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Three Figures by the River
Nov 20, 2019
Three Figures by the River and the Story behind them...
These paintings relate to the time when we first came to France. We used to go swimming in the river. It was warm and sunny and sometimes I would fall asleep. Waking up one time I saw three people by the river, standing together and it stuck in my mind. I did a little drawing and later started constructing these pictures of three figures. A white haired lady in the middle. Did these people know each other? I started to paint them changing their positions and colour. As with the cityscapes the simple motif helped me to investigate the effects of colour changes and any slight change in the positions of the figures, changes how you interpret their relationships.
A turn of events years later, I saw practically the same group of people and I realised that the white haired lady was in fact a man with a towel around him. I had misinterpreted all along thinking it was 3 women, which made no difference to what I was doing, but it put another slant on it, making me think that it isn’t necessarily what you see, it’s what you are doing with what you see that is important. As with many of the series, after a period of time, I tend to pick up where I left off and continue.
