After a visit to Berlin, his colours became more strident, and his brushstrokes looser. He also made many woodcuts, which influenced and informed his paintings.
painting
At the height of his surrealism, his paintings were inspired by found objects, Freud, and the megalithic monuments of Wessex.
Two turned to stone: Battus for betraying Mercury, and Aglauros for obstructing Mercury’s courting of Herse, and her jealousy.
With early success, he painted the rich colours of summer in western Norway, and some magical scenes of foxgloves and Midsummer Eve.
How Acontius won his bride, and how a portrait of her by an obscure Dutch painter may be part of a series. Mysteries solved, perhaps?
Rainbows are one of nature’s grand spectacles. How careful, then, have painters been to get their colours in the ‘right’ order?
No less than 6 different stories, 4 transformations, 5 wonderful paintings, all from less than 150 lines of Latin verse.
During the 1920s, he painted some of his finest conventional landscapes, and became overtly surrealist.
Natural Norway in the early 20th century, with its courting couple in a cowshed, watermills, dramatic fjords, and rugged hills.
Rape, ejection from society, transformation into a bear, then into a constellation: poor Callisto, but some superb narrative paintings.
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