Waterfall

This waterfall and the surrounding glade was painted as a commission. The client sent me a number of stock photos and I chose one of them as a starting point. I then produced a colour sketch before final approval. Here it is:

The work of this started as the coronavirus was making itself known, and I continued working on the piece throughout lockdown. It took far longer to paint than I had anticipated. My mood was much influenced by the lockdown. Normally I like to take walks and be with nature as much as possible. The rules meant that I couldn’t and I became very low. I would spend more time looking at the painting than actually working on it. And while the looking is very much part of the work, in my case it went too far. I started to repaint areas and obsessed with getting the painting to be perfect. Of course, such a thing is impossible!

Luckily, I managed to stop before I overworked the painting. Looking back, I’m happy with most of it. The mossy rocks are like green-pelted animals. In painting them, I often thought about Wistman’s Wood. It is only when you paint water that you begin to realise how many forms it takes. There is the still water reflecting sunlight, the water in the shade which has depth. Then, with the waterfall itself, there is the quality of water descending fast and in different phases of agitation. There is a lot going on.

There are depths here too, things to see if you care to see them…

You might like my Witch’s Pool or my November Leaves.