and the ice cream which are usually imbedded in the intricate plateresque facades of the Cathedral and the University’s famous sandstone frog are all featured, as well as the skull upon which the frog sits (my painted skull is inspired by the Mexican Dia de los Muertos celebrations for which houses and graves are adorned with beautifully decorated hand painted skulls like this one). Represented too is the tradition of learning at the University, embodied in the Orrery (one of which I bought while in Salamanca as a souvenir of the city) as well as the famous Plaza Mayor, represented by the infamous bust of Fascist leader Franco which can be found amongst the busts of Spanish rulers around the square, and the inclusion of which causes such controversy that it is regularly vandalised. My Franco too has been vandalised, but is that paint on his face or blood on his hands? Finally the painting is generously sprinkled with various groups of cypress trees, tidily placed in terracotta pots at various spots across the canvas as well as a curtain of clouds sweeping across a clear green sky. Ooh and look out for the little stork’s nest embedded amongst the spires of the cathedral – the storks are a customary feature of the city and do not appear to cause the residents any hassle – in fact some churches have baskets placed on top of their spires to aid the storks in building a safe and secure nest!

So there it is, and above, so you don’t miss the details, are more photos showing the various individual aspects of the painting. I hope you like the painting and, more importantly, let me know what you think! I’ve already started a new work, so look out for that over the coming months.

© Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm, 2001-2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of the material, whether written work or artwork, included within The Daily Norm without express and written permission from The Daily Norm’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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Jun 10

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Sunday Supplement: High Perspective (Viewed from 21c)

Having recently been voted the top city to visit in the world (as if we didn’t know it already), after last weekend’s Jubilee spectacular and, of course, with the olympics almost on our doorstep, it seems only appropriate that in this week’s Sunday Supplement, I feature one of my paintings which features the city of London as its central theme.

I moved to London ten years ago this September, when I came to study law at King’s College London. I was thrilled when, full of anticipation at what was to be my first day moving away from home in order to start university, I entered my student digs to find this view before me: a perfect vista over London’s south bank complete with the skyscrapers of the city and the tower of Tate Modern, all framing the iconic “Oxo Tower” at the centre. It was as though this room had been chosen for me as an artist, despite the reason for my studies being the pursuit of law. Over that year, I saw this incredible view change over the seasons, as buildings became blanketed with snow, shrowded in a thick mist, and glimmering with the soft hues of pinky golden sunsets and bright midday sun. At the end of my academic year, when my first year law exams were finally over, I imported a canvas into my room and sat down to paint this representation of my view.

High Perspective (Viewed from 21c) (2003 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, acrylic on canvas)

It’s not a straight forward landscape: far from it. Rather I used symbols to represent various landmarks rather than paint them directly as I saw them. The GMTV tower on the left for example was replaced with the stack of CDs which my friends and I were listening to during that year, this being a pertinent representation because the GMTV studios are where so many entertainment shows are filmed. Similarly I replaced the Tate tower with a tube of paint, and one of the large publishing headquarters with a stack of magazines (and a couple of law books to show willing). A predominant theme running through the work is food. This was inspired by the Oxo tower itself, named after the stock cube which, in the days when London’s south bank was a hive of industrial activity, would no doubt have been manufactured at the site. Since these stock cubes are frequently incorporated in soups and stews and casseroles, I started reinterpreting the London skyline as various vegetable ingredients which could then be added to the dish which is being cooked in the bottom right hand corner of the work. Instead of the golden balls on the corners of one south bank building, golden tomatoes take their place; similarly London spires become carrots and Norman Foster’s famous “gherkin” building is painted as just that. Finally, since I could see where the river was, but couldn’t actually see the water itself (owing to buildings blocking the view), I imported the water into the scene with the aid of a very long hose pipe which spirals through the roof tops and chimneys before finally adding much needed liquid into the saucepan on my windowsill.

The view as it really was back in 2002

And covered in snow…

So there you have it, one of my most prominent London works, and actually one of my most valuable painting sales when it was sold at exhibition in Mayfair in 2008. Not to worry though – if you like the work and wish you had the original brightening up your lounge, there are limited edition prints of the work available on my main art website, here.

Have a great Sunday and come back to The Daily Norm this coming week for a load of food and art-based posts including the unveiling of my newest painting!

© Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm, 2001-2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of the material, whether written work or artwork, included within The Daily Norm without express and written permission from The Daily Norm’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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May 4

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Manet Norms at the Cappuccino Grand Café – Part II: Decoding the Manet’s

Yesterday I launched my new painting onto the public stage – Manet Norms at the Cappuccino Grand Café. Having stemmed from an idea to recreate Manet’s masterpiece, Bar at the Folies-Bergère, I felt that an insertion of the painting into my Cappuccino landscape would only work if the other Norms too were based on Manet paintings. One look at Manet’s oeuvre revealed a host of images which were ripe for reconstruction within my Normy café scene. Like many of his impressionist colleagues after him, Manet was a pioneer of painting real life, scenes capturing the French society all around him, from lonesome drinkers supping upon a plum brandy, to day trippers out on the coast and a child fascinated by the plumes and puffs of the steam railway. All this Manet captured to perfection, and feasting hungrily upon his works, I transformed a great many of them into Norm customers at my café when presenting the thriving, bustling atmosphere for which Cappuccino Grand Café is famous.

So without further ado, here are all of Manet’s original paintings followed by my own interpretation as featured in my new Cappuccino café scene. Despite being some 150 years apart, these characters slip effortlessly behind the elegant marble tables and botanical celebration of Cappuccino’s terrace in a café which exudes sophistication, and retains the feeling of glamour and recreational hedonism which was intrinsic to venues such as the Folies-Bergère back in Manet’s day. Parfait!

Bar at the Folies-Bergère

Edouard Manet – A Bar at the Folies Bergère (1882)

My reimagination of the Bar at the Folies Berger…

Those bottles…

Argenteuil

Edouard Manet – Argenteuil (1874)

My Norms, loosely based on the figures in “Argenteuil”

The Luncheon

Edouard Manet – The Luncheon (1868-9)

The Luncheon-based trio of Norms

Le Chemin de Fer (The Railroad)

Edouard Manet – Le Chemin de Fer (The Railroad) (1873)

Norms, complete with the little sleeping puppy

The Balcony

Edouard Manet – The Balcony (1868-9)

Not on a balcony, but the same trio as Norms

Man writing in a café / “Chez Tortoni”

Edouard Manet – Man Writing in a Café / ‘Chez Tortoni’ (1878)

Writing just the same “Chez Cappuccino”

Chez Le Pere Lathuille 

Edouard Manet – Chez Le Pere Lathuile (1879)

Love is in the air, at least for one of these Norms…

La Prune (The Plum Brandy)

Edouard Manet – La Prune (The Plum Brandy) (1876-8)

I hope the Norm writing will join this lone drinker for a date

© Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm, 2005-2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of the material, whether written work or artwork, included within The Daily Norm without express and written permission from The Daily Norm’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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May 3

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Manet Norms at Cappuccino Grand Café – Part I

It came to me one sunny afternoon, when I was painting my last Norm work, Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe. My mind should have been on the painting, but as is often the case when painting the minutiae of a large detailed canvas, my mind was elsewhere, in Spain’s jet-set Marbella in fact, on a hazy summer’s day, sitting in the green and bounteous garden of the Cappuccino Grand Café, with the sea calmly lapping the sandy shore, and all the worries of the world wafting away in the sweet-smelling mediterranean air. Such is the effect of the Grupo Cappuccino’s free radio station, whose chilled jazz and nostalgic bossa-nova  transports one back to the Cappuccino experience so thoroughly enjoyed in the summer past, even when all around you southern England, land of the current “drought” is on high flood alert.

The real Marbella Cappuccino

So there I was thinking about Cappuccino, and I knew that following a recent trip there, I just had to recreate the café on canvas, so that, as well as listening to its soundtrack, I could also hang a large image of my favourite Spanish café in my home here in London. Trouble was, I already had a canvas reserved for another Norm parody based on a second masterpiece of impressionist favourite Eduoard Manet, A Bar at the Folies–Bergère. 

Cappuccino’s gardens by the sea

That’s when it occurred to me – I want to paint Manet, and I want to paint Cappuccino – why not combine the two? And so the idea was born. I set about creating this partner to my Norm version of Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe with Manet’s renowned Bar at the Folies–Bergère installed right where Cappuccino’s own bar stands. And that was just the start. Having decided to paint one Manet masterpiece within the scene, it seemed consistent to bring several other Manet characters to life when I painted the customers of my café. So, in these gardens, you have an ultra chic, wonderfully contemporary Cappuccino Grand Café together with resident DJ Pepe Link, and a dashing Norm waiter while, conversely, the customers comprise a load of Norms in 1860s period dress. It’s a combination which I love and I am so proud of the result.

Without further ado, I give to you my latest Norm creation, Manet Norms at Cappuccino Grand Café.

Manet Norms at Cappuccino Grand Café (2012 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, Oil on canvas)

On tomorrow’s post I’ll guide you through all the Norms featured in Cappuccino’s lush tropical garden, and all the paintings by father of the Impressionists, Edouard Manet, which inspired them. In the meantime I leave you with a gallery of some details from this new Normic landscape. À tout à l’heure.

© Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm, 2005-2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of the material, whether written work or artwork, included within The Daily Norm without express and written permission from The Daily Norm’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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Mar 11

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Sunday Supplement: La Foret des Jeux / Q4- exploring the subconscious

A sunday supplement focusing on my non-Norm paintings is well overdue I think, and for this weekend’s supplement, I have decided to go with a painting which I created in 2007/8 following something of a recurrent dream. It’s a work which is magical and jovial, surreal and fantastical, and therefore a perfect follow up to the Royal Ballet’s superb performance of The Dream which I saw last Monday.

The works featured today were painted within a short space of one another when I was exploring my subconscious. There are two “places” on which I constantly reflect in my subconscious and as an artist seeking inspiration. Both are imaginary. One is a kind of chic but dilapidated house, quite dark, with heavy damask wall coverings, low lighting, lavish furnishings and a general air of mysterious desertion about it. Out of the window is a city landscape – rooftops – almost certainly Paris, and the weather is bleak, probably autumn, dark. This place is triggered in my imagination by certain things – cool lounge music such as Hotel Costes often does the trick. Often there is no trigger at all – I just find myself transformed there in the middle of a working day. I tried to represent this place in my 2007 canvas, Q4. As with any attempt to drag the subconscious level into everyday language, the task was difficult, and while the painting comes close to creating that place to which my mind wanders, it cannot fully represent the feeling I have when I escape into the realms of my deepest imagination.

Q4 (2007 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, acrylic on canvas)

The second place I constantly return to in my subconscious is a dark forest on a summer’s night. The forest is full of surreal things, semi-hidden signs of life and a small source of water. It’s a little scary but not intimidating – the forest is hung with paper lanterns, and forest creatures provide a welcome atmosphere to me – the visitor. In seeking to paint this whimsical vision on canvas in La Foret des Jeux (the Forest of Games), I played on the surreal themes which I knew were weaved into my own imaginings. I imported the theme of games – as I had done in previous surreal paintings – and no doubt inspired by the likes of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. I anthropomorphised chess pieces bringing life to the scene – showing the King sitting upon a thrown, the Bishop falling from a tipped bath of water, and the Queen picnicking with her playing Pawn children. There onwards I let my imagination run wild, making for a rather surreal but playful image. It was painted at a time when my imagination was ripe for the picking – I’m not so sure I could paint something like this today.

La Foret des Jeux (2008 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, acrylic on canvas)

La Foret des Jeux, Canvas 1 (2008 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, acrylic on canvas)

La Foret des Jeux, Canvas 2 (2008 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, acrylic on canvas)

Wishing you a relaxed and enjoyable Sunday.

© Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm, 2005-2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of the material, whether written work or artwork, included within The Daily Norm without express and written permission from The Daily Norm’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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