The Bench is a 12 foot painting inspired by a trip to Barcelona, where tourists were lounging on the bench in Gaudi’s Park Guell. You may notice that I ignored the elaborate mosaic on the actual bench.
Rejected from one exhibition, "The Bench" later won the top prize in the Artist and Illustrators Artist of the Year Competition.
For details of where and when it is being exhibited, see normanlongartist.com
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| Norman Long "The Bench" 16 x 144 inches |
The composition was partly inspired by Vincent Desiderio’s “Sleep”, which I saw at the artists talk in New York. (Vincent studied at and teaches workshops at PAFA, where I studied in Philadelphia)
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| Vincent Desiderio "Sleep" |
I initially used photoshop to join images together. Then, thinking
about the abstract rhythms and symmetry of the composition
along with the psychological relationships between the characters, I did drawings of figures on tracing paper, allowing me to move them and play with the distances between figures. I tried to arrange the
diagonals (invented shadows are useful) to move the eye up and down the composition rather like a bouncing
ball.
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| Photoshopped photos of people sat on Gaudi's bench, Barcelona |
Some earlier paintings enabled me to try out aspects of the painting. “Watching Time Go By” included a couple from “The Bench” and a child walking in the foreground (the man sadly lost his companion as the painting progressed)
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| Norman Long "Watching Time Go By" 24 x 12 ins £995 |
Small studies for the two side panels
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| Norman Long "Bench Study - Observed" 7 x 14 ins £450 |
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| Norman Long "Bench Study- Proximity" 7 x 14 ins £450 |
The composition was roughed in on the final boards
using black and white acrylic, then colour acrylic and finally oil. New figures were introduced to help the narrative (my wife and the local PC guy were models)
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| The Bench - Black and White acrylic stage |
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| The Bench section 1 - Colour acrylic stage |
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| The Bench section 1 - Finished stage |
Only later did I realize that I had imposed such a deliberate structure upon the groupings of the figures. Even the positioning of the red sweaters is symmetrical.
Part of the challenge was to maintain a satisfying degree of finish across the piece. At times, some figures got too finished and I had to mess them up a bit. To keep me from getting too fiddly, I worked often with extended paintbrushes.
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| The Bench section 2 - Colour acrylic stage |
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| The Bench section 2 - Finished stage |
Because it wasn’t possible to have the painting flat against the wall in my studio and it was hard to get back from it to see it as a whole, I used mirrors to view the painting in progress. Towards the end, I took it outside and viewed it from cross the car park to make sure it held together as a whole.
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| The Bench section 3 - Colour acrylic stage |
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| The Bench section 3 - Finished stage |
I don’t see it as a true triptych, but
one painting which travels in three parts. When I have painted large works in the past, I have found them inconvenient and expensive to
transport, so being in three 4 ft panels makes it much easier. I enjoyed trying to incorporate
the joins within the composition without ignoring the fact that they are there.
I consider myself lucky to be able to embark upon challenging, personal painting projects such as The Bench. The support of students and collectors gives me the freedom to
push my art in new directions, follow my instinct and engage in a visual
dialogue with great art.
An article about The Bench appeared in the December edition of Artists and
Illustrators magazine.
