An artist discusses a two-year panoramic painting of the view from Eggardon Hill in West Dorset, measuring 180 by 60 centimeters. It captures Bridport, the Marshland Vale, Shipton Hill, the sea, and on clear days the Devon coast. They finished the sun rays the week before and talk about framing, depth, and the moody atmosphere of the completed work.
Right then, so I'm in my gallery and, um, Saturday the 13th of July 2024, and I've just put this painting up, so I thought it'd just be nice to have a little look at it. 6 foot by 2 foot panoramic painting, the view from Egerton Hill with sun rays, and, um, yeah, it's This is a painting that I had been kind of working on for a couple of years actually. There's a little bit of sea there. And, but I was sort of holding off doing the sun rays because I knew it would require a bit of dedicated focus. So finally got into that last week. And, um, yeah, it's kind of fun. So, uh, it's just very painted. I wanted it to be quite sort of, uh, kind of accurate but also a little bit fun. Um, and yeah, I'm liking it. I'm just— it's really lovely when you've sort of done a bit of work on a painting, and you frame it, and you put it up in the gallery, and you have a look at it. And there's just a lot of thinking and looking, and, you know, just, you know, it's like when you think about going to an exhibition, and the exhibition is always a surprise to you. And it's the same with the artist, you know, when you've made a painting, of course it's a surprise to you. And so you just want to spend time looking at the painting really and just enjoying what's going on on the surface. And yeah, this one, I mean, I love, I love creating the feeling of depth in a painting. And the view from Eggedon Hill, this is in West Dorset, There's just this epic view which looks across Bridport, across the Marshland Vale. You've got these ancient hill forts like Shipton Hill here, and then a glimpse to the sea. And then you can actually see— sort of, you can't see in the painting, but the Devon coast on some days over there. And then just the this moodiness. I really like the storminess. And yeah, so just nice to, yeah, spend some time with it really and just, yeah, look at it on the wall in context and, yeah, enjoy my little gallery.
