CANALS IN
WATERCOLOUR Artist Dave Gardham tells us about his wintry waterways scenes that feature on IWA’s Christmas cards and his love of boating
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Above: The Packet House at Worsley is Dave’s personal favourite Christmas card painting. Right & Below: This painting of Dave’s grandchildren fishing at Great Haywood brings back happy memories.
’ve been an IWA member for many years and my paintings first appeared on the Association’s Christmas cards in 2013. I had a selection of waterways scenes and thought they would make a good calendar so got in touch with Neil Edwards who advised me to submit a picture for the cards instead. To my surprise, it was accepted and I’ve added a new painting to the collection each year since.
Creative beginnings I’ve been creating art for as long as I can remember. I used to draw all the time when I was a kid – I loved to draw horses and I’d be sat in class doodling. Once I started painting, I always included water of some kind if I could, as I’m fascinated with the canals, but I do other things too. Years ago I took on commissions as a hobby. I did some family pet portraits and at one time I had quite a number of requests for tigers. It was around the time Esso had the ‘Put a Tiger in Your Tank’ slogan and I got fed up of painting them! People like having their boats painted in a favourite spot, and portraits of anglers holding a net full of fish – probably more than they’d ever caught – were popular as well. Since being introduced to the waterways, canal scenes have been my favourite things to paint. While out boating, I do some painting and sketching on location if I see a view that I like; I look at the scene and move things around a bit on the page to get the best composition. Mostly, though, I work from photographs. I do the majority of my paintings during winter after we’ve closed up the boat. It can take a month or more to complete a painting, although it probably only takes around two weeks of actual work. You have to have a break or two; coming back to the piece after a few days means you notice things that aren’t quite right that you might not otherwise have seen.
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Kings Bromley Marina.
Winter 2019 23/10/2019 14:21
