Jonathan Brown – PLACES AND PEOPLE
27th October to 20th November 2015
The watercolour landscapes are inspired by memories of visits to towns and villages in the South of France. I wanted to portray the complex structures, the climate, and the light of the Mediterranean in an abstract use of colour. The sensitivity of the female back is portrayed in a variety of mixed mediums.
JONATHAN BROWN : PLACES AND PEOPLE
I have, since a young child, always been captivated by the visual and creative arts. I took early retirement from a long career in financial property management which enabled me to embark on pursuing this life long ambition.
An early encounter with Pablo Picasso’s work in the Museum Antibes started my love of the arts. I admired his ability at an early age to master the unique gift of being able to observe and paint which he developed into such a wide range of expressive forms of art in the 20th Century. I seek to develop an expressive style in some of my own figurative work while capturing the movement of the figure.
I am mainly self taught but, since beginning to paint, have plunged myself into every opportunity to hone my skills: attending workshops, including the painting techniques of the Renaissance artists, portraiture, drawing and more recently watercolour.
The series of watercolour landscapes creates architecturally the complex masses of building structures in the Mediterranean villages and towns and deconstruct these using abstract contrasting and vivid colours to depict the areas of light and darks. Some of these pictures depict towns and villages on the Cote d’Azur including Antibes, Nice and Villefranche which I have visited and left a lasting impression on me.
I have been influenced by the great portrait painters, Rembrandt and Velazquez. I am intrigued by the place and settings created by Vermeer and Degas and the landscape studies and paintings of Turner.
My main passion is figurative work and, in particular, capturing the essence of the human form in the moment and the movement. I want to accomplish paintings that place these figures in contemporary settings and achieve the essence of light and intimacy of place. I have, in the last twelve months, concentrated on training my observation and drawing skills, creating images which I want to apply to charcoal, pastel, watercolour and oil paint.