Los Remedios in Veher de la Frontera, Andalusia.

I have some habits when working, but I am not bound by them. The embryonic drawings are shown below are taken from the travelling sketchbook and show the source material. From my notes on the next page I was unsurprisingly much in mind of Matisse while in such heady surroundings. and looking at the drawings you can see I was not drawing what I could see in front of me but my experience of being there instead. I took no photograph, for the knowledge that I have a photo, stops me seeing and feeling.

In the studio, as I begin,  I have the drawing and a strong sensation with the memory. It is enough.

After some warm under-painting had dried, I began to establish a layout that followed the R/H drawing that itself imagined an elevated viewpoint, the oil drawing was now a sort of second generation imagination.

The key colours are the top ribbon of sky and trees that took time to co-ordinate, the worked down maintaining the harmony and creating interest within the colour/shape register already agreed in the top ribbon.

The loose foreground always pleases me.

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