Someone has asked if I remember which was the first of my paintings to be printed as a greeting card. Yes, I do. It was 'Still Water', and it was published about 25 years ago. I painted this subject at a demonstration in Wells-next-the-Sea. It was a bright, sunny morning, and the venue had huge windows letting lots of natural light. Many’s the time I’ve had to paint under artificial light, and this can make it difficult to judge colours. The finished piece can look fine in that situation, but when viewed later in natural light, the result can look decidedly weird - pastels are especially challenging, and I’ve often picked up what appears to be orange, only to find that it was, in fact, pink! When I get a demo painting home, I set it up in my studio and consider it under natural light. If the colour balance is all wrong I’ll write it off and turn over the paper to use the back. Sometimes I discover the rejected piece was on the back, in which case it is destined for the heap next to the kindling box. Fortunately, when I got this particular demo painting home, the colours looked fine. I set it up in my studio to consider it further - sometimes a painting can go straight into my portfolio, sometimes it may need some finishing touches, and sometimes…. I remember standing there looking at the structure, tone, technique of the piece and picking fault with every part of it. The more I looked at it the more I could see that was wrong. By the time I’d finished critiquing it I had turned wholeheartedly against it and decided this painting was just no good at all. I was about to whip it off the easel and tear it into shreds, when a call came through from the kitchen, ‘Coffeeeee!’ ‘Right,’ I said to the unfortunate piece, ‘You have ten minutes reprieve. Then you go in the kindling box.’ Coffee drunk, there was a ring on the doorbell. It was a print publisher looking for subjects to produce as greetings cards. She came into the studio, where I had a number of paintings that I thought she really would like - the best of the best of my work. She considered each one, finally dismissing them with a shake of her head. She glanced around the studio, by way of taking her leave, then her eyes lit up and she pointed over my shoulder to something behind me. ‘That one!’ I followed the pointing finger, only to find myself staring at the condemned demo painting… Since that day I've lost count of the paintings I've despatched to the kindling box, but I'm not so hasty to make the final decision, keeping work in folders for consideration, before finally deciding whether to mount the work up, or keep back for development or reinterpretation. Some paintings spend months, even years, being shuffled between one category of folder to another. And before I tear anything up, a part of me will still say, 'Now are you sure about this? Remember 'Still Water'!' Still Water is long out of print, but a selection of greetings cards of landscape and animal subjects are always available to purchase wherever I give painting demonstrations and talks.
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Judith Key
Judith Key is a Norfolk based artist, working in watercolour and pastel. She has exhibited with the Society of Graphic Fine Artists and New English Art Club at the Mall Galleries, London. Her paintings are in collections worldwide. Categories
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May 2018
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