Original artwork description:

“The Moon and The Melodies – Sea Swallow Me “is an acrylic painting on canvas 100cmsW x70cmsH and 4cmsD. The exhibition quality canvas is stretched over a custom frame supported by steel corner and edge braces. The painting is priced / sold unframed.
The painting takes its name and character from a neo classical 1986 album of the same title by the late Harold Budd in collaboration with The Cocteau Twins. The music is electronic and is built in layers of spaciously treated piano and keyboard sounds combined with the Cocteau Twins' shimmering waves of guitars and Elizabeth Fraser's wordless vocals to create what amounts to a soundtrack to a dream about sleeping. This is an innovative, unique, and timeless album that is atmospheric and evocative.
The painting is inspired by dawn, the morning twilight before sunrise, with moonlight settling over a beach and the light reflecting over the ebb tide. The painting was made from photographs taken on a local beach. Visually it is light in a state of obscurity, ambiguity, or gradual increase. There are few edges because moonlight blurs shapes and softens edges. There is a unique quiet ambience on an open beach at this time. The pervading tone or mood of the location is calm, atmospheric, peaceful and tranquil and that is what I’ve tried to express.
My paintings are about atmospheres and the atmosphere here is one of haunting contemplation. The experience of making a painting like this is less to do with any exacting literal replication of what exists ‘on the surface’ and more to do with the pervading ambience, tone or mood of a location. The distinctive atmosphere or quality that surrounds a location and that aura is hopefully represented in composition and colour.
I build my paintings in layers of thin, transparent washes of colour combined with and overworked with impasto applications and wax. I use brushes, knives and cloths. I let the paint take its own course. I like the process of painting, so I purposefully leave in the traces of its behaviour such as the marks of knife and brush and the stream and trickle of diluted pigment. I enjoy the incident and accident of painting. I let incidents occur. I invite them into the process and I respect and work with the nature of paint. I am continually inspired by modernists and colourists Barbara Rae, Howard Hodgkin, Gillian Ayres, John Hoyland and Mark Rothko. I always look to the Impressionists to enjoy their visual responses to light and colour.
The painting is shipped in a robust custom made cardboard crate (same as those used to transport large screens). The painting is bubble wrapped to protect the canvas. Further wrapping is made with corrugated card. A wooden frame is placed inside the cardboard crate to preserve the structural strength of the packaging. Each painting is insured to its sale value. Shipping costs within the U.K. take into consideration weight and insurance. U.K. shipping costs for this artwork are £90.

Materials used:

Acrylic on canvas

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