commissioned images

of homes & gardens...

Domaines de Standing à Monte Carlo!

ripolin sur bois

Introduction

House Portraits are, quite simply, paintings of houses and their gardens or setting. 

But they difffer from the ordinary, usually rather strict and formal, photographic sort of image associated with property.  Their mood is one of fond fantasy and their ambition is to capture the flavour and character of a home rather than merely record the details of the building. 

They tell of a visit, not a survey.

I never use photographs for the House Portraits that follow;  instead, I visit the property and sketch in ink & charcoal, making a collection of views and details as well as finding the ‘feel’ of the place.

The final picture is not intended to be a view from one angle but an impression, a fantasy, based upon themes, moods, shapes and spaces, all taken from the entire property, the gardens as well as the house & its setting, giving views from as much as of the place...  Indeed, in the case of The Great Menton Tryptich, the paintings face each other on the main entrance stairway and afford an impression of the place as if the house were invisible!

The spirit of House Portraits is evidently much the same as that of RoadMovies and other work; there, the visual logic follows a journey rather than a view, and with House Portraits it has been said they are paintings of a visit rather than a view - with all the quirks of human contact that that suggests.  In The Road from Pont to Var, an ink drawing that used as the basis of a screen [now lost], the Chinese-scroll manner of unfurling a long horizontal journey takes you past at least three friends' houses in the evocation of the old railway line passing by Le Bar-sur-Loup in Alpes Maritimes.

Prout's Ink Sketch

for The Great Menton Tryptich; 2003