06.21
“Dinghy” and “Dinghy Deux” (acrylics & mixed media) are a new direction for me. Well, a spur off the old direction – I still intend to retain my other, more cartoony style of painting. This time, freeform abstract, with no ‘touch ups’ of marker pen. I wanted to do it, and get out of there.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT:
I had been creatively lost for some time, trying to get into the mood of this “Beached” theme. I was thinking of people on the beach; beach umbrellas; and kids with buckets and spades. But as colourful and appealing as this image was in my mind, it all seemed rather cliché.
The problem was solved when I visited the Burnett River recently, and saw an old wooden dinghy, moored at a pontoon. The dinghy was painted in bright red-orange, with blobs and splashes of white paint. The paint was also peeling in places, revealing older (darker) colours beneath. This vision took me back to my English childhood memories of my late father. He was a shrimp fisherman on the River Dee in Cheshire.
I can remember at age seven, on a car trip with Dad to Wales (late 1950s), to buy an old dinghy. Wales was just across the other side of The River Dee. Since then, I have always loved the insides of old wooden dinghies, as well as dinghies per se. Dad’s dinghies were always brightly coloured. But after that initial paint job, there was no regard for their care or appearance. Later additions to the bright colours were the rainbow effects of diesel and sea water inside the dinghy; splashes of paint or toxic red-lead paste (a legal net preservative then); and dried smelly remnants of fish, cockles and shrimps. Old diesel traces also added to this cacophony of smells.
This “Dinghy” duo tries to capture a little essence of The Dinghy, seen through both my adult, and childhood eyes. While painting, I wanted to feel the decay of both boat and its fishy catch; and the deepness of the sea. Bright colours merging with dirty blues. My reason to use the reverse side of canvases is perhaps obvious. They remind me of the insides of a dinghy. A slice of Dinghy.
“Dinghy” – acrylics & mixed media on canvas reversed.
“Dinghy Deux” – acrylics & mixed media on canvas reversed.
My late father, Roy Mealor – shrimping on the River Dee estuary, Wirral, Cheshire, England in 1991. The estuary was wide – maybe 6 miles at this point, off the town of Caldy – with England on one side, and Wales on the other. Photo by me with SLR Oympus OM1(35mm analogue).