For the Easy Luck of Gold

A swallow flies out of a stone texture. It is metal, cast, standing off the canvas and throwing a real shadow onto it.

“For the Easy Luck of Gold”, 153 × 107 cm on canvas, mixed texture technique with gold, framing on request.

The ground is built like rock: grey-white strata with gold leaf between them, scree and cracks in places. The tone is cold, and against that cold the swallow looks warm.

The bird is small, some fifteen centimetres. People do not find it at once. I like that.

I did not lay the gold evenly. It runs on the diagonal, from bottom left to top right, the same way the swallow is flying.

A gold leaf painting this size asks for a big wall: a living room, a hall, a study with a high ceiling.

A metre and a half tall, so it needs open space, closer to the middle of the wall.

The bird's shadow falls one way by day and another by evening. This is a case where the work changes without anyone touching it.