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Trevor Lawrence is a recently retired postman, living in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, who has always drawn, painted and illustrated. Before moving to Ireland from England, Trevor worked as an illustrator, storyboard visualiser, art director and art tutor. Here he explains how he was inspired to capture this glorious riot of colour. To see more of Trevor’s work, post a comment or upload your own images, visit www.painters-online.co.uk
‘A Summer Garden was inspired by looking at flower beds in the courtyard of Antrim Castle Gardens near to my home. I found that, if I crouched down to flower level, I could see a multi-layered composition before me – graphic vertical lines of grasses that could enter and exit the canvas, large splashes of colour from daisies and poppies and golden bamboo canes at odd angles within delphiniums. My painting is a composition of all those things.
‘I took one of my less successful works on canvas board and covered it in gesso then madly scratched vertical lines into it with the end of a brush. I then drew the flowers in red acrylic and, covering the drawing in warm grey acrylic, began painting. I have wrestled for years to be a loose and free painter after decades of doing tight illustration. I still struggle. My painting was okay, but tight, tired and laboured, almost a botanical illustration.
‘I threw out the fine brush, loaded a broader brush with oil, nice hot colours of rose madder, cadmium orange and permanent magenta. I also had to include my love of blue and started making loose bold marks into the flowers, going over the whole painting again. Much better. Now we were getting somewhere!’