25 x 20 cm | 9 x 7 in
Subject: Landscapes & Nature
Tags:
Sea,
Refracted Light
Original painting in oil on canvas board.
"Working from life, being outside and responding to a subject first hand brings many challenges. The short time window and changing conditions force one to work quickly and can, consequently infuse a sense of spontaneity into a painting. This part of the coast is a regular place for me to paint when conditions are right. The cliffs portrayed are home to the Minnack Theatre, an open air theatre in Cornwall. The drama is already present in such a place!"
Sometimes the scene with the reality that strikes us most, seems to be a mirage. Seascapes immersed in light; a still life thrumming with colour; the woosh of an evening sky above a curving coastal road: Seth Marshall’s concern is the visual intensity of an image, and his paintings remind that this is a sensual experience.
In ‘Penlee Point’, one of Marshall’s Cornish scenes, we encounter a sheer impression in the radiating lines of light on water and the dark outline of the cliffs. The brushwork can be distinctly pared down and structural against the canvas. Urban scenes such as ‘Dusk, Summer’ use colour to track the gorgeousness of light contrasting the dark, and in Impressionist-inspired still lives colour is used joyfully, but with practised restraint. In the tradition of trompe l’oeil experimentation, Marshall’s interior and exterior spaces convey the truth of an image as a confluence of events: subject, object, and light wave.