A Sea Of Red

"Poppyfield" by Faisal Khouja

As the weather shows signs of improving my thoughts are turning to my next field trip. Maybe I'll sling a tent over my shoulder and head down to the South West Coastal Path in Cornwall. Last time I was there I was stunned by the cadmium yellow hues of the gorse in bloom against the backdrop of the Atlantic Ocean.
Contrary to the common perception that England is a patchwork of pastel colours, I have found there to be an intensity of colour available for any budding painter to hunt down and study, especially in the Springtime.
My painting of the Poppyfield above was executed after having sat in a field for a few days near to where I used to live in the North Cotswolds. It had been a wheatfield the year before and they must have liked what was in the soil as this was a veritable explosion of colour to delight the eyes.
With the oil paintings I often work from memory. So after I had seared the essence of this field into my memory, I rushed back to my studio which was in an old farm building at the time to begin the work while it was still fresh.
There are no paintbrush marks in this work as it is done exclusively using syringes with a technique that I developed over 2 years. The technique is expensive and tricky to master but the results are more fluid and intense than using brushwork. As a struggling artist I guess it would have made more sense to go with the sheeple and use an easier methodology with my work and knock out more work in less time. Oh well next lifetime maybe...
I rang up the British Legion to see if they wanted to use my image in any of their publicity (in the UK we have Remembrance Day where everyone wears a red poppy to honour those who have died in war) but they replied that they were inundated with images of poppies already.
After a few days all the poppies in this field had gone over, just as well I managed to capture them in all their blazing colour before they disappeared just as quickly as they had popped up!