Marrying a geologist has resulted in a fascinating, but not always easy life, and many years were spent living in tents in various deserts or arid climates.  I am not someone that deals with heat well so when I started my married life in the Richtersveld and Kalahari Desert I knew I had a good few challenges ahead of me….  Later we moved to Namibia where I spent 5 years in the Namib Desert and the Kaokoveld and it was here I realised there was a very fine line to be drawn between love, bravery and stupidity…..  Love and stupidity have prevailed and I now find myself living in another desert in the United Arab Emirates searching for inspiration in the extreme summer heat in surrounding mountains and desert.  My organic landscapes and camel paintings are my way of coming to terms with my environment and the extreme heat I continue to learn to live with.

Just behind our home, on the way to Wadi Bih, Ras al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates

My camel paintings started more by accident than by design.  A lady came to me asking me to do an abstract that would suit the furnishings in their living room.  I am not an abstract artist and neither do I usually take on this type of work, so I was initially very nervous and a little dubious of the commission.  When I saw her living room and the colours and the rough unsealed travertine marble I immediately thought of the Hajjar Mountains behind our home and the shimmering desert sands and liquid heat that oozes across the Emirates road at midday.  These landscapes I now create are really an amalgamation of all the deserts I have lived in and the mountains I climbed with Phil while he mapped the various geological structures.

And so my camel paintings were born…..

All my large camel paintings are commissioned by clients.  Much of the textures used in the paintings have to be imported by myself from the USA, which obviously complicates things when living so far from my product source.  Over the years more has become available in the UAE, but a lot of the more specialised textures and gold and other metal leaf I have recently started using still need to sourced from the USA.  I begin my paintings by talking to the client about what they want, what it is about the desert that makes them want to remember it and hang it in the form of a canvas on their walls.  From that I gain an impression of how much texturing and shimmer for the heat they want, and the colours I will use.  Not everyone is able to convert what they see onto a canvas.   I see myself as a kind of scribe for what they see so they have something to remind them of what they love while living here, or when they one day leave the Emirates.

The texturing takes a long time to dry thoroughly especially because I apply it so thickly with a pallet knife.  Each individual layer is added separately.  I usually wait a few hours between texture layers so initial texturing for the painting can often take up to a week or more.  Only once it is properly dry do I begin with the painting process and laying of colours and shimmer.

I use many different textures, gels and mediums in my organic landscapes.  For this particular painting which didn’t require as much texturing as others I have done I used the following:

• Liquitex Mat Super Heavy Gel
• Modeling Paste
• Glass Beads textured Gel
• Natural ground Modeling Paste
• Quartzsand
• Light Modeling paste

Above is the completed textured step on the canvas with all the texturing laid and dry, ready to begin with the acrylic paint and interference layers.

In the above close-up you can see the light modeling paste (the white texture), Quartzsand (the darker opaque sandy looking texture), and Natural Modeling paste (the grainy texturing that lies beneath the white, light modeling paste).

This close-up shows the glass beads textured gel (the glue looking gel with small glass beads embedded in it) , Liquitex Mat super gel (just below the sketched camels), and the Light modeling paste (the white texture).  The Heavy gel and the glass bead gel create a very slithery, slippery surface to apply paint on which creates the liquid feeling for the impression of the shimmering heat and the watery feel for the painted reflections.

Camels and reflections with very thick gel layers for the hot, shimmering, watery effect.

This close-up shows all the textures used in one area and how the different textures have been layered on top of each other.

I always complete the top half first….  The bottom half still needs an application of paint.  In this particular painting the client wanted the oranges and yellows and ochers of the desert sands to be highlighted with some sandy texturing.  Besides the basic pigments like white, burnt umber, buff titanium and ocher I used a lot of iridescent acrylic colours such as bronze, light and dark gold, orange and copper as well as interference copper, white and gold paints which add a translucent shimmer.  The interference paints also allow the colour beneath to show through the shimmer.  It is a complex arrangement of layering solid colours, iridescent and interference paints over textures and gels which give the painting a depth and a feeling of movement.  Because of all the texturing there is a very sculptural feel to the paintings.

The paint on my brush behaves very differently when applied to the textures on the canvas than just straight onto the canvas.  It is very exciting for me as an artist to see how the paint behaves because every organic landscapes texturing is different.  It is because of this sculptural effect and how the various paints ‘behave’ the painting looks like it is constantly changing.  As the light catches the paints and the shadows cast by the relief of the textures the painting changes and moves before your eyes.  If you hang it where it will just catch the light from the side it will illuminate differently as the sun moves through the room.

Once the texturing has dried and the layers of paint have been added I paint on the camels and their reflections. Most people prefer the more calligraphy-like camels with the semi-mirrored vertical reflection.  In the close-up below you will just be able to make out the faint pencil line beneath the paint of where I want to place the camels and their reflections.

I don’t like hanging a frame around the camels.  It is also difficult to frame because the heavy texturing prevents the frame from sitting flush against the canvas.  I wrap the texturing and paint around the frame of the canvas so the painting continues around the sides.

And the final result…..

Mixed medium and Acrylic on Canvas

H 50 X W 100 X D 4 cm

With some close-ups….