Vincent Keeling's Art Blog

Hi all, I’ve just got one painting to tell you about today. I’ve decided to call it “Solar Rose II” after a painting I did way back in 2009. As ever, for me it’s all about trying to conjure up a luminous quality to the rose. And, in this instance the rose almost seemed to be emitting light itself, reminding me of the sun with it’s warm yellow and orange tones, and thus the title Solar Rose seemed apt. As for the composition, although I am often drawn to the interesting shapes of a tightly cropped arrangement, here I felt...

In my Blog post on 2 February many of you might have seen my oil painting study for The Unfolding Kiss; Both the study and this larger scale work, represent a long term ambition of mine to introduce figures into my floral work in an effort to create something quite new. And with this in mind I am delighted to announce that after many months of painstaking work this full sized painting is now finished, varnished and ready to go out into the world. The idea behind the painting was to marry two of my favourite subjects in oil painting. The first is the...

This painting is called “Lovers by the Ha’penny Bridge”, and for those of you who keep a close eye on my work, you’ll notice that this is a larger version of a small study painting I completed back in 2016. As often is the case I painted the smaller study to work out the colouring and composition on a small scale first.  So what can I say about this larger canvas? The first thing is that it’s an unashamedly romantic painting, where many of the unsightly elements, like garish traffic lights and battered road signs have either been removed or transformed with...

Finished painting "The Enchanted Garden" by Vincent Keeling For me this work is very much about the circle of life. In the centre we see a King and Queen representing a couple in their prime, then to the right we see young lovers pursuing each other, and on the left a newborn is added to the mix creating a family tableau. Further to this I’ve added the semblance of a gravestone in the right foreground to complete the life cycle. Early stages of "The Enchanted Garden" painting in progress. The idea for this painting emerged in quite a spontaneous fashion....

The Unfolding Kiss: A Study oil on canvas, by artist Vincent Keeling   This is a very important painting for me as it represents my first attempt to realize a creative idea that has been floating around my head for some seven years; This is the idea of combining two strands of my previous work, the floral and figurative, and trying to merge these into a seamless whole. I should also point out, that the figures in this work are inspired by a sculpture, I’ve always loved, called “The Kiss” by the nineteenth century French sculptor Rodin. Although in the...