Ann Wegmuller: COLOUR AS EXPRESSION
Colour is very important to me. It is probably the subject of my paintings. The painting itself starts from my feeling for a place and the colour is the mood. It is like music: different sounds are like different colours.
Each colour has its own beauty and strength but can be enhanced or toned down by another colour. The excitement for me comes from doing the unexpected with this.
To put down a loaded brush of cadmium red, then sharpen it with shapes of pale magenta, or paint some cool dark yellow and put beside it some warm pale blue instead of the other way round.
Summer Estuary | Gouache
The Matisse exhibition in Paris in 1993 liberated me from any literal translation and gave me the courage to put colour down as I felt it should be and not as it was. This way of working makes me an intuitive, expressionistic painter, which leads to the difficult question of composition or structure.
To find out about underlying structure, I had to make black and white photocopies of paintings that spoke to me through colour alone. This was a fascinating process and taught me that a little discipline is no bad thing. Also if I was clever enough, I could ignore the Golden Section and other longstanding “rules” about composition and try to make my paintings harmonic or edgy and disturbing through my own composition.
The subject of my paintings is what I have seen around me, the land beside the sea and the weather conditions upon it. They are about a kind of place rather than a particular place. They are generally not figurative and any hint of human habitation comes from the shape of a boat or pier rather than the shape of the human figure itself. Above all else I try to communicate to others my feelings about what I have seen.
From the WATERCOLOUR EXPERT, 2003
Ann Wegmuller: SKETCHBOOK
Recently I have been painting the land beside the sea, the shore and the interest on the shore itself. It always takes me back to my childhood. It was and is my adventure playground, the rocks, rock pools, plants and the tide-line.
Colour is very important to me and my paintings start with my feelings for a place, the colour is the mood.
The pictorial reality of a particular place is of no real interest to me rather the discovery of unexpected shapes and colours that change with every tide.
Shore Song | Gouache
 Shore Song (Detail)
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 Shore Song (Detail) |
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Rock Pool | Gouache
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Tide Out | Gouache