Figure in Movement

[Cindy Procious]

Originally Posted by Carlos Ygoa

Such maturity for an earlier work!

I agree wholeheartedly.

Extrapolating from the dates of your university days and your youthful visage on your avatar, the maturity of your work belies your age. I assume you studied art from grammar school onwards - I can only guess that you had some excellent teachers who saw your talent and encouraged it at an early age.

I absolutely love the way you paint skin.

[Thomasin Dewhurst]

Thanks so much, everyone. I had one teacher in the third and fourth year of my B.F.A. degree whose remarks and insight have stuck with me. At the time I didn't like what he said because he was so unflatteringly honest unless he was really impressed with something (a very C20th British way of approaching art education). He didn't actually teach us how to paint, he just guided us through our own particular pitfalls. One remark about a nude I was painting then (or, rather, not painting - I was decorating the edges over and over and neatening the middle bits) was that it had a "nasty feel" and since then I have become paranoid of slickness and quick dazzling paint that tries to hide a lack of rigor and feels hollow and cheap. Mostly in my work my results come from trying not to paint like this, although sometimes I get so lost in trying not to do something that I can no longer see when something does work.

[David Draime]

Thomasin,

This is really fantastic. I agree with everything that has been said. Outstanding!!

David

[Thomasin Dewhurst]

Thank-you very much David. It's very nice of you to comment so warmly!

[Stanka Kordic]

Dear Thomasin,

I truly hope the Art World is acknowledging the unique freshness of your talent. It takes my breath away.

I haven't taken the time to peruse your past posts, but can you speak briefly about your palette and technique? The texture of your work is so intriguing..no medium?

Wishing you every success in your career.

Stanka

[Thomasin Dewhurst]

Stanka, thank-you so much for your generous comments and well-wishes! And thank-you for taking the time to post your comments. They mean a great deal.

When I painted that painting (about 5 or 6 years ago) I was using a lot of earthy colours such as yellow ochre, burnt sienna, raw umber, burnt umber and also basic reds such as cadmium and alizarin crimson. It was the palette introduced at University by our lecturers. They were mostly landscape artists and transfered their landscape palette to the figure. But it worked very well. Nowadays I am using a lot of lemon yellow, terra verte, and cadmium orange, ultramarine blue, and phthalo blue. I am also using some mars yellow and naples yellow to keep the background figures and receding parts of the forefigure warm but not too prominent. I find that a good thick titanium white, such as winsor and newton's one, is great for achieving the substance of flesh

I don't use any medium, just oil paint, although sometimes I do use liquin as a sort of varnish to bring out the transparency and saturation of the paint once it has dried.

I just work the paint, the drawing, and the tonal relationships together, and shifting and reshifting everything around (if I have the guts as it gets harder to be brave the closer the painting is to working) until it looks like a figure in space. At the moment I am working the blues and greens in the light with the yellow whites to create a sense of form. I am also beginning to really see the relationship of the background with the figure - rather than just putting the background in, I am really working the tones, lightnesses and complementariness of colours with the figure to make the figure pop out in a very tactile way.

I am looking a lot at Lucien Freud - very intelligent painter.

[Claudemir Bonfim]

Great job.

My favorite of yours!

[Thomasin Dewhurst]

Thanks so much, Claudemir. I am very pleased you like it.