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Philip Dawes Fine
Art Gallery
Gallery Two -
Landscapes - 9
Tossa de Mar, Spain. 1962
Picture title:
Tossa de Mar, Spain. 1962.
Oil on canvas. Size: 46-1/2" x 66-1/8" (118cm x
168cm)
Available in pine frame.
Note: Light reflection on the left side of the painting has been
picked up in the photo,
making it appear too light on that side.
A new photograph will be made later in 2010.
The painting was done in a
three week holiday period when I was advised to take a brake and
holiday because of overwork, by my boss at the advertising studio
Max Raynor Arnold, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, where I worked as
a photographic retouching artist. And although I had dabbled a
little in oils in my late teens, this was the first outdoor
painting, and the first real painting I had ever done.
In preparation for the 'holiday' which I decided to use to paint,
the shop on the ground floor of the studio building in Frankfurt am
Main, a leather shop called Gabler, adapted for me a medium size
leather suitcase with a three-sided zip to open the top flap. He
fitted straps to the case to hold my aluminium easel and an
aluminium three-legged stool with leather seat, which he also made,
thus I was well equipped for the trip.
I painted the picture over about a ten day period, sitting in the
heat of the Mediterranean Sun without a hat. The people in the
picture were just passing by; the figure walking across the path in
the mid-distance was a local man carrying a bed roll. A day or two
later he came along to see what I was painting, and nearly jumped
with joy when he recognised himself carrying the bed roll, and
nearly touching the canvas, pointing at 'himself' to two other
people who came with him. My knowledge of Spanish was as perfect as
my understanding of Moon talk, but we communicated, and he offered
me a swig from the traditional Mediterranean leather wine pouch,
where the pouch is held up high, about six to 10 inches from the
face, and the wine is squirted as a jet into the mouth. He had to
demonstrate to show me how to do it. |
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