'Happy Days' and making memories

'Happy Days' and making memories

A story about my festival painting 'Happy Days'.

I’ve recently worked on a new festival painting and wanted to share it with you.

I went straight onto canvas with this idea, marking out the general looks and feel in blue paint, then began to layer it, adding elements and impressions of objects from a festival scene. One thing I love about the way I progress my paintings is that I simply start with an idea in my head. I want my pieces to flow freely and evolve as I develop them and for me that makes the creative process even more exciting! You never quite know how it will come together but it does, and when it feels complete, it simply is.

The idea was to develop a painting that expressed and demonstrated the difference between the busyness of our daily lives, the hum-drum of daily living and routine, compared to the feeling when we break free of the norm, experience new things, laugh, come together, meet interesting people, and build a positive outlook to live well and happy.

I wanted to show the busyness of time and use colour and mark making to show the movement between the two, coming from dark, quiet and still to light, joy, fun and play. As darker tones at the bottom corner start to work up the canvas, they begin to fade away and be taken over by lighter, more colour, bringing energy, joy and feeling of escape, excitement, a change from the norm.

I think the more I ‘let-go’, the more my style develops, the freer I feel to let the painting come together naturally, letting instinct, expression and natural emotion control how I apply the paint, mixed-media, colour and marks to create it.
And this is the finished piece.
Happy Days painting on canvas
100 x 100cm. Acrylic on canvas, finished with gold leaf liquid.
Bye for now x
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