Marie-Liesse de Solages
The living room, two canvases resting on the sideboard

Canvases, master copies and compositions of my own

Oil painting

I learn by imitating the great painters. Copying Monet or Vermeer means spending hours looking at their colours and the way they reinterpreted a landscape or used their brushes. You end up understanding why a stroke sits there and not somewhere else. It’s 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.

Further down, a painting is hidden. You can uncover it with a brush.

The shelf at home: Girl with a Pearl Earring and the Monet cliff, standing between two vases
Cliff Walk at Pourville, after Claude Monet
I · Cliff Walk at Pourville
after Claude Monet
Detail of Sailboats in the Lagoon: the gondola in front of the island
Detail · Sailboats in the Lagoon
Saint-Cado
II · Saint-Cado
my own composition
Sailboats in the Lagoon, after Jean-Baptiste Olive
III · Sailboats in the Lagoon
after Jean-Baptiste Olive
Detail of Saint-Cado: the water, laid on with a knife
Detail · The water at Saint-Cado
Detail of Saint-Cado: the rowing boat and its reflections
Detail · The rowing boat at Saint-Cado

IV · Provence Landscape
after an unknown painter

Provence Landscape, the chapel among the cypresses
Detail of Cliff Walk: the grasses
Detail · The grasses on the cliff
Detail of Provence Landscape: the scrubland
Detail · The scrubland in Provence
Detail of Cliff Walk: the rock face and the gulls
Detail · The rock face on the cliff
The Auteuil Greenhouses
V · The Auteuil Greenhouses
my own composition
A Family Walk, Paris at dusk
VI · A Family Walk
my own composition
Detail of Provence Landscape: the cypresses
Detail · The cypresses in Provence
Girl with a Pearl Earring, after Johannes Vermeer
VII · Girl with a Pearl Earring
after Johannes Vermeer

A canvas to clear

The painting is underneath Playable

Six canvases and a clock. The game takes the whole screen.

Copying to learn

Before I painted anything of my own, I learned by redoing other people's brushwork.

First pass of the copy: the big shapes
First pass · The big shapes
Second pass: the canvas on the easel, the sky filling in
Second pass · The sky fills in
Third pass: the grasses catch the light
Third pass · The light arrives
The finished copy on the easel, the Monet pinned up above it
The finished copy, on the same easel

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 it makes me want to keep going.