Aidan Butler Art

My painting November Morning, Phoenix Park was accepted into this wonderful exhibition in the Ulster Museum in Belfast

I was lucky enough to travel through The Phoenix Park three times a week on my way to work, until lockdown changed everything. Europe’s largest municipal city park, It’s many incarnations provide inspiration and solace, but I particularly like the change from Autumn to winter in mid November. The colours, the stillness and glorious light from the low winter sun make it a landscape painter’s paradise.

For this painting I stopped the car, and went for a 30 minute stroll talking reference photos and thumbnail sketches. My chosen viewpoint was looking through these bare young trees in the foreground into the morning sunrise, which was just about to appear behind the copse of trees in the middle distance. My chosen medium is pastels as they provide me with a degree of control and directness when capturing a subject, and there is no drying time.