Artist At Work - The British Artist Lowry And His Paintings

by: David Tatham

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Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2010 Time: 8:54 AM - 0 comments

Lowry would often say that he drew what he saw, with a certain amount of artistic licence of course.From a quick'doodle' in order to capture the moment, to a lengthy well worked drawing that would take many hours to execute.

Dreamscapes:

Lowry was known to sit in front of his canvas or a board on his easel with no idea of what to paint or draw. He will have a dreamy aura around him and doesn't now about his next work until he starts working. Dreamscapes were so named by Lowry as he would let his mind and imagination work on the painting.

Industrial Landscape:

Mr Bernard Taylor was a major influence in helping Lowry form some what we recognize today as his northrn industrial lanscapes. Taylor once advised Lowry to paint his landscapes on a pristine white background. Lowry then experimented with several permutations and combinations of white paint on his boards. He would paint layers of white on the board and leave them for a long time, making the background creamy when he is ready for painting a landscape. This gave Lowry the desired effect of the industrial sky and the stark placement of his figures; a feature he wanted to achieve.

Color and Brush Strokes:

Lowry is known to use a basic range of colors on a pure white background. His range of colors never exceeds other than black, flake white, ivory, vermilion (red), yellow ochre, Prussian blue, and a linseed medium. He is known to be partial towards oils. If one pays close attention to his paintings, one can find an ingenious variety of brush strokes including both the ends of the brush, his fingers, sticks and nails.

Lowry was also known to reuse and recycle his older images. A typical example is that of a portrait from nineteen thity eight, which was found to have a painting underneath of a nother portrait.

Landscapes and Portraits:

Lowry would paint everything that was arround him at the time, the people and their places of work. Though Landscapes and seascapes are some of his powerful pictures, he found particular pleasure in his portraits of solitary figures. He found painting sad people to be his biggest challenge and a difficult one. He had a huge insight of human nature and was known to maintain an unattached relationship with it.

He painted throughout his life and had a ground breaking retrospective exhibition at Royal Academy in the year of 1976, months after his death. Since 1936, the Salford Museum & Art Gallery has been collecting his artwork and houses a huge collection of his award winning works and other paintings.