The Silver Thread II, ©John O’Grady
Oil on 5 mm Panel 16″ x 12″ – Requires framing
SOLD
While painting, I recalled the special pale yellow green light you can see sometimes as the sun is setting off the west coast of Ireland.
You may have noticed I often paint scenes, set in the late afternoon or at dusk, beloved of photographers and painters and known as the golden hour. The contours are less sharp, the light is more diffused and yet, light and dark play with each other to create a spectacle renewed daily.
With this painting, the back light creates a delicate lace-like golden fringe around the clouds and reverberates on the ‘white horses’ dancing on the ocean while the unusual pale yellow-green light at the back of the island works to add an air of melancholy and mystery…
I’d love to know what you think.
Great sense of movement! I can hear those waves breaking.
Hello Nigel,
Thanks very much for your comment
Hallo John!
This painting is extraordinary wonderful! I can see, you have got the sea in your heart and in your soul! It is a marvelous work! I love it!
Thanks for showing and my best regards!
Frauke
Hello Frauke,
Glad to hear that you love it and that it connected with you. I seem drawn to making these sea painting at the edge of something.
The light is extraordinary. The sky captures the “melancholy and mystery” while the sea surges with blind life force. This reminds me a bit of your “Take Me to the Island” series, which was also evocative of being “at the edge of something.”
The technical aspect of this is striking, too. It looks as though there’s yellow underpainting in the sky, but there’s also a hint of red and some violet at the heart of a few of the clouds which feels very poignant.
For me many of your paintings ask, “What’s out there?” This seems to be a recurring theme: being on the cusp of something, whether it’s the veil between the worlds or the view beyond the next hill. This give your work an emotional resonance that stays with the viewer long after the first look.
Hello Jo.
I was in two minds whether to call it ‘Take me to the Island.’
Your mention of the colours in the clouds is interesting as for me that is the part that drew my interest as well and and the particular mood that is evoked. The colour arrangement is quite unusual I think, slightly unsettling, I can’t quite put my finger on it.
The ‘What’s out there’ is something I keep returning to involuntarily, working without a preordained structure tends to naturally bring out these themes. Thank you for your comment that they have an emotional resonance’.
I think this painting as one that the viewer can return to time and time again John. It has great depth and visual interest created through colour and composition. However, as in other of your landscapes it is the atmosphere and mood of a time and place that gives it such a strong emotional appeal – it is a painting to be felt as much as viewed.
Hello Christine,
Thank you for your comment. It is a piece that I am pleased with myself, the colour arrangement and the contrast of light and dark, helps to capture that mood that gives it an emotional resonance I think, that you clearly felt yourself.