Pompeii

Original artwork on canvas mixed medium ink, charcoal, oil pastel, acrylic and oil 100 cm x 200cm Framed in oak. Pompeii is one of my favourite places I've ever visited. I find what happened there so moving. When you're standing in it, you can actually feel what those people felt, seeing them frozen in time. That feeling is what this painting is about. It's a tall canvas full of jugs, bottles, cups and a little pot of flowers. Some are painted solid in peach, mint and cobalt, and others are just drawn in outline, so they feel half there. The background is dark blues, greens and blacks, with the paint left to run down the whole surface. What stayed with me in Pompeii wasn't the big grand things. It was the ordinary stuff, the jugs and cups and bowls, still sitting where someone left them. That's what I wanted to paint. Everyday objects that suddenly mean so much, just because they survived.