XANADU

As for many artists, the restrictions of lock down provided opportunities for reflection and contemplation. For me, additional time for reading offered the chance to revisit old favourites and among them was the poem XANADU.

This painting was loosely inspired by the lines

"And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery."

I wanted to achieve a sense of the exotic within a stylised geometric composition as a counterpoint to the bland greyness of social confinement.

It is a fairly heavily worked piece as I worked to achieve a harmonic compositional balance of geometry, colour and pattern.