Madurai

 

As part of this period of trying things out I decided for this one to go back to painting in a way that I used to do ten years ago when I used thicker paint on board. I thought that thicker paint would suit an image of detail and complexity first and chose to try and get across the chaos of a city street in India. This is a kind of an imagined memory of my visit to Madurai about eight years ago and shows one of the streets leading up to the Meenakshi Temple on a hot dusty afternoon with the gopuram shimmering in the light. I wanted to try and get across the wonderful chaos of an Indian street but by choosing a centered composition I shot myself in the foot a bit, I should have chosen an off-centre composition but never mind this was mainly a technical exercise so I guess it suits the purpose. 

Most of this picture is painted in quite a spontaneous way and the detail was often determined by individual brush marks that coalesced to look like architectural detail etc. The basic building shapes are from basic reference photos I took there but everything else is made up... apart from the gopuram and the tuc tucs.

Oil on mdf board 18 1/2" x 18 1/2".

There is a short step-by-step progress through this painting including the colours I used in previous posts on this blog.