A First Look at Burnt Skies: Ten New Paintings from a Long Hot Summer
It’s been the kind of UK summer we don’t get often enough to trust it weeks of heat that don’t quite feel like ours. I spent most of it in the studio, and somewhere around the third or fourth canvas I realised the whole run of work was turning into one thing: the show I’m now calling Burnt Skies.
It’s not finished. Dates are set for 12th Feb through to the 12th March (more details here). I wanted to put the first ten pieces out as a preview before anyone else sees them, and talk a bit about where they came from, rather than just letting the paintings speak for themselves and leaving the rest unsaid.
Where this body of work started
Heat does something to how you see colour. Skies that would normally cool into blue by evening stayed red and gold for what felt like hours. Everything outside had that scorched, dry-grass quality – even the shade felt orange. I didn’t set out to paint “summer,” but by the second week it had taken over the palette anyway, and it hasn’t really let go since.
The thread running through all ten pieces is sunrise and sunset, and the particular kind of optimism that comes with either. A sunset says the day is done and nothing about it can be undone now. A sunrise says none of that matters, here’s another one. I think I needed to paint both this year, sometimes in the same session.
The collection so far…
I’m not entirely sure if all of these will make it to the final selection but I wanted to share for a preview and for your feedback – please let me know if you have faqvourites or ones you dont like!! I’m thick skinned.
Burnt Sky
A dense, close-up burst of red and gold with a near-white flare breaking through, the moment right before a sky tips from orange. This is 1m x 1m on canvas
Edge
A wide Derbyshire hillside sunset, the sun sitting low and huge over a dark silhouetted ridge. The most “landscape” of the set, a horizon line to hold onto before the rest of the work pulls further into abstraction. 60 x 80 cm and framed in a matt black floating frame.
Electric Storm II
The outlier of the group, a diagonal streak of gold, orange and hot pink cutting across deep blues and purples, like lightning caught mid-strike. Proof the palette this summer wasn’t only red. 70 x 70 cm unframed
Euphoria
Heavy knife-work in red, orange and gold, with an olive-green undertone running underneath like scorched ground. The most physical, textured piece of the set. 60 x 80 cm and framed in a matt black floating frame.
Firestorm
Rich red and violet with faint grass-like marks scratched through the surface and a warm gold band low in the composition – the closest thing to a horizon this piece will give you. 70 x 70 cm unframed
Heat
A second read of the hillside-and-sun composition, painted with a different light and a slightly softer palette, the same subject revisited on a different day, which felt like an imge of the whole summer. 60 x 80 cm and framed in a matt black floating frame.
Night Surf
Deep magenta and violet with a pale, foaming diagonal breaking through the dark. This is the painting that convinced me these skies could read as night and water just as easily as fire. 70 x 70 cm unframed
Passion
An intense red with a glowing amber-white core pushing in from one corner – less a scene more of a feeling, painted at full 35 degree heat. 60 x 80 cm and framed in a matt black floating frame.
Static
Deep red-violet with thin gold threads running down from the top and a soft white flare low in the frame – the quietest, most unsettled piece in the group. It was painted during an electric storm and the air felt heavy but still so warm. 70 x 70 cm unframed
Wildfire
A third variation on the hillside-and-sun theme, wider and hotter than the other two, the sun almost overexposed against the dark ridge below. 70 x 70 cm unframed
What comes next
These ten are the potential candidates for Burnt Skies, not the whole of it – there’s more still drying in the studio. If you’d like to hear first about new work, the newsletter is the best way – I’ll always share new work there before anywhere else.
Please do reach out to me with any thoughts or feedback – andy@art-haus.co.uk.
