Monthly Archives: July 2023

St Oran’s Chapel, day 3

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Above  – St Oran’s Chapel 2, Iona. Oil on 5×7″ wood. Rose Strang 2023

I’m hugely enjoying this self-motivated exploration of light and texture. As yet I’ve no idea where I’m likely to exhibit it. Today’s painting does remind me of the soft buttery light that flowed through the windows of St Oran’s Chapel on the 15th May this year.

I’d love to treat my walls to a coat of lime render (the plaster used to cover the walls of St Oran’s) but it’s a bit caustic I’m told, not ideal for domestic settings.

Here are the three window paintings so far ..

More tomorrow …

St Oran’s Chapel, day 2

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Above St Oran’s Chapel 1, Iona. Oil on 5×7″ wood. Rose Strang 2023

Working with a palette knife brought better results today. So this will officially be the first finished painting of this series!

Once I move on to canvas I’ll explore some dry brush work but the palette knife seems to suit the scale and texture of wood just now. I’m using a palette of white, lemon yellow, medium  yellow, ochre, cadmium red, crimson and black. I’ve been looking at the beautifully subtle work of Jan Mankes, but his technique was very painstaking – slow build up of layers in oils –  which doesn’t suit my style so much.

More tomorrow ..

New series – St Oran’s Chapel, Iona

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Above – painting in progress St Oran’s Chapel, Iona. July 2023. Rose Strang

A change of palette after a very busy few months. No doubt I’m drawn to these cool beiges and subtleties of light because life has been quite hectic.

There hasn’t been much time to paint, what with getting married in May and all! Then Adam and I spent a month editing our wedding video and creating music for it so we could share a video of our special day with family and friends (we decided we’d have a very low-key wedding, so it was just the two of us).

I kept thinking of the light during our wedding in St Oran’s Chapel – it couldn’t have been any more beautiful. Hence these first attempts at capturing the subtlety of light  and the way it plays on textured plaster. It’s quite a minimalist, and spiritual theme. St Oran’s Chapel is believed to be the oldest building on the Isle of Iona that’s still standing. It sits modestly in the grounds of Iona Abbey and it’s quite small. The acoustic is amazing.

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This series will develop onto larger pieces of wood and canvas, and might involve figurative painting too – a bit of a rarity in my work.

Being the visually oriented people we are, we wanted to find an excellent photographer for our wedding day so we were lucky to find Martin Venherm Martin Venherm Photography whose photos we’d admired when he’d been hired to shoot our friends’ wedding. He created images we absolutely love, and will enjoy looking at in the years to come! Here are a few of my favourites  …