Not Flaming June, but Flemen July
Oil on canvas
100 X 100 cm
After “Men and dogs’, I risked another rural theme. 'Roe rut Rusper,' a chance witnessing of a rut chase acted as starting point but I aimed to develop shapes and colour in the whole canvas. This moves the picture away from the conventions of wild life art where the “action” is central and the rest is consigned to a “setting” as if it were a scene staged by nature for the observer.
Roe deer are a passion of mine, they are so much more elegantly built that our other native deer and their solitary lifestyle makes them a more interesting animal to seek out than the herding species. This composition features an occasion when I saw a pair of roe rushing across the ride in which I was standing, from left to right and then, a minute later chasing in the opposite direction. The opening onto the open field and the stile were both there, as was the wood on the right of the field. At least I think the stile was there, this happened 35 years ago. It might have been a simple wired fence.
The sketch has a line curving across the backs of the two deer, linking pursuer and pursued. The head of the buck is thrown hard back and the gap to the doe’s rump is larger. However, when setting up the composition on canvas I decided to reduce the visual significance of the rut in order to try to raise the other visual elements, the stile, the foliage, the field and the sky.
Initially I only drew a wooden fence. But the stile made an interesting statement about being able to cross crossing into the field, which may have been wishful thinking at the time, so I added it. “My truth” as some people would say…
Graphically the straight lines of the stile contrast with all the curving lines used elsewhere.
The trees at the end of the ride arched together to frame the opening to the field.
The woods on the right of the field made a wedge of darkness next to the brilliance of the grass in the field.
I wanted to refer to the colours of the actual location and time whilst keeping control of the palette. I made the trees greens and greys and the deer a deep red. I picked up some of this red on the tree trunks.
Colours change their value in relation to the other colours around them. The sky was dangerous – if I made it blue, I would be tempted to add in clouds, an element too many and if I used a yellowy grey – the dawn’s early light – it would be too literal. I pondered this for two days before resolving to paint it violet. That curtseyed to the idea of blue and the half light in which the deer were chasing.
The grass field was enlivened by varying the direction of the brush strokes line by line horizontally. The tree foliage progressively lightened vertically within arc that suggest the shapes of the leaf clusters which I gave unpainted canvas separations. At the base of the trees theses disappear and dark lines indicate stems.
The ground in the ride picked up the colour of the foliage and the sky. I used short horizontal flicks of paint to indicate leaf litter.
#britishdeersociety
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