'The Rock Garden'

The Rock Garden

On a lovely summers day I was taking photographs in the Rock Garden on Southsea sea front. I came across a patch of Aubretia nestling in the space between several lumps of granite and immediately saw the same pattern I used for 'The Seasons'. What struck me most of all was that the pattern seemed to exist in both the flowers and the stone.
 
The painting that emerged from this encounter uses both the static and the 'waved' version of the pattern - for the granite and Aubretia respectively. In the former the flecks of mica in the granite readily transposed themselves into the tessara of the static pattern whilst the larger flowers became the dominant structure in the waved pattern with smaller flowers between and the underlying leaves just showing through.
 
The boundaries between the static and waved versions of the pattern caused some problems which could only be solved uniquely in each instance. The colouring of the granite is constant across the static pattern apart from the sunlit and shaded portions. The flower section was coloured using a complex gradation of tints along three axes at 120 degrees separation.
 
The original painting was given to an acquaintance during a fit of depression and hasn't been seen since.

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