Canvases, master copies and compositions of my own
Oil painting
I like copying Monet and Vermeer, it teaches you to look before doing. When you stay hours on a single stroke, you end up understanding why it sits there and not somewhere else. It is the same exercise as picking up a product already in service: you inherit other people’s decisions and you have to understand them before making new ones.
after Claude Monet
my own composition
after Jean-Baptiste Olive
IV · Provence Landscape
after an unknown painter
my own composition
my own composition
after Johannes Vermeer
Copying to learn
Before I painted anything of my own, I learned by redoing other people's brushwork.
Nothing is final
Copying taught me that you can always go back. Oil dries slowly, so I paint over things days later, cover a whole area, change my mind about a colour. I start more easily when I know nothing is final.
After a day in front of a screen, working with your hands changes something I can’t quite put into words, and that keeps bringing me back.