Original Visual Art Creative Thinking

A digital painting made from a photograph of an oil painting, the group of brightly coloured figures look around as if searching for something, or someone.

Opening a Window on a Contemporary Artist

WELCOME TO THE MAITLAND GALLERY

Working with oil paint

You can achieve exceptionally fine detailed work or shovel the paint on with a trowel. In a multitude of ways oil paint suits my temperament, and I have had some amazing battles with it, a superhuman toil, of blood and sweat; that digs deep into the imagination, and uncovers untold riches, and not a few petty annoyances.

A painting, on my view, ought to give to the person looking at the image a window on to eternity and provide a spiritual reassurance to people that despite all appearances to the contrary, all will be well with our lives; and that we live in an orderly and not a chaotic world, where peace and harmony are the normative experience of the many, and the vast majority of beings lead happy and productive lives.

The figure on the left is a shaman, or holy man, he wears a bull mask, the source of his power and hold over others. The central figure has his /her arms raised, either in fright or high spirits. Symbols of the sun, moon, and earth populate the landscape. A die rests on the ground in the right foreground.

Large Painting: The figure on the left is a shaman, or holy man, he wears a bull mask, the source of his power and hold over others. The central figure has his /her arms raised, either in fright or high spirits. Symbols of the sun, moon, and earth populate the landscape. A die rests on the ground in the right foreground.

Digital Painting: This image is a digital painting made on my computer, a group of people in a landscape. I wanted to emphasise the flatness of the design. I made this image by uploading a photograph of an oil painting I had done and using tools I found online to digitally alter it, making colours brighter and stronger, and more expressive. This is a fantastic way to make art, and allows the artist increasing flexibility, and introduces all kinds of image manipulation, and enhancement almost impossible by any other means.

This is a self-portrait, of sorts, I enjoy the starkness of the background and its contrast to the strongly coloured face.

Automatic Drawing: The imagery I use in my paintings develops in drawings which in their initial stages are made from the most straightforward of elements: from point to line, triangle, square, and circle... I tend to work in drawing books and complete a series of images before starting to paint.

The images are obtained by a process of automatic drawing, (taking a line for a walk!) and after completing a number of these drawings, a theme, and a subject-matter emerges and begins to impose itself, more and more, onto the white of the paper.

I like this painting very much, in some ways it can be viewed as a little unsettling, but art is supposed to make a person question the image, and when the answer is hard to find, this is the cause of our unease.

The New Art: “Maitland’s paintings reveal a strong personality, sure, of himself, and determined to achieve his artistic goals, with an accomplished facility in the use of oil paints, and to the undoubted quality and innovative zeal, he has brought to his art practice. The expressive application of colour to canvas being the activity, which best suits his turn of mind – and is, in fact, his most enduring and profound achievement.”

To the Fakers of Britart in the South of England

(An Artist's Reply!)

I read a post on the web, it said, poor vanquished, Britart is dead. It died a death in yesteryear; Britart no longer roams the Earth, this is clear! But the forgery in art that is London bound, out of Modern Tate, I heard the sound; some time ago, “come one,

come all, and worship at an adman’s creation.” So, for many long years lodged in the Southern womb, the vanguard of Britart was made to swoon; and all the time in the North, fiercely scally laughed all to scorn. If art is not eternal, and ever new, what is the artist

commanded to do? What we need here is a second birth, to outshine the other, as brother clobbers brother; a new birth from the grave of Southern lies, a new art that requires no disguise. This has come from my ill-educated pen; I require a reinvigorated art in truth,

come forth in all honesty in the North, from the despised and downtrodden, out of Eden’s garden. Truly, bring to birth, a poetic past participle; wring from my illogical pen, a mind’s worth of courage; and let the unruly World proclaim a new idea is here, is here!

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