"Peel Park Sketch 5"
Image size
Original DPainting
Bernard Taylor made the suggestion that helped Lowry achieve the stark figures and the pallor of the industrial sky
that he desired.
Taylor prompt Lowry painted on a pure white background. He experimented with layers of white paint on boards, leaving them for a time until
the surface became creamy.
LS Lowry used a really fundamental range of colours, which he mixed on his palette and painted on the white background.
"I'm a simple man, and use simple materials: ivory, black, vermilion (crimson), Prussian blue, yellow ochre, flake white and no medium (e.g. linseed oil).
That's all I've ever utilized in my paintings. I like oils... I like a medium you'll be able to work into over a time frame".
Examining the surface of a Lowry painting reveals to us the variety of ways he worked the paint with brushes (using both ends),
together with his fingers and with sticks or a nail.
Some paintings are painted over the surface of different images.
The 1938 portray Head of a Man (Man with Crimson Eyes) when x-rayed confirmed a female portrait and probably a self-portrait underneath.
Someone once asked,"What do you do along with your outdated suits?" "Wear them", got the reply!
Lowry actually wore them for work, wiping the brushes on his lapels and sleeves.
In 1932 the father of Lowry died . For the following seven years, his 73 year old mother became ill and fully ruled the life of Lowry.
After she died in 1939, Lowry painted "The Bedroom Pendlebury" - in memory of those lengthy hours he spent there.
Demanding an excessive amount of his attention, Lowry would usually only be able to arrive at his studio after dark.
"My mother didn't understand my artwork, however she understood me and that was enough" Lowry said.
These have been years of isolation and rising despair, mirrored in the paintings of Lowry.
They depict derelict buildings and wastelands as mirrors of himself. As an official warfare artist - himself emotionally blitzed -
Lowry drew the ruined shells of bombed-out buildings. In 1939, the year Mrs Lowry died - the particular person he most wanted to please -
success came with the first London exhibition.