The Roland Garros, Ile de la Reunion

The Roland Garros is a restaurant in St. Denis, right near the waterfront of the Indian Ocean. From the patio, the waves can be heard crashing against the rocky shore. You can also hear the cars and trucks going by, but with the sun and fresh air you hardly care about it. In the distance is the old volcanic mountain that is populated by houses, if you zoom in there are some little houses depicted on the mountain crest just over the roof. What inspired me was the way that the natural environment was encroaching on the restaurant, it was as if the building was swimming in a sea of jungle foliage.

When composing a picture, 'balance' is always a crucial element. Balance of course is an optical illusion because everything in a painting is flat and has no weight, but your brain is always finding ways to estimate the volume and mass of an object. In the Roland Garros painting the restaurant is dominating the bottom left of the picture, this is a very heavy visual 'weight' that would normally create an imbalance.  To offset this imbalance, I created a strong element on the right of the painting: the towering tree, and the distant mountain behind the tree. Creating an illusion of distance is a great way to balance the other 'heavy elements', the old chinese masters used it all the time, in fact they often kept half of their paintings completely blank, which suggested a blinding, distant horizon.

7.5x11" cold press watercolour, July 2011.