In the Light Refracted (2013)Painting by Emma Cownie

This ‘refractionist’ work sees the light broken down into light filled colour segments. The foreground dark reds are juxtaposed against the light-singed orange and lushy leafy greens to suggest a green distant solace from the scorching heat, with the darker blues suggesting a progressively deepened experience of this respite and solace from the sun’s baking rays. Thus we see a transition from scarlety red via the purply blue path through the burnished, charred-edged oranges and fruity greens to the darker recesses of the oil ink blues like a colour spectrum from hot to cool. Again another use of the refractionist motif. Not only are my paintings often refractionist in terms of e.g. light coming through materials as through tree leaves, shedding light ‘stain glass-like’ but in this case symbolising a progression of temperature and the experience of this variation in heat. The rich boiling bloody reds in the foreground also contrast to the purply blue colours of the path. This spreading of light across these different temperature textures also has a ‘lava lamp’ effect’ as if the oily colours slide across the canvas. The path’s purply blues suggests a transition, a comfortable inviting passage to the cooling shade of the far trees. The far ice cool blue contrasts from the initial, foreground liquidly purples, which in their calm serenity suggest relief from the distress of the exasperated, bad tempered heat.

Materials used:

oil painting on linen canvas

Details:

• Painting on Canvas
• One of a kind artwork
• Size: 42 x 32 x 3cm (framed) / 40 x 30cm (actual image size)
• Framed and ready to hang
• Signed on the front
• Style: Graphic, illustrative and typographic
• Subject: Landscapes, sea and sky