Pauline Clyde

Our landscape was formed by the folding and fracturing of rock and in some places this is an obvious geological feature as I found in Milford Sound; a mile high mountain plunges the same distance into the depths of water below. However, the soft undulations of the British countryside belie the drama of its making, but it still has an underlying energy which can be experienced, especially when the wind and light affect the landscape.   On many walks in all weathers I have seen unexpected colour and light,  a true sense of the land, which has sometimes prompted a move away from prescribed colour or an abstract approach.

The desert is an extraordinary environment; a far cry from the watery moors of Exmoor and one which I paint whenever I can.  These vast areas have captivated artists and writers with their ever changing light and colourful rocks weathered to make strange and monumental shapes in the landscape.   The painters Maynard Dixon and Georgia O’Keeffe settled in these arid places and lived out their days mesmerised by the light and shapes of this desiccated land.  The desert skies never fail to excite.

The desert paintings are mainly from the inhospitable valley known as Death Valley, for good reason, and the severity of its temperatures meant that I had to steal much of the pictorial information at dawn and towards the evenings.   The desert forms a bowl and as you can imagine the sun hits the mountains at their peaks long before it warms the flat basin and the dunes below.   It is a land where you think the journey across a valley may take twenty minutes, I doesn’t, it takes two hours.   The clear air causes mountains to appear closer than they are and the clarity and dryness give the landscape clean lines and veils of blue.    Because of the variety of minerals in the rock it is possible to sit and paint surrounded by pinks, yellows, greens and violets glowing in the evening light.  In a range of mountains in the High Atlas, Morocco there is a point on the horizon where a pass is used by Bedouin traders and their camels from the Sahara desert.   Again when I stood by the camp it looked as if we could walk there in an hour, no, I was told it would have been a day’s trek.

The extraordinary thing about a bunch of tulips is that they will go on growing when they are put in water.   They find their own space and the stalks will twist and grow in all directions. As a flower subject they will last for long enough to work up a detailed painting, as with 'Yellow Tulips, Blue Stripey Jug’.  However flowers always become more interesting as they fade and dry.   Petals may appear waxy and thick but a source of light behind can cause delicate translucencies, the petals glow against a strong back light making them a compelling subject.

In 'Red Tablecloth’ the light comes from the canvas and the intention was to make the painting glow with light.   

Inevitably a tree is a beguiling subject and one which has endless possibilities to explore whether they are young saplings or brittle ancient stumps.  Their colours, varying amount of leaf cover, shapes and directional energy are all too irresistible not to react to.   The way a tree has grown and developed is effected by its surroundings and the weather.   On Exmoor their submissive shapes are moulded by the prevailing wind and often a row of beeches all have identical aspects to the way their branches have formed, as in ‘Three Beeches’.  

Each year I spend two weeks beside a pond at a friend’s house in France.   The strong light means the best time to work is first thing in the morning, but I spend most of the day in the cool shade of an oak tree.  It is a special pond; quite shallow so that the layer of debris and mud is only a foot beneath the surface.  This provides a surface onto which shadows fall and the sun causes the silt to glow with different browns and golds.   It contains many frogs which come and sit close by my feet when I am painting. 

When I first studied the many surfaces and light on the pond, its lilies and rushes, I realised that I was looking at a multitude of dimensions and effects, so I listed what I saw.   My list started with the textures of leaves surrounding the pond, overhanging bamboo and oak leaves, the shadows of these leaves on the lilies and on the water, also on the bottom of the pond.  The shadows of reeds on the surface of the water which was also reflecting the blue or white of the sky, if the sun was in front of me.  The shadows on the light areas of the pond and the shadows cast on dark areas of water by the lily pads growing high from the water’s surface.   

The deepest, darkest shadows where of the waterlily pads lying on the water with a curl on their edge, the different greens of the pads, sometimes yellowing with decay.  The shadows from other lilypads, the areas of water caught in the centres of lily pads reflecting light.  Reflections continuing from reeds onto these puddles and the debris on the surface of water and pads.  Surface water tension produces two lines of shadow on pads.  There were areas of golden dappled mud.  The lightest tone is sun reflecting off the pads, the darkest tone is shadow of pads on the water or on the bottom.    Sun directly above a lily pad causes a frond like shape on the bottom of the pond.    Then the translucent leaves glow as the sun lightens then from behind.

 Stalks protude out of the water between lilypads and their reflections can be seen plunging down even if the reeds above the lilies are out of sight.  At every point that a reed breaches the water it alters direction owing to refraction and also doubles back on itself with its own reflection.   When the wind blows it produces ripples that cause these many aspects of pond life to completely disappear.  All this and not a mention of the huge golden carp that coast through the water, beneath the lily pads, then appear with great gulps in front of me like surfacing submarines. 

For several years Pauline worked as a commercial artist, illustrating guide books for Cadogan Books and producing watercolour images of proposed buildings for developers and architects in London.  She completed private commissions of house exteriors and interiors and worked with the interior designer Victoria Waymouth on a series of fabric designs. 

In the course of a painting a decision process emerges which determines whether the focus provokes an abstract or figurative approach.  These abstract paintings often began as carefully observed studies or drawings of landscapes.   Working with a large brush is a release from the tightness that can restrict expression thereby producing a gestural paraphrase of the subject for which oil paint is an ideal medium.