Sanctuary

Sanctuary

24" X 20"

Original Oil

I've done a lot since the last post. When I first painted the floor, it looked like it scooped up on the sides. While it is an old floor, it was not sinking in the center! A few straight horizontal lines helped the perspective illusion.

Time for the altar. My first decision was the color of the altar linens. In the Anglican Church (Episcopal Church in the US), the linen colors symbolize different seasons and events. For this painting I chose white, the color for Christmas, Easter, high holy days like All Saint's Day, Weddings, and other important events. Adding gold stripes on the altar front added some ornamentation fit for a cathedral yet kept it simple. I lit the candles on the altar.

Next came the stained glass windows. The blue ones are particularly intense at Salisbury Cathedral and quite striking. Ultramarine Blue was my go-to color, but there are quite a few other blues to give the punch the window needed. The upper stained glass windows were almost impossible to read from my reference photos. The light streaming through them made the design difficult. With the reds and oranges as well as the whites reflected on the arches, I didn't want to make this upper stained glass set too detailed but wanted to know what I was painting. Researching that set of windows, I found some details and painted just enough to identify them.

Last was to make the painting sing. Some of the floor needed to be warmed with brown tones. The ceiling needed to be darker. The side arches wanted some deeper yellow ochre.

As I was working on finishing the painting, I knew I needed a title. Sometimes the title can wait until the painting is finished. Here, I didn't want to attempt completing the piece without the title. I felt it would guide me the rest of the way. That may sound very "artsy", but for such a cerebral piece, a title could help me stay emotionally connected. A call to a fellow artist, some chatting and he came up with Sanctuary. Perfect. All the final touches to the painting were made with the title resonating through my brush.