Today, I went to the 'Changing Times' exhibition again. I wanted to study Mary Fedden's 1957 painting, 'Orange and green still life'. I couldn't match the vibrant colour, but my watercolour study was always a compromise: with the original rectangle compressed into a square. So I took some liberties by overlapping shapes, adding a circular table, a shoreline of tablecloth, an extra wine bottle for good measure, and juxtaposing a full moon outside with an electric light bulb inside. As I painted, I was aware of Fedden's echoes of other artists - motifs from Braque and Ravilious, not to mention influences of Julian Trevelyan, Mary's husband and fellow artist. Foretastes of Patrick Caulfield? |