Fresh Paint

Inspiring new artworks, straight off the easel

Sarah Butterfield

With its dreamy pastel hues, palm tree silhouettes and car headlights speeding into the night, Sarah Butterfield’s Oceans, Light and Palms XIV has a touch of Miami Vice to it. In fact, it was a return to another American hotspot –California, where the British artist had lived and worked as an architect in the 1970s – that first inspired this body of work. “I took our family to that place of dreams and a whole series of new paintings flooded my mind,” she explains.

Collected together in her forthcoming solo exhibition Oceans, Lights and Beyond, Sarah’s recent works provide a much-needed dose of escapism for an audience largely confined to British shores over the last 18 months. “I hadn’t thought of my work as escapist, but I like the idea a lot,” she says. “We do need some form of escapism.”

One of the aims of her paintings is to reveal beauty in unexpected places, whether that’s the Californian traffic in Oceans, Light and Palms XIV or a KFC restaurant just off the A27 in Hampshire. “When I capture these phenomena in my paintings, a feeling of escapism naturally follows as I hope the viewer can find the splendour of the menial or mundane process in their lives too.”

Sarah’s perceptive paintings are backed by a sound knowledge of scientific theory, perhaps unsurprisingly as the daughter of the celebrated late medical researcher Sir John Butterfield. “Knowing some concepts helps you see perceptually,” she says, pointing to her interest in refracted light on water and the optical effects of complementary colours. “Think of Monet’s paintings of poppies in a grassy meadow,” she adds of the latter. “The increased luminosity of the red petals against the green grasses not only conveys a glow of light but the optical effect between these two complementary colours also even suggests the nodding movement of the heads of these flowers in the breeze.”

Travel is another key aspect of Sarah’s work, yet the recent restrictions have given her a chance to reflect and refine paintings in readiness for the new exhibition. “Sometimes during lockdown, late in the evening, I would see a previously completed traffic painting I had seen around the house all day and would just pick up a brush and palette knife making gestural marks that captured what I had wanted to do much better than before.” Oceans, Lights and Beyond runs 2-6 November at Mall Galleries, London. www.sarahbutterfield.co.uk

SARAH’S TOP TIP

“If you are trying to wed two areas together, one of shade and one of sunlight, try adding a common colour to both mixes”

LEFT Sarah Butterfield, Oceans, Light and Palms XIV, oil on canvas, 122x152cm

SIMON’S TOP TIP

“To vary the surface quality, I cover certain areas with stencils and spray a semi-opaque dammar varnish glaze over the painting”

LEFT Simon McWilliams, Forest Ether, oil on linen, 153x121cm

Simon McWilliams

Simon McWilliams may have been elected Vice President of the Royal Ulster Academy (RUA) earlier this year, but he has been creating paintings of equally impressive venues for more than half of his life. The Belfast-born artist has had a fascination with painting palm houses and greenhouses ever since he concluded a decade of artistic studies with three years at London’s Royal Academy Schools from 1995.

“I like the contrast of the architectural with the organic,” he says, explaining how the built elements of his subject provide “a scaffold of realism” on which to experiment with oil paint. “The stimulus comes from the real world and gives me the excuse to use these techniques to say something, not only about the nature of the paint itself but also that which it depicts.”

Forest Ether is perhaps his most impressive realisation yet of themes and interests that were further inspired by an influential visit to a Michael Andrews retrospective at Tate Britain in 2001. Last year, the curator and art historian Dickon Hall noted that Simon “has constantly made technical experiments within the space of these works” and that is certainly true here, as the leaf motifs on the left of the painting were printed in place, while impasto tree shapes were created by pushing oil paint with a piece of card as if it were a squeegee.

More than just being a depiction of plants in a glasshouse, however, there is a transcendent quality to Forest Ether and other paintings in this series, a sense of these spaces being not quite of this world. “It made me think of the early 70s science fiction film, Silent Running, where all plant life on Earth was becoming extinct and specimens had been preserved in a series of enormous, greenhouse-like domes floating in space,” agrees Simon.

“I have always been attracted to the universality of subject matters, that it is not necessarily a portrait of a particular place. The otherworldliness of the painting suggested the title for me, it was an attempt to direct the viewer in a spiritual direction, as if above the forest was this mysterious substance suffused with light.”

Would the RUA’s new Vice President class himself as a spiritual person then?

“As openness is generally a personality trait of artists, who knows?” he says. “I’m open to any ideas.” The Royal Ulster Academy’s 140th Annual Exhibition runs from 29 October to 17 January 2022 at Ulster Museum, Belfast. www.royalulsteracademy.org

RIGHT Gary Lennie, Portrait of a Young Woman, oil on canvas, 30x40cm

Gary Lennie

It might be too soon to start talking about New Year’s resolutions, but every January Portfolio Plus member Gary Lennie sets himself the same goal: to improve upon his practice so much that he’s mortified by the work he’s painted 12 months prior. “I want to be embarrassed by it, as I like to see I’m making progress,” he says. “I’m always open to learning and I think that’s very important.”

This growth mindset led the Scottish artist to sign up for a year-long, virtual painting programme taught by awardwinning painter and occasional Artists & Illustrators contributor Louis Smith at the Warrington-based Realist Academy. “The whole thing was done on Zoom,” explains Gary, who now lives along the southeast coast of England. “We had to login with our laptops, so we could see Louis, and our mobile phones, which we had to place looking over our shoulders so he could see us painting.”

One outcome of the course is the oil painting, Portrait of a Young Woman. Using a photo posted out for reference, Gary sketched the outline of the face on a canvas stained with Burnt Umber before filling in the shadow shapes and building up the subsequent layers over several sessions.

Capturing the young model’s Every month, one of our Fresh Paint smooth skin was Gary’s biggest artists is chosen from Portfolio Plus, challenge – “I find it easier to our online, art-for-sale portal. For your paint old, wrinkly faces,” he chance to feature in a forthcoming admits – but limiting his palette issue, sign up for your own personalised proved helpful. In fact, the flesh Portfolio Plus page today. You can also: tones were created using the • Showcase, share and sell unlimited four colours of the Zorn palette artworks commission free (black, white, red and yellow), • Get your work seen across Artists & plus a hint of violet to capture Illustrators’ social media channels the cooler lights around the • Submit art to our online exhibitions eyes and temple. “When you • Enjoy exclusive discounts and more first look at skin, you don’t Sign up in minutes at www.artistsand expect to see these colours, illustrators.co.uk/register but if you really look, they’re there,” he says. “That was what I got out of the course more than anything: the importance of close observation.” www.artistsandillustrators.co.uk/mr-lennie