Life Portrait Art & Beyond
Land
I had been working with several landscape and painting medium ideas at once. I was fighting with a painting for my brother, wanting it to be both right (always a stupid place to start), and to have the energy and caring I felt for him and his wife. No pressure. So while I repainted their painting several times, I went thru a bunch of different methods and thinking about hills and land and water. I like those hill things that surround us in Wellington. Though I’ve never been into painting them, before, except as backdrops for murals.
So: the vertical drops are aerial, and the horizontal canvases more feet-on-ground based. I used photos as starting points, along with many small sample watercolor washes. I had fun making them, and I hope you enjoy them too!
Fierce bones we dare to walk on.
Previous paintings by Paula Clayton
Canvas scrolls as I negotiate my relationship with the hills around Wellington.
New Zealand has some of the most interesting and dynamic topography you'll find in the world. Geologists get hugely excited about the chance to visit sites of obduction, subduction, tectonic sheer and other stratified evidence of violent natural landscaping (all in one short country). Spiritual values, connections and politics are raw, healthy, evolving. And we have Peter Jackson busy making us famous via The Lord of the Rings.
Real life visuals in New Zealand are amazing. These paintings capture some of my response to both their impact on my eyeballs, and the complicated mix of my joys and associations with the land I grew up in.