Afghanistan, World Inspired Landscapes

A to Z is the plan, starting with Afghanistan. One day, the series will end with Zimbabwe? Luckily this not a poetry collection! Initially I set about creating landscape paintings direct from source material until I learned more about copyright rules. The series is now based on a variety of sources including books from the library and internet sources from which I draw inspiration, like shape, colour notes, and cultural aspects of the landscape. After researching a country I then create a work from my imagination and memory of the research. I am glad I took this route because it caused me to learn a lot more about countries. For example, Afghanistan has amazing mountains and valleys with narrow blue rivers and pockets of lush greenery. Many minerals and ores can be found in the mountains. In fact, Afghanistan was  one of the few sources for high quality lapis lazuli, a brilliant blue mineral that was and still is used to make ultramarine blue. Nowadays ultramarine blue is synthetic although some special edition releases still use genuine lapis lazuli. I actually acquired a sample of lapis luzuli from Avenue des Arts on Victoria street, the owner Pierre gave me a free sample along with two other amazing colours I will talk about in a future blog.

In this painting, I used french ultramarine prominently in the flowing river, and burnt sienna (an iron oxide) in the mountains. I also used a paint called iridescent moonstone from the maker Daniel Smith which is titanium white (PW6) with finely ground mica. The black bands on the left slope, and the bluish band on the middle right slope will sparkle when the light shines on them due to reflectance off the mica, creating the sensation of minerals embedded in the mountains. Unfortunately the sparkle effect doesn't show too well on the computer screen. I wanted to use pigments to create an artistic statement regarding the value and beauty of the mountains and mineral resources of this country rather than focus on the political issues.

5 x 7" watercolour, 140lb cold pres (painted on the back of "Av du Parc"). February-March 2020