Redoing one of your own paintings can be a bit tricky. It is all too easy to sacrifice spontaneity for the sake of technical improvement. It is especially so when the original painting has been well received and sold to a happy buyer as is the case with the original “Sledmere Road”. However the original had never quite matched my vision so I was keen to have another go at it. I had noticed the tremendous sunset in my rear view mirrors as we were driving home from Sledmere to Bridlington. It was so amazing that we had to stop. It was impossible for Merice to take a photograph as the light was just too dazzling but I was so inspired I was able to complete the painting from memory. However I was never truly satisfied with it. It had turned out too pale – a bit on the ‘pink’ side rather than the brilliant ‘orange’ and ‘gold’ I remembered. But as it had took me so long to paint I was happy enough to exhibit the painting at the ‘Colours of the Wolds’ exhibition and, as said previously, it sold for a good price. Nevertheless I finally decided to revisit the scene and try and capture my original impressions. I approached the painting in a completely different way –this time concentrating on working quickly without too much attention to detail and focussing entirely on the orange and gold of the reflections in the puddles. There’s a lot more colour and movement in the road giving an impression of how I first noticed the scene whilst driving along. All in all then I am very pleased with the result as it is much nearer what I saw. However it will be interesting to see what reaction it gets compared to the other more measured approach….so over to you!
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