Apologies for the corny title – but Berlin was truly inspiring. I was lucky enough to see two Emil Nolde exhibitions.
One I had the highest hopes for was at the Berlin Extension of the Nolde Foundation.
This was the Unpainted Pictures – a series of small glowing watercolours completed during a time when Nolde was forbidden to paint by the Nazis.
However, the exhibition I enjoyed more than this one was: Man – Nature – Myth at the Kupferstichkabinett (Museum of Prints and Drawings). There were some lovely mournful etchings of harbour scenes and beautiful bright watercolours from Nolde’s South Seas expedition.
I discovered that Nolde’s oils were sometimes painted from smaller watercolour or oil pastel pictures and that gave me an idea to try making some plein airs in watercolour for a change, maybe transferring the more successful ones into oils. I haven’t used watercolour since my illustration days when I spent ages carefully stretching unyielding swathes of Arches HP paper and furrowing my brow over a size 4 brush. So I thought it might be fun to buy a simple block of paper, forget the stretching, and get a couple of large brushes to paint in a bold and free manner!
Then hopefully the results will feed back into the oil paintings – either directly by making an oil version or indirectly by learning something from trying a different technique.
Anyway, I’m very excited about all the possibilities!
Just looking through some older work while I tidy up the studio a bit and found this oil so thought I’d post a (slightly out of focus) pic. Is more expressive/less realistic colour the way to go?
