Robert Bateman (Prints)

Goldfinch With Mullein (Print)

Artist's page

Offset Paper; Edition 950
16.75" x 21.125" / 40.64cm x 53.34cm
Unframed (US Dollar): $225.00

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“The landscape of late summer is full of a rich variety of colours and textures
that provides a feast for the eye of the artist. The decomposition of autumn
and winter has begun to set in, and the resulting visual images are perhaps
more complex than they are at any other time of the year. In the same way
that the face of an old person shows the experience of many years, the
wrinkled leaves of late summer show the product of a series of events
in processes of biology, physics and chemistry.

“In this painting, I like the way the old leaves have a textured, sculptural
quality that relates to the eroded embankment. The soft, undulating forms
of the grassy hillside are a backdrop to the sentinel – like ramrods of
mature mullein stocks. Although many consider them just weeds, to me
the mullein plants have the nobility of some ancient aristocrat. The
goldfinch is not an afterthought. I put him in the painting partly to give
scale, and partly because he is usually found in this type of habitat. I
left the bottom unfinished because I enjoyed the sketchy quality of my
brush strokes, and I liked the artistic element provided by the
white negative spaces.”