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Sunday 18 January 2009

Aberystwyth Prom.


Low sun, warm light, dark shadows, yes its a Hopper but on a very bad day, Aberystwyth is a small holiday/university town on the far edge of wales. This Hopperesque portrayal is kind of really apt as Aberystwyth is the setting for a series of fabulous 1950s style gangster/detective novels by Malcolm Pryce "Framed in the structure of a hardboiled private detective crime novel, with Aberystwyth evocatively replacing Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles". Titles include "Aberystwyth Mon Amor", "The unbearable lightness of being in Aberystwyth", Last Tango in Aberystwyth" you get the idea.

8 comments:

rob ijbema said...

the most dissapointed beach i have ever seen,Aberystwyth!
man what a dump...
your painting looks so much nicer simon,full of hope...
very sharp

Deborah Paris said...

Gorgeous foreground shadow and crop of the composition. Don't see so much Hopper as I do Jones.

Simon Jones said...

Thanks for the nice comments Rob, and I beg to differ on the others : the beach is not for swimming, its for promenading and throwing sticks for dogs, its too stony, it also provides a fantastic foreground to the town. Its like me saying "Amsterdam, what a dump! hills? WHat hills!
Hi Deborah, thanks for the comments, much appreciated, well the shadow was intentional, but the crop, a happy accident, first time I uploaded it this crop appeared in the browser, and I thought...great.

harry bell said...

Serendipitous crop or no, it's a really effective picture.

Simon Jones said...

Thanks Harry, yes I often find I crop paintings drastically when their finished , the joys of working with digital reproduction and not on canvas. I nearly didnt upload it, the scan looked horribly yellowy, it turned out to be a bit of a non event as a painting, but that crop transformed it.

Anonymous said...

Hi, got here via Liz enjoy looking at your work, its very contemporary and expressive. I mostly work on canvas but have decided to do some A3 on paper work because it does give you the opportunity to crop, I always think when its too late, how I wish I'd zoomed in on just that bit, mind you can always paint another one I suppose. Love your portraits, I'm still struggling.

Simon Jones said...

Welcome Carolann, contemporary.. I like it, well I am just trying to avoid cliches, unless their Hoppers. Cropping I am still strugglig to compose satisfactory paintings with forethought, I actually spent many years as a professional painter convinced composition was a myth, I am a very slow learner.

Tato Skin said...

Perfect painting!Bravo!