Meadows & Grassland
Wildflower fields, open moor and grass moving in wind.
About Meadows & Grassland
Grass moves, and a painting has to decide how to admit that. These do it with direction: the strokes lie the way the wind was going, and the whole field reads as leaning even though nothing in it is blurred.
Amber and warm brown lead the measured palette here, which surprises people who expect green. Open grassland is only green for a short part of the year. For most of it, it is the color of dry stalk with flowers scattered through, and that is what these paintings are looking at.
Flowers are where the knife earns its keep. A dab of thick color reads as a poppy from across a room and as pure paint from a foot away, and neither reading is wrong.
Meadow paintings are horizontal by nature and want a wide wall rather than a tall one. Above a sofa or a long sideboard is where they belong. They take a natural wood frame better than a black one, which tends to close them in.