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Forest of Luffness. Painting progress 21

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Above: Forest of Luffness 15. Oil on 30×30″ canvas. Rose Strang 2025

Today’s painting, continuing the Luffness series. These are looking coherent now, so that’s encouraging!

Here’s a detail of the figures –

I’ve decided to paint more detailed portraits onto the smaller canvases as I’ve never liked huge face portraits. I have three more at this large size then I’ll create about three smaller portraits and that will be this series complete for now, I think. I have to get on with some landscape paintings for summer exhibitions.

Here are all the large paintings grouped together –

Forest of Luffness. Painting progress 20

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Above: Forest of Luffness 14. Oil on 30×30″ canvas. Rose Strang 2025

Today’s painting, which happily coincides with the palette of my favourite painting so far from the larger series. Details –

The other painting –

Forest of Luffness. Painting progress 19

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Above: Forest of Luffness 13. Oil on 30×30″ canvas. Rose Strang 2025

Getting into the flow of this series at last, with three large paintings that make sense together. It was a relief to get back to painting today after a nasty virus. More painting on Monday.

Here are a few more details …

Forest of Luffness. Painting progress 18

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Above: Forest of Luffness 12. Oil on 30×30″ canvas. Rose Strang 2025

Today’s painting returns to the mysterious forest. I’m quite happy with the looseness of the paint. It made me reprise yesterday’s painting as I wasn’t too happy with the figure of Richard. Here it is …

Also some close ups of today’s painting …

Forest of Luffness. Painting progress 17

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Above: Forest of Luffness 11. Oil on 30×30″ canvas. Rose Strang 2025

More work today on the latest painting, I wanted more of a sense of mystery in the forest background so I simplfied it considerably and darkened it, with very little light. I also blured the edges of the male figure somewhat to bring the female figure and baby into focus.

I want to emphasise the cycle of life – birth to aging and death, not to make us all feel depressed but to express the what we bring to each of these experiences. Emma’s focus is entirely on her new born baby, there’s the strength of motherhood. With Richard Demarco there’s a complete presence – he’s attending to every aspect of the place and what it has to say to him, also how it speaks to his spirituality.

I like the way the bright leaves of spring highlight Emma’s arrival into the painting. In short, I’m glad I woke up, took a look at my painting, had a bit of a hissy fit and changed it up a bit!

Forest of Luffness. Painting progres 16

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Above: Forest of Luffness 11. Oil on 30×30″ canvas. Rose Strang 2025

I decided to work on yesterday’s painting a bit more as I felt it lacked depth and compared to the rest of the series, looked a bit sketchy.

More details below, including myself next to the painting to show scale…

Forest of Luffness . Painting progress 15

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Above: Forest of Luffness 11. Oil on 30×30″ canvas. Rose Strang 2025

More work today on the Forest of Luffness series. Today’s painting features Richard Demarco beginning to explore the tomb, while in the background Emma walks into the picture with baby Atlas. It’s an odd composition but I liked the filmic sense of mystery. I enjoyed painting loosely and freely; more of this sort of painting to come I think.

A few close-ups and details …

Forest of Luffness. Painting progress 14

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Above: First of June. Forest of Luffness 10. Oil on 12×12″″ canvas. Rose Strang 2025.

Today I updated yesterday’s painting of Richard Demarco, and as usual I’m not at all sure I shoudn’t have left it! Still, it does actually loo more like Richard, and it did need a bit more grounding – so I added legs, hint of the chair etc, but quite sketchy.

In the upcoming documentary, we”ll be interviewing Richard about some of his past work – exploring dialogue between war-torn countries and the healing presence of art.

Back when I worked with Richard as an assistant archivist and curator, Richard was working with Mercy Corp on an exhibition called Beyond Conflict, whch explored the negative impact 9/11 had had on a western view of Muslims.

We’ll be discussing that exhibition in the upcoming doc’ and we’ll be exploring the role of faith in art – does it change what we seek to express, or what we look for in others’ artworks?

Some more views of today’s finished painting.

Forest of Luffness. Painting progress 13

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Above: (Painting in progress) First of June. Forest of Luffness 10. Oil on 12×12″″ canvas. Rose Strang 2025.

I’m working on the hands and the rest of the background tomorrow (the easy part!) you can see pencil outlines.

Clickable images and details below –

Working on a close up portrait of Richard Demarco today for the Luffness series.

This is fairly small again at 12×12″ canvas. I took a still from film footage of our day at Luffness, from which I’m painting this portrait.

There were nine of us there that day last year, including little baby Atlas, but when I carefully look back through all the footage Manuel sent me (Manuel Pennuto is the documentary maker of the Luffness project) the person really paying attention is f course Richard and Terry.

It’s why I asked he and Terry Newman if they’d like to visit the friary ruins at Luffness.

I’d write more about that but it’s 9pm and I’m puggled! There’s nothing more complex than painting the human face – that is, if you truly want to capture expression, hence feeling tired. It’s a good thing I now have a painting lamp so I can paint all hours, but my back isn’t thanking me!

I feel I could create three portraits showing sight, hearing, touch and soul – the idea of (as D.H Lawrence put it) wholly attending.

More tomorrow …

Forest of Luffness, painting progress – 12

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Above: First of June. Forest of Luffness 9. Oil on 30 by 30 inch canvas. Rose Strang 2025

This is the largest in a series of the same subject. I wanted to create it on a large scale to really get the sense of the figures in a forest – possibly lost, or perhaps they’ve discovered themselves in a different realm or time!

Here are the three paintings at different sizes –

Forests seem to have always been associated with mystery, a search, sometimes the idea of freedom from authority, or the idea of spiritual seclusion. I’m a fairly instinctive painter – I don’t begin with a definite concept that I then execute precisely – far from it! I think this approach echoes what I find in landscape and why I paint it. Adding figures always brings tension – it makes the viewer ask more questions, especially when the group are so srangely placed as they are in this painting.

More paintings coming soon, I’m having a little break from it for a couple of days while I write a book of short stories I’ve been working on. More on that later …

Here’s aclose-up of the figures –