The Lull Before The Storm - Surrealism

The Lull Before The Storm © Kate Lomax 2015 All Rights Reserved

At heart, my natural style of painting is Surrealism.  Not to be confused with Fantasy, Abstract, Abstraction, Manga or any genre that folk sometimes mistake for Surrealism.

Surrealism is identified by the process.  You go to the paper or the canvas with not the slightest idea of what you are going to paint.  The moment you actually think about it, the thought process disqualifies the work as true surrealism.  Surrealism is to paint in a dream like state. How I work with this in watercolour is rather random, but it works for me.   If I am working in oil, I stare at the blank canvas for several days and let the canvas talk to me.  This is also the practice of many fellow artists. Most of us believe that everything has life.  Even a canvas.  It is made from cotton which is, after all, a plant that grew in a field prior to harvest.  It is that energy that an artists wishes to work with, to get the very best result possible.

I like to work with the elements.  Therefore I use a glued on all sides pad of heavyweight paper.  Arches is a good one.  I pop it out in the rain and allow the paper to become damp.  Because of the way rain falls, some drops will be wetter than others. So the paper is unevenly wet.

I then take my watercolour pigment and sprinkle randomly on the paper. I then allow it to dry.  Then, using a damp brush, I work on the multi coloured paper, picking out elements that I can see in my minds eye.   The first element I saw in this work was the swimmer's head.  Viewed from the rear of the head, which is turned slightly to the right, and fills a good part of the paper.  Once I had picked out the detail, the rest of the detail  followed spontaneously and soon I was reliving a then recent experience on the beach, when I was almost caught in a bad storm: 

The Lull Before The Storm - I was walking the dog along our local coastline, and over the New Forest we could see a violent storm approaching. We stood for a moment aghast at the speed it was moving across the Solent, and yet, there was only a gentle breeze. In minutes, the energy changed.

The whole painting is captured within the form of the back of a swimmer, his goggles having come astray in the sudden waves. Find him and everything else is likely to become visible to you... A paddler retreats, a child is still laughing into the sun, unaware of the approaching danger, a water nymph has popped her head up, as has the water sphinx, who peeks out from beneath a wave. The wind God, Boreas, gently exhales, saving his breath for the eye of the storm, which we see just peeking over the hill at the back.  The trees are found on the clifftops at Hill Head, and you will make out the figures of a walker and their dog. The Robin? My Grandmother always said if you saw a robin in times of trouble, everything was going to be just fine, which of course, it was. 

Enjoy.  And perhaps, if you have never tried, have a trial with surrealism.  Guard against analysing your brush strokes or any other part of the painting process.  Let your heart and your subconscious work together to produce something a little different.  Please feel free to post your work on my 'Paint With Kate' page on Facebook www.facebook.com/katelomax

Don't forget to like my page while you are there, and then you will find new blogs and tutorials in your feed, as and when they are published. 

Remember to always have fun with your art and explore new things, new colours and new styles, there could be a surrealist inside of you just screaming to be released!

To purchase 'The Lull Before The Storm' please click the gallery link at the top right of this page.

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