After The Rain

I painted this after a walk along a muddy woodland path in Berkshire, not long after the rain had stopped. The path was thick with mud and dotted with puddles, and the sky was in every one of them, brilliant and sparkling. The mud was printed all over with footprints: boots, paws and horses' hooves, the separate journeys of everyone who had passed that way and stomped straight through without looking down. A bird was bathing in one puddle, and tiny insects were busy around the edges of another. A whole world was living in the water that everyone else was walking over. The mud is made from acrylic paint, sand and texture paste, laid on thickly with a palette knife and embossed with real horseshoes, so the hoof prints are pressed into the surface rather than painted on. Warm yellows and oranges pick out the texture over a base of burnt umber, ultramarine and yellow, and a satin varnish gives it a damp look. A fine line of imitation gold leaf traces each puddle, marking where water meets mud and linking the two together. The puddles are finished with high gloss varnish and diamond dust, so they shine like real water. As you walk past, they sparkle, just as water does when the sun catches it from behind, so the painting changes with the light through the day. Learn more about this painting on the Journal