The Yellow House Revisited (2017)Oil painting by Emma Cownie

This is a recent oil painting from a new project which I am calling “Urban minimalism“.
This style is influenced by those American realist painters who paint the quiet, the spacious and the still and revere a certain treatment of light and colour such as Edward Hopper, Jim Holland, John Register, Frank Hobbs as well as by Contemporary Minimalists such as Christopher Benson, Leah Giberson, Tom McKinley, Mitchell, Johnson, Jessica Brilli and Emmett Kerrigan.

I aim to bring an American sensibility to a Welsh urban landscape.

My “rules” for composition and painting:-
No cars
No People
Bright light. There must be shadows – at diagonals if possible.
Simplified forms – there must be little detail in the final painting. I found this the most challenging “rule” to stick to.
I wanted to explore the interplay of the geometry of shadows and man-made structures – the tension between the 3D buildings and the 2D shadows. The simplified blocks of colour.

I have painting this house on Hillside Crescent in Uplands, Swansea before and have returned to paint it from a different angle and at a different time of day.

Materials used:

oil painting on linen canvas

Details:

• Oil painting on Canvas
• One of a kind artwork
• Size: 46 x 38 x 2cm (unframed)
• Ready to hang
• Signed on the front
• Style: Urban and Pop
• Subject: Architecture and cityscapes

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