David J Coleman

Following on from the charcoal drawings that are already on mu blog. I am now working on two oil paintings. One of them is still at the planning stage but is based on one of these charcoal drawings. It is up for critical review on Wednesday 5th Feb by Rob Pepper and Robin Lee-Hall.

I continue to try out many styles and themes related to my twin obsessions in art. One is nature based themes, and the other is painting people. These themes are not as far apart as may appear to be the case and I am using techniques that can be adapted to both. Gradually, they are converging on a settled overall style, but it is a really slow job. I have decided , for the moment, that I need to continue to pursue a fairly broad approach.

Here is a sparrowhawk which I painted onto a heavily textured surface that evokes the random foliage to be found on the edge of a wood, where the effect of the wind and light are more important than depicting detail. I have often introduced a small amount of highly figurative detail into semi-abstract landscapes. I have experimented a lot with figurative detail in this space and made several efforts to get it right. Here is the overall space which is about 60cms wide.

My fellow students think I need to try to position people in these spaces tather as I have positione birds and animals. This may be the next step.