Shirley Trevena Watercolours E-Book

Shirley Trevena

• Herausgeber: Batsford
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 29

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Shirley Trevena is a successful and popular watercolourist with a huge international fan base. Throughout her career Shirley has pushed the boundaries of watercolour and is regarded as one of Britain's most innovative artists in that medium. Shirley's watercolours are vibrant in colour, visually inspiring and strong in composition. In this book, Shirley shares her thoughts, ideas, stories and sketches of more than 100 paintings to give a valuable insight into the evolving work of a much-loved artist. Shirley breaks the conventional rules of watercolour in many different ways: through her exciting compositions, strange perspectives and above all, the strength and vibrancy of her colour combinations. In this exciting and inspiring book, Shirley gives her personal view of painting and shares her creative process with us.

Leseprobe

My thanks to my commissioning editor Cathy Gosling for all her support and encouragement. This, and my previous three books, would not have been possible without her.

This is predominantly a picture book with very few words, everything chosen to give the reader a closer, more personal view and hopefully a valuable insight into my evolving work as a watercolour artist.

For over 30 years I have produced many paintings, some good, some okay and some easily forgotten. I have even experienced walking into a friend’s house and admiring a painting on their wall, only to be told that it was one of mine painted some 25 years ago. On closer inspection it then proved difficult for me to imagine how I had dared to put paint down in that way, but I could see bits of future Trevena’s in it and even vaguely remember the composition.

On thinking about this surprising incident, I thought how useful it would be to look again at work I had agonised over many years ago. I am a great believer in the need to keep past efforts: bits of drawings; experimental work and neglected paintings only half finished which will never be framed but may be useful one day; hundreds of scraps of paper, photos and bits of magazines all cut out and put away either with the hope that I would be inspired at some future date by their subject matter or, as in some cases, thumbnail sketches that had been turned into successful paintings.

All these images whisk me back 30 years or more. It felt as if I was studying a family photograph album where you can see on one page your aunts and uncles when young, pulling silly faces and doing cartwheels, and then you turn the page and see them as they are now, older and rather more defined.

I like this idea of seeing time pass with images and decided to try to reproduce it in book form. But I also wanted to have time to go backwards as well as forwards and that meant putting new paintings, straight from the studio, next to earlier work using similar ideas and objects, but probably painted more than 20 years before. I would write my thoughts, ideas and the stories behind many of these pictures, giving the reader an insight into my work as it has evolved.

As a teenager I was destined to work in an office – unfortunately art college was not an option. In my hunt for images in this book I did manage to find a few drawings made when I was a child, and looking at them now, I can persuade myself that I can see the beginnings of my need to break the rules of perspective – although young children don’t bother with that rule – that’s what makes their pictures so exciting.

I found some fairly competent, tight pencil drawings. I was obviously looking hard at my subject matter and knew how to wield a pencil but not a lot of risks were taken then. There are a few paintings of the type I started with when I gave up my office career. They are quite bold and expressive. I knew nothing about using watercolour and so it was all trial and error. I found out in later years that this was a big advantage. My excitement and need to experiment carried me through to discover the beginnings of a style of painting that would be recognizable – mine.