My featured artist for Friday 23rd is Jeff. Rowland. Jeff Rowland studied Art at North Tyneside College. Self-employed as a professional artist since 1984, he has experimented with all media, including glass engraving, printing and painting. However he seemed to be continually drawn back to oil painting. In 2000 he did a HND in advertising/illustration as a visualizer, studying at Newcastle College. While there he worked on many live briefs and was successful in winning a NEPA award (North East Print Association). After graduating and looking for work, he just could not keep away from art. After exhibiting in a Northumberland gallery, his artwork was taken to the London Affordable Art Fair , where his work sold out in one day. Things began to snowball. He exhibited in Edinburgh and in Dublin with equal success. He has honed his efforts and skills into compositions that really express and convey a certain atmosphere or a moment in time. He likes to let the viewer of the painting make their own mind up about what is happening with the characters in the composition. He likes to add street signs pointing in two different directions suggesting that these two people are coming together ……. or are they splitting up? Maybe they are having an affair; is their love a secret or are they simply going back to the bar where they first met? This is also helped by composing the painting on a street corner; view of two roads meeting or two paths crossing. In their relationship, has the bar become ‘their bar’? Only the viewer has the answer. Jeff says, “Living on the North East Coast we get our fair share of rain. When it rains, I feel the need to get out there and sketch. Look at how rain can bounce off the ground and car roofs; the reflection from car lights and street lights.” Jeff says,”I find myself constantly looking at buildings wherever I go. Because the composition of my work could be anywhere or any street, it is a wonderful feeling to see a street corner bar, or restaurant and be completely excited about how I can create an atmosphere on that corner. I see old pub fronts or contemporary restaurants and I am completely hooked. By sketching or photographing the bar, I am ready to paint. I first choose a canvas and decide whether it will be portrait or landscape. I then have a strange ritual I like to perform. Quite simply I run the palms of my hands over the tooth of the canvas and get a lovely feeling through my hands from the canvas, almost a personal connection between artist and material. Then, with a heavy graphite block, I begin to lightly knock in a horizon and areas where buildings will be. I then use my fingers to make marks and shapes giving me an overview of how the painting will look. I like to feel every part of the canvas. At this stage the work is at its most vague. Streaks, smudges and finger marks are just enough to allow me a glimpse of the finished work. After fixing the graphite, I am ready to paint, mixing five or six colours on my palette. Using cerulean blue, ultramarine, Van Dyke brown, lamp black and titanium white, I create a spectrum of greys and cools blues. The application of these colours is applied vigorously to the canvas using a common decorator’s paint brush. I knock in all of the areas to create an undertone, then, always working from the background, I start to add suggestions of something going on. This may be a street sign, traffic, or street lights. I am now creating a perspective and depth of field. Working towards the middle distance and foreground, I apply the paint darker and heavier, pulling the foreground forward. At this stage I work on the bar front with its suggestion of light and perhaps a glimpse of the bar counter. After finishing the name of the bar, I can see where I want to place my characters or vehicle. Once they are in place I can now really enjoy applying the rain. I have developed a technique of stippling the paint with that common decorator’s brush. Because the brush is old and the hairs are split, I can achieve a wonderful effect which leaves paint marks that are not constrained to a uniform pattern. I can get the same effect from this brush with falling rain. I run the brush down the canvas using only the weight of the brush. The split hairs from the brush allow the strokes to become rain.” Jeff’s work is published by Washington Green, and his work is found across the UK in Castle Galleries.
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 20:54:51 +0000
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