My next show, "WAVES and WAKES", is scheduled to run from Sat 12th April until Sat 10th May at the Katharine House Gallery, in The Parade, MARLBOROUGH, Wiltshire, SN8 1NE. For further information, ring The Gallery, which is open Tue-Sat, on 01672-514040.

Gust : Short Fetch

Size: 1.07m x 0.76m  Medium: Oils on canvas  

May 1976 (restored 2010)  Exhibited: D 

Here at Maidstone, not a cloud in the sky, I was standing on a raised, concrete bank about 5ft (1.5m) above the wide River Medway. The wind was strong and blowing boisterously from behind me over relatively-calm, sheltered water nearest to the camera.

Where strong, eddying gusts first strike the open water, its surface is immediately agitated into a confusion of small waves, which meet those reflected back from the opposite bank.

Most of the impasto work here was done with the edge of a pallette knife after having first seen Monet's Water Lily paintings in L'Orangerie, Paris, during an Art College trip that Easter Holiday.

History

Exhibited D; then sold in May 1977 to Mr F J ("Jack") Ayres of Sotwell near Wallingford, who owned it until his death in 2004. The painting was subsequently returned in June of that year by Executor of Mr Ayres' Esate, Mrs Shirley Oliver, and is currently owned by Mrs B M Evans in Lyndhurst, Hampshire, having been restored by the artist.